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Molesworth #3
Whizz for Atomms
With one mad yell the mob, armed with stumps and bits torn from desks, surge away down the pasage, trampling the masters under foot. A buket of water fall on GRIMES and the term end in a series of wizard rags and japes. Cars arrive, driven by parents with drawn, white faces. Nigel Molesworth is dragging St. Custard's into the 20th century in the company of 'felow pupils, their doting maters, pompous paters and any others who are interested', via the Elizabethans and the Wild West. Most importantly, he has some important lessons in how to treat Girls, what to do with a tee-vee, what a holiday will really involve, and how to survive the uranium age that is sure to hit any time now. CAVE!
112 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1956
About the author
Geoffrey Willans
41 books28 followersHerbert Geoffrey Willans was an English author and journalist, is best known as the co-creator, with the illustrator Ronald Searle, of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3b and curse of St. Custard's".
He was educated at Blundells School, Tiverton, and became a schoolmaster there. Molesworth first appeared in Punch in the 1940s and was the protagonist and narrator of five books, beginning with 1953's Down with Skool!, and followed by How to be Topp, Wizz for Atomms and, posthumously, Back in the Jug Agane and the anthology, The Compleet Molesworth. Comic misspellings, erratic capitalisation and 1950s public schoolboy slang are threads running through all the books.
According to Ronald Searle in his obituary:
"His cunning was more refined than Bunter...Willans was delighted that schoolmasters, far from feeling publicly disrobed, were in fact giving away his books as end of school prizes."
Willans co-wrote the screenplay for the 1959 film The Bridal Path, which starred George Cole, but died at the age of 47 before the film was released. He also wrote a number of other, mostly humorous, books, including The Dog's Ear Book (also with Searle), My Uncle Harry (an exploration of the British gentlemen's club), Fasten Your Lapstraps! (an account of the early days of intercontinental flight), and Admiral on Horseback (a rather serious one about the navy). He was a keen amateur botanist, and spent so long in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew that the staff gave him a key.
A review in The Times newspaper describes The Whistling Arrow as having a futuristic aeroplane as the 'heroine'. "It is his apparent strength in writing about planes and the people that flew them." The reviewer compares it with one of Evelyn Waugh's earlier novels.
He was educated at Blundells School, Tiverton, and became a schoolmaster there. Molesworth first appeared in Punch in the 1940s and was the protagonist and narrator of five books, beginning with 1953's Down with Skool!, and followed by How to be Topp, Wizz for Atomms and, posthumously, Back in the Jug Agane and the anthology, The Compleet Molesworth. Comic misspellings, erratic capitalisation and 1950s public schoolboy slang are threads running through all the books.
According to Ronald Searle in his obituary:
"His cunning was more refined than Bunter...Willans was delighted that schoolmasters, far from feeling publicly disrobed, were in fact giving away his books as end of school prizes."
Willans co-wrote the screenplay for the 1959 film The Bridal Path, which starred George Cole, but died at the age of 47 before the film was released. He also wrote a number of other, mostly humorous, books, including The Dog's Ear Book (also with Searle), My Uncle Harry (an exploration of the British gentlemen's club), Fasten Your Lapstraps! (an account of the early days of intercontinental flight), and Admiral on Horseback (a rather serious one about the navy). He was a keen amateur botanist, and spent so long in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew that the staff gave him a key.
A review in The Times newspaper describes The Whistling Arrow as having a futuristic aeroplane as the 'heroine'. "It is his apparent strength in writing about planes and the people that flew them." The reviewer compares it with one of Evelyn Waugh's earlier novels.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 7, 2023
A delight
July 21, 2011
The third book in the 'Molesworth' sequence and everything is getting more offbeat and surreal. This book is supposedly a guide to life in the coming atomic age, but in fact it's a set of bizarre almost-random musings with a strong anti-authoritarian slant. The text is brilliant quasi-stream-of-consciousness stuff and the illustrations are technically brilliant and thematically perfect. Hilarious!
May 18, 2013
In which Nigel Molesworth, the goriller of 3b, teaches us how to survive in the Atommic Age plus the Molesworth Guide to Gurls. The usual gang are back at St Custards plus a little interlude chez Molesworth, hem, hem.
January 4, 2012
I came to Germany to learn to speak German. 34 years later, I'm still here. Like Nigel, I must be a slo developer:
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November 9, 2012
Magnificent books!
April 26, 2023
it feels a little more diffuse than the first two, as if willans is having to cast his net wider in search of material, but molesworth is a character with such a strong sensibility (or i am so biased by having read it a hundred times in my youth) that that doesn't matter so much
November 26, 2022
Amongst other things, provides very helpful template for school assemblies. Chizz.
March 4, 2013
The third and weakest of the Geoffrey Williams books.
January 9, 2014
y media estrellitas. Tiene ilustraciones muy bonitas, pero no sé si sea por el estilo a cómo esta escrito me fue complicado entenderle.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews