"doin' good, ritin' rongs and persuin' happiness". (Just William - Richmal Crompton)

Member Name: merv

Product:	Just William - Richmal Crompton
Date:	05/02/02 (350 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Enjoyable, Entertaining, Very Funny

Disadvantages: None

I can’t help feeling that we are over-protective with our children these days.

Growing up in the 50’s without the universal ‘benefits’ of television, computers and on-tap entertainment, most of my childhood was spent out of doors – playing football in the street, cricket on the green, fishing for sticklebacks in the brook at the back of our house, helping the local farmers with the harvest, damming the stream, bike rides to places we’d never been before, ghost hunting in the abandoned old hall on the edge of town, sledging down the mountain, climbing trees and building dens.

The list seems endless and of course, the sun was always shining and people were always pleasant to one another.…..

Well perhaps the memories dim a bit as you get older and you only remember the good times but having said that I never seemed to be bored and me and my pals always seemed to be given a fairly free rein about what we got up to and where we went.

Of course in those days we had a good role model. Harry Potter may well be flavour of the month with today’s children but in those ‘never had it so good’ days, it was William Brown, the tousle-headed, snub-nosed, hearty, loveable imp of mischief who had been harassing his unfortunate family since the 1920's. His name became a byword for irrepressible boyhood and his pranks were the scrapes of every healthy youngster.

The stories were recorded with incredible observation and a keen sense of humour by the author, Richmal Crompton, a writer of immense talent. Born Richmal Crompton Lamburn on November 15 1890 in Bury, Lancashire, her first professionally published story appeared in the Girl's Own Paper in 1918. She had started out as a teacher and at this time was a classics mistress at Bromley High School Kent. She was stricken with polio in 1923 and despite this disability continued teaching until her doctor convinced her to give

it up for her own good.

She devoted her time to writing the ‘William' books, which were inspired by her brother Jack who travelled the world writing a number of books on his adventures. Richmal's first William book appeared in 1922 and she continued to write of his adventures until her death in January 1969 - a total of 38 books.

I wrote a while back about Anthony Buckeridge’s Jennings’ Books but William's circumstances, despite their 1920s setting, will be a lot more familiar to modern children than those of his main rival and the stories are still firmly placed in the original era both environmentally and socially. Incredibly, the William books span five decades and as well as the wonderful adventure, fun, and humour of the books, they provide a unique portrait of the changing landscape of a typical English village (William's home) during those fifty years.

William's father was a pipe-smoking authoritarian, his mother the flustered housewife in charge of cook and maid, his seventeen year old brother is trying hard to 'be a man', and his sister is the weak, swooning type. He is accompanied in many of his adventures, by his faithful friends, Henry, Ginger and Douglas, the four of them known collectively as the Outlaws, with Violet Elizabeth Bott the spoilt child who often proves to be the bane of his life and the butt of his humour.

William gets up to all the usual tricks. In the first and most well known book ‘Just William’ he rode a bike literally through a picnic, disrupted a Band of Hope meeting, turned his house into a zoo, fell in love with his teacher and bankrupted a sweet shop.

Minor details of everyday life are woven into the stories, reading them now is like a history lesson e.g., ‘twelve pennies to the shilling’, and that ‘sixpence would not only gain you entrance to the matineé performance at the local 'Picture Palace'
, but
would buy a huge helping of Gooseberry Eyes to tide you through the films’. Many more such details of school and home life bring the stories alive even for a twenty first century reader, and the language is modern enough to make the reading relatively easy.

If an alien landed and wanted a quick synopsis of aspects of life in the twentieth century, you could do a lot worse than presenting it with the William books and saying “It's all in there.”

Some of you may be familiar with the film, television series and radio programme of the books. In the film, William, was played by Dennis Waterman of ‘Minder’ fame, whilst Bonnie Langford played Violet Elizabeth in the television series.

Perhaps the best interpretation is on radio, where the books are read by Martin Jarvis - and an excellent job he does too - one of the most popular series of recorded readings on cassette. He really puts his heart and soul into the reading and his varied voices and accents really capture the spirit of the books. William is just how I imagine him full of attitude and invention "doin' good, ritin' rongs and persuin' happiness". Ginger has a kind of loyal brightness in his voice, appropriate to the character of William's trusty lieutenant. Henry, the 'historian' of the group, sounds more 'boffinous'. Douglas (my own personal favourite) is a little slower, almost gloomy, looking as he does on the dark side and often expecting that their exploits will 'end in death.'

Nowadays, William has been hacked, re-packed and "politically corrected" into collections of adventures more designed for the short attention spans of modern life, but to absorb the real flavour of these brilliantly crafted, sharp witted classics, there is a box set available in chronological order of the first ten books, with original line drawings and facsimiles of their original covers.


Otherw
ise look in car boot sales and school jumble sales, thiry eight of them were written, and they’ve sold more than 10 million copies, so there’s plenty of second hand versions about.

Word of warning - if you are a bit apprehensive about letting your kids out in the big bad world, keep them away from the William books. Once they start reading these, they’ll be off exploring and having adventures of their own.

A total of thirty-eight William books were published by George Newnes between 1922 and 1970, the final book 'William the Lawless' being published after Richmal Crompton's death in 1969. A complete list of the titles is included below – see what I mean about history, even the titles reflect changes throughout the 20th Century!

1920’s

Just William
More William
William Again
William the Fourth
Still William
William the Conqueror
William the Outlaw
William in Trouble
William the Good
William

1930’s

William the Bad
William's Happy Days
William's Crowded Hours
William the Pirate
William the Rebel
William the Gangster
William the Detective
Sweet William
William the Showman
William the Dictator
William and A.R.P
(Later issued as William's Bad Resolution)

1940’s

William and the Evacuees
(Later issued as William the Film Star)
William Does His Bit
William Carries On
William and the Brains Trust
Just William's Luck

1950’s

William the Bold
William and the Tramp
William and the Moon Rocket
William and the Space Animal
William's Television Show

1960’s

William the Explorer
William's Treasure Trove
William and the Witch
William and the Pop Singers
William and the Masked Ranger
William the Superman
William the Lawless

Summary: