Uniquely in the series, Jennings, as Usual contains no action away from the school premises, nor has any reference to any person or place other than school staff, pupils or locations. Instead he took to acting including an uncredited part in Anthony Asquith's 1931 film 'Tell England'. The character of John Christopher Timothy Jennings himself is precisely what is needed for a story of this sort.

To understand the Jennings books, it’s necessary to understand the context in which they were being written.The only book in the series whose jacket illustration depicts action that doesn't occur in the same story. Children in the 1950s who read the Jennings stories were very familiar with the Greyfriars stories, because they had begun in 1908 and literally thousands of stories had been published since then. He went on to university before working as a tutor in a preparatory school, and later became a fireman during the Second World War. I gather there was a TV series which I never saw and doesn’t seem to be on YouTube but here’s what must have been an LP version of the fabulous Leslie Crowther reading a couple of stories.

At that time, in the 1950s, the BBC’s biggest success was the Billy Bunter television show, written by Frank Richards, about a boys’ boarding school.My copy was, once again, a 1980s updated version, with decimalised currency replacing the original, but strangely leaving a little casual racism. Oxenham Society Elsie Oxenham Enid Blyton Ethel Talbot Fidra Books fill-ins folk dancing Girls' Own Girls Gone By Publishers goddess Gwendoline Courtney Hamlet Club hero heroine interview Isle of Man J. Of course, I didn’t share this with friends – at my (highly academic) school we were also supposed to be young ladies preparing to become teachers (or if not so bright, secretaries) with neat handwriting – I always felt that Jennings didn’t fit.