Womble T-Shirt

Product Information

M. Childs (3 January 2011). "Elisabeth Beresford: Children's author who created the Wombles". The Independent . Retrieved 27 November 2011. {{ cite web}}: CS1 maint: date and year ( link)

In addition to these books, many annuals, picture books and children's early readers have been published over the years, some of which were also written by Beresford. Great Aunt Thessaly (sometimes Great-Great Aunt Thessaly) – named after the province of Thessaly in Greece. The former leader of the Wombles before Great Uncle Bulgaria, she was noted to be 'very old and very wise', and is known to have taken a young Bulgaria to see the guards of Queen Victoria, and a young Cousin Yellowstone to Wimbledon Tennis Tournament. Her name was occasionally spelt "Thessally" in earlier editions of the first book. From 2000 to June 2003, Wimbledon F.C. used a Womble named "Wandle" as a club mascot, named after the local River Wandle. After the 2002 relocation of the club to Milton Keynes, the licence to use the character was not renewed beyond June 2003. [21] In 2006, the club's Wimbledon successor, AFC Wimbledon, made a licensing deal with Beresford and launched its own Womble mascot. After a naming competition in which the final name was chosen by Elisabeth Beresford herself, AFC Wimbledon announced that the new Womble would be known as "Haydon", after Haydons Road, the nearest railway station to Wimbledon's original home ground, Plough Lane. Twelve years later, the club announced plans to return to their original neighbourhood; Haydons Road is also the closest station to their new ground. The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by Elisabeth Beresford and originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. [1] They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles supposedly live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are primarily concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England.Elisabeth Beresford took her young children for a Boxing Day walk on Wimbledon Common, where her daughter Kate repeatedly mispronounced it as "Wombledon Common" ("Ma, isn't it great on Wombledon Common?"), sparking the idea of the Wombles in her mother's mind. On getting home, Beresford wrote down the idea and started developing the characters and storylines. [3] She developed most of her Womble characters around members of her family, and named them after places the family had associations with. [4] [5] [6] [7] Plot aspects [ edit ] Physical characteristics [ edit ] Dalai Gartok – the leader of the "Great White Wombles" of the Himalayas, named after the Tibetan town of Gartok. He and his Wombles inspired the legends of the Yeti. Dalai Gartok is also one of the oldest known Wombles, and has honed his Womble senses to the extent that he has considerable telepathic ability. Tante Lille – the leader of "Les Wombleaux of Boulogne", named after the northern French town of Lille. as royalty, especially the Queen. They also have a respect for human literature; the Wimbledon Wombles maintain a large library of books left by humans on the Common, and Great Uncle Bulgaria is fond of reading The Times. Beresford also gave permission for a team of Wombles to run the London Marathon. [22] reboot [ edit ]

Wombles Netball Club – List of Committee Post Responsibilities". Angelfire.com . Retrieved 30 April 2012. Miss Adelaide – the burrow's schoolmistress and head of the Womblegarten and a great friend of Madame Cholet, named after the city of Adelaide in Australia. A very strict but fair Womble, she has the ability to make even Great Uncle Bulgaria feel silly. The Wombles return to TV on Channel 5 in 2015". Digital Spy. London. 28 August 2013 . Retrieved 31 July 2018. a b c "Underground, Overground – The Wombles get wired". BBC. 17 February 1998 . Retrieved 14 August 2011. Wombles are essentially burrowing animals. Beresford's original book describes them as "a bit like teddy bears to look at but they have real claws and live beneath Wimbledon Common". As they mostly live in long-established burrows, they rarely use their claws even for digging. Their size and physical appearance has changed somewhat over the years: in the original editions of the books, Wombles are pictured as bear-like and between 3 and 5 feet (about 1–1.5 metres) in height, making them only slightly smaller than adult humans. This changed with the TV series, in which they were portrayed as being about knee-high to humans, with pointy snouts like those of hedgehogs. In the book and film Wombling Free they are described as "short, fat, and furry", roughly between three or four feet (about 1 metre) in height. [ citation needed]Beresford wrote a collection of short stories entitled The Invisible Womble and Other Stories (1973); these stories were based on episodes from the TV series, although they occasionally refer to events in the novels. The world of Wombles author Elisabeth Beresford". BBC. 10 November 2010 . Retrieved 14 August 2011. Later character names for the film Wombling Free and second Wombles TV series were developed in the same manner: Madame Cholet – a very kind-hearted but short-tempered female Womble, and the cook of the Wimbledon burrow, styled on Beresford's mother and named after the town of Cholet in France. She affects a French accent, though she is actually no more French than any other Wimbledon Womble and simply likes to think of herself as French.

Siddique, Haroon (25 December 2010). "Wombles creator Elisabeth Beresford dies, aged 84". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 14 August 2011.

Required Cookies & Technologies

Wombles are very careful to keep their existence secret from human beings – at least in the books and TV series – fearing that discovery of their existence will lead to the Great Womble Hunt. For the most part, adult human beings rarely take notice of them, or fail to distinguish them from humans. In the film Wombling Free this is reversed as the Wombles seek to get humans to listen to their pleas to "make good use of bad rubbish". Wombles are herbivores and are very fond of mushrooms. They eat a variety of plants, fungi, and tree products that human beings cannot (or will not) eat, so daisy buns, moss pie, acorn juice, fir-cone soufflé, elm bark casserole and grass bread sandwiches are part of the Womble menu – augmented by any food left behind on the Common by human beings. All Wombles are strong swimmers and can even survive for long periods in ice-cold water. Several sub-species of Womble are revealed throughout the books: the Loch Ness Monster is actually part of a clan of water Wombles and the yeti of the Himalayas are giant snow-white Wombles. Wombles have a sixth sense which allows them to sense green spaces and wildlife: this is first mentioned in the Wandering Wombles but developed to a keen long-range telepathic sense by Dalai Gartok Womble in The Wombles Go Round The World.

Alderney – Madame Cholet's assistant, named after Alderney in the Channel Islands where Beresford lived towards the end of her life. She appeared in the early books, but was not in the first TV series. Her character was revived in the second TV series. She is a precocious young Womble with a slight disregard for the rules. [24]Great Uncle Bulgaria Coburg – the oldest and wisest of the Wimbledon Wombles and their leader. He is based on Beresford's father-in-law and named after the country and the German city, [2] respectively. He occasionally frightens the younger Wombles with his stern demeanour (and particularly his habit of glaring at them through two pairs of spectacles) but is actually very kind. He is over 300 years old by the final book.