About: Geoffrey Willans     Goto   Sponge   NotDistinct   Permalink

An Entity of Type : yago:WikicatEnglishScreenwriters, within Data Space : dbpedia.org associated with source document(s)
QRcode icon
http://dbpedia.org/describe/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdbpedia.org%2Fresource%2FGeoffrey_Willans

Herbert Geoffrey Willans, RNVR, (4 February 1911 – 6 August 1958), an English writer and journalist, is best known as the creator of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3B" and "curse of St. Custard's", as in the four books with illustrations by Ronald Searle. Willans was born in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Turkey, where his father was a superintendent of the Ottoman Aidan Railway.

AttributesValues
rdf:type
rdfs:label
  • Geoffrey Willans (en)
  • Geoffrey Willans (it)
rdfs:comment
  • Geoffrey Willans (4 febbraio 1911 – 6 agosto 1958) è stato uno scrittore e sceneggiatore britannico. (it)
  • Herbert Geoffrey Willans, RNVR, (4 February 1911 – 6 August 1958), an English writer and journalist, is best known as the creator of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3B" and "curse of St. Custard's", as in the four books with illustrations by Ronald Searle. Willans was born in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Turkey, where his father was a superintendent of the Ottoman Aidan Railway. (en)
dcterms:subject
Wikipage page ID
Wikipage revision ID
Link from a Wikipage to another Wikipage
sameAs
dbp:wikiPageUsesTemplate
has abstract
  • Herbert Geoffrey Willans, RNVR, (4 February 1911 – 6 August 1958), an English writer and journalist, is best known as the creator of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3B" and "curse of St. Custard's", as in the four books with illustrations by Ronald Searle. Willans was born in Smyrna (now Izmir) in Turkey, where his father was a superintendent of the Ottoman Aidan Railway. He was educated at Blundells School in Tiverton, and became a schoolmaster there. He enjoyed sailing in small boats. During the Second World War he took part in the Greek campaign and the Battle of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, serving on the corvette HMS Peony. He later joined the carrier HMS Formidable. Molesworth first appeared in Punch in 1939, and later became the protagonist and narrator of four books: Down with Skool! (1953), How to be Topp (1954), Wizz for Atomms (1956) and, after Willans's death, Back in the Jug Agane (1959). All four were collected in The Compleet Molesworth. Comic misspellings, erratic capitalisation and schoolboy slang are threads running through all the books. According to Ronald Searle in his obituary of Willans in The Times: "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 wrote other books as well. A review in The Times described his novel The Whistling Arrow (1957) 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 compared it with one of Evelyn Waugh's earlier novels. The idea of a 'whistling arrow' was popularised by the Walt Disney Studio film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), starring Richard Todd, where arrows that whistled were used as signals between Robin Hood and his outlaw band. Willans also co-wrote the screenplay for the film The Bridal Path (1959), which starred George Cole, but he died of a heart attack in London 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 more serious one about the Royal Navy). (en)
  • Geoffrey Willans (4 febbraio 1911 – 6 agosto 1958) è stato uno scrittore e sceneggiatore britannico. (it)
schema:sameAs
prov:wasDerivedFrom
page length (characters) of wiki page
foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf
is Link from a Wikipage to another Wikipage of
Faceted Search & Find service v1.17_git139 as of Feb 29 2024


Alternative Linked Data Documents: ODE     Content Formats:   [cxml] [csv]     RDF   [text] [turtle] [ld+json] [rdf+json] [rdf+xml]     ODATA   [atom+xml] [odata+json]     Microdata   [microdata+json] [html]    About   
This material is Open Knowledge   W3C Semantic Web Technology [RDF Data] Valid XHTML + RDFa
OpenLink Virtuoso version 08.03.3330 as of Mar 19 2024, on Linux (x86_64-generic-linux-glibc212), Single-Server Edition (61 GB total memory, 46 GB memory in use)
Data on this page belongs to its respective rights holders.
Virtuoso Faceted Browser Copyright © 2009-2024 OpenLink Software