Johns

WILLIAM EARL JOHNS (1893 - 1968)

On 1 April 1918, the creator of 'Biggles' was appointed flying instructor at Marske in Cleveland. Aircraft were very unreliable in those days and he promptly wrote off three planes in three days due to engine failure - crashing into the sea, then the sand, and then through a brother-officer's back door. Later, he was caught in fog over the Tees, missed Hartlepool and narrowly escaped flying into a cliff. Shooting one's own propeller off with the synchronised forward-mounted machine-gun was a rare accident, but it happened to Johns twice!

The Commanding Officer at Marske was a Major Champion, known as 'Gimlet', a name used later by Johns for the hero of a series of stories.

After the war, Johns remained in the RAF and arrived late on 24 December 1924 in Newcastle, and spent an horrific night at 15 Ellison Place, then a disused private nursing -home. His bed collapsed, leaving him entirely in the dark without matches. he did, however, have the company of noisy rats, sounding as if they were wearing clogs, and intermittently biting pieces out of the floor. With a cheerfulness worthy of Biggles, Johns survived to serve a year in Newcastle, while living with Doris (Dol) Leigh, his devoted companion, on the coast at Whitley Bay. Unique among children's writers of the time, Johns employs a working-class character as an equal member of the Biggles team - Ginger Habblethwaite, later Hebblethwaite, the son of a Northumberland miner (we never learn his Christian name).

Johns' 1935 book Biggles and the Black Peril has Biggles and Algy meeting Ginger for the first time. He is discovered in Durham, though he himself doesn't know which county he's in. He is living rough as he walks to London to join the fledgling RAF. Why he should bother to do this rather than walk into Johns' own recruiting office in Newcastle is not made clear. Perhaps he was dodging his disapproving father back in 'Smettleworth'. Johns, incidentally, doesn't attempt the accent, and Ginger's language resembles that of the American gangster films of the day. Cramlington airfield is mentioned, as is Newcastle, where Ginger is sent to buy some decent clothes. All three spend a night or two in Newcastle, which is not described. The plot also briefly involves a house on the Northumberland or coast, as Johns puts it, though going by the internal evidence of the book it should be in Durham, or possibly North Yorkshire. There are discrepancies later on in Johns' Biggles series, as Ginger more than once declares himself to be a Yorkshireman.

Howard Leigh, younger brother of Doris Leigh, was allowed by Johns to join him in his studio, and encouraged to become an aviation artist. Howard received no formal training at art school yet during the 1930s he was a much sought-after specialist in aviation illustration and he is still highly regarded. Readers of Johns' early Biggles books, published by John Hamilton and Oxford University Press, will know his accurate and graceful frontispieces in these volumes.

He died of cancer on 6 February 1942., aged 32, at the Saville Nursing Home, 65 Clayton Road in Newcastle. This seems to be the Fernwood House, where Eileen Blair, George Orwell's wife died three years later (v. GEORGE ORWELL).

Myers Literary Guide:	The North-East
WILLIAM EARL JOHNS (1893 - 1968) On 1 April 1918, the creator of 'Biggles' was appointed flying instructor at Marske in Cleveland. Aircraft were very unreliable in those days and he promptly wrote off three planes in three days due to engine failure - crashing into the sea, then the sand, and then through a brother-officer's back door. Later, he was caught in fog over the Tees, missed Hartlepool and narrowly escaped flying into a cliff. Shooting one's own propeller off with the synchronised forward-mounted machine-gun was a rare accident, but it happened to Johns twice! The Commanding Officer at Marske was a Major Champion, known as 'Gimlet', a name used later by Johns for the hero of a series of stories. After the war, Johns remained in the RAF and arrived late on 24 December 1924 in Newcastle, and spent an horrific night at 15 Ellison Place, then a disused private nursing -home. His bed collapsed, leaving him entirely in the dark without matches. he did, however, have the company of noisy rats, sounding as if they were wearing clogs, and intermittently biting pieces out of the floor. With a cheerfulness worthy of Biggles, Johns survived to serve a year in Newcastle, while living with Doris (Dol) Leigh, his devoted companion, on the coast at Whitley Bay. Unique among children's writers of the time, Johns employs a working-class character as an equal member of the Biggles team - Ginger Habblethwaite, later Hebblethwaite, the son of a Northumberland miner (we never learn his Christian name). Johns' 1935 book Biggles and the Black Peril has Biggles and Algy meeting Ginger for the first time. He is discovered in Durham, though he himself doesn't know which county he's in. He is living rough as he walks to London to join the fledgling RAF. Why he should bother to do this rather than walk into Johns' own recruiting office in Newcastle is not made clear. Perhaps he was dodging his disapproving father back in 'Smettleworth'. Johns, incidentally, doesn't attempt the accent, and Ginger's language resembles that of the American gangster films of the day. Cramlington airfield is mentioned, as is Newcastle, where Ginger is sent to buy some decent clothes. All three spend a night or two in Newcastle, which is not described. The plot also briefly involves a house on the Northumberland or coast, as Johns puts it, though going by the internal evidence of the book it should be in Durham, or possibly North Yorkshire. There are discrepancies later on in Johns' Biggles series, as Ginger more than once declares himself to be a Yorkshireman. Howard Leigh, younger brother of Doris Leigh, was allowed by Johns to join him in his studio, and encouraged to become an aviation artist. Howard received no formal training at art school yet during the 1930s he was a much sought-after specialist in aviation illustration and he is still highly regarded. Readers of Johns' early Biggles books, published by John Hamilton and Oxford University Press, will know his accurate and graceful frontispieces in these volumes. He died of cancer on 6 February 1942., aged 32, at the Saville Nursing Home, 65 Clayton Road in Newcastle. This seems to be the Fernwood House, where Eileen Blair, George Orwell's wife died three years later (v. GEORGE ORWELL).
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