sorry SO behind on replying to things. Pioneer Air Fighter is the recollection from the 50s where they edited it to be a bit more kid friendly right? all the whiskey replaced with lemonade!
I've been rereading the boy biggles and biggles goes to school, and having a very different opinion of his dad reading as an adult compared to reading as a 16 year old, he might be gruff and edwardian and emotionally quite rejecting, but you can also see him a constant oh god im a lone parent to an absolute liability who keeps trying to die of fever, why is he making it so hard for me to keep him alive, stop messing about with tigers arggg. I do wonder what it would have been like if his father and brother survived the war, complicated, I think, probably more expectations he go back and do as was planned, him to study for the Indian Civil Service exam and get posted out there - but then at the same time, would the war have changed his father's ideas of what a good future looked like, also maybe a bad idea to send him back to get some more malaria?? and he's JUST such a wreck at the end of the war, it might be psychologically eviscerating for him to be perceived by his father and brother in that state.
I enjoy Condor! but i enjoy the adventure nonsense, and I enjoy that he's barely pieced himself together, but yes you can really see it's the first one WEJ wrote, when he was still mostly producing WWI short stories, and he has no idea what he thinks should be going on or who this character is and is trying to jam his little neurotic disaster into a Serial adventure. There's always part of me that things some of the interwar adventure books is just 18 year old Biggles stuck in 266 mess, day dreaming intensely to avoid having to engage with reality. Like when he was a sick child stuck in bed reading for weeks at a time.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2024-10-17 10:33 am (UTC)I've been rereading the boy biggles and biggles goes to school, and having a very different opinion of his dad reading as an adult compared to reading as a 16 year old, he might be gruff and edwardian and emotionally quite rejecting, but you can also see him a constant oh god im a lone parent to an absolute liability who keeps trying to die of fever, why is he making it so hard for me to keep him alive, stop messing about with tigers arggg. I do wonder what it would have been like if his father and brother survived the war, complicated, I think, probably more expectations he go back and do as was planned, him to study for the Indian Civil Service exam and get posted out there - but then at the same time, would the war have changed his father's ideas of what a good future looked like, also maybe a bad idea to send him back to get some more malaria?? and he's JUST such a wreck at the end of the war, it might be psychologically eviscerating for him to be perceived by his father and brother in that state.
I enjoy Condor! but i enjoy the adventure nonsense, and I enjoy that he's barely pieced himself together, but yes you can really see it's the first one WEJ wrote, when he was still mostly producing WWI short stories, and he has no idea what he thinks should be going on or who this character is and is trying to jam his little neurotic disaster into a Serial adventure. There's always part of me that things some of the interwar adventure books is just 18 year old Biggles stuck in 266 mess, day dreaming intensely to avoid having to engage with reality. Like when he was a sick child stuck in bed reading for weeks at a time.