The
schoolboy hero of twenty-six books by
Anthony Buckeridge (born 1912). The first book was
Jennings Goes to School in 1950, and the most recent is
Jennings Breaks the Record in 2000.
They are set at Linbury Court Preparatory School, a boarding school in Sussex. Jennings begins as a new boy, as does Darbishire. They become friends and have all sorts of adventures and scrapes. The adventures are of the realistic schoolboy kind, usually involving getting into trouble, avoiding masters, and hare-brained schemes that make perfect sense in boyish logic.
The older boys include Temple (nicknamed Bod) and his cohorts Atkinson and Venables. The masters include the kindly Mr Carter (called Benedick because he says a grace containing the word benedicata), and the irascible Mr Wilkins.
Their exclamations often include "supersonic" as an intensive, "mouldy" and "ozard" meaning bad (opposite of wizard, quite logically), and "fossilized fish-hooks!". Their insult is "hairy ruin".
The books were once immensely popular but in recent years their decline was highlighted by the success of Harry Potter, and the decision in 2000 of their publisher, Macmillan, not to reprint them. An independent publisher House of Stratus agreed to take them on.