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Asked to chose his favourite literary character as an inspiration for law, the [[JC]] — after a wistful look at [[A. P. Herbert]]’s curmudgeonly litigant [[Albert Haddock]] — chose of course Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle’s immortal, heroic schoolboy [[nigel molesworth]], self-styled “curse of st custards”, made real through the winsome prose real-life schoolmaster Geoffrey Willans and real-world illustrating genius, Ronald Searle, in a series of books published in the 1950s and now available through compendiums like {{br|The Complete Molesworth}}. | Asked to chose his favourite literary character as an inspiration for law, the [[JC]] — after a wistful look at [[A. P. Herbert]]’s curmudgeonly litigant [[Albert Haddock]] — chose of course Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle’s immortal, heroic schoolboy [[nigel molesworth]], self-styled “curse of st custards”, made real through the winsome prose real-life schoolmaster Geoffrey Willans and real-world illustrating genius, Ronald Searle, in a series of books published in the 1950s and now available through compendiums like {{br|The Complete Molesworth}}. | ||
Molesworth — a ner’er do well 12 year old at a Boarding School that may well have inspired Hogwarts — stands on neither form nor ceremony in how he expresses himself. For our age of obsessive modern formalism, nigel is the embodiment of unapologetic, old-fashioned ''substance''. He cares no fig for spelling or grammar — “uterly wet and weedy” he would sa, no doubt — but, through a savant genius for subversion of the vernacular, has still generated his own idiom which — [[as any fule kno]] — survives to this day in publications as august as ''Private Eye'', ''Test Match Special'' and (cough) the [[Jolly Contrarian|jole contrian]]. | Molesworth — a ner’er do well 12 year old at a Boarding School that may well have inspired Hogwarts<ref>Seriously: moleworth’s latin pla was called Hogwarts, and there are [https://www.hogwartsprofessor.com/whence-hogwarts-rowling-molesworth-influence-and-intertextuality/ those who have burst forth in print on this thesis].</ref> — stands on neither form nor ceremony in how he expresses himself. For our age of obsessive modern formalism, nigel is the embodiment of unapologetic, old-fashioned ''substance''. He cares no fig for spelling or grammar — “uterly wet and weedy” he would sa, no doubt — but, through a savant genius for subversion of the vernacular, has still generated his own idiom which — [[as any fule kno]] — survives to this day in publications as august as ''Private Eye'', ''Test Match Special'' and (cough) the [[Jolly Contrarian|jole contrian]]. | ||
Molesworth cuts through where the insipid bromides we have become accustomed to do not: his language and his clarity of vision | Molesworth cuts through where the insipid bromides we have become accustomed to do not: his language and his clarity of vision have survived the ages: | ||
{{quote|{{indent|{{baskerville|Second to swots headmasters like boys who are good at foopball and shoot goals then they can shout ‘Pile in caruthers strate for goal’ or other weedy things from the touchline.}} <br> | {{quote|{{indent|{{baskerville|Second to swots headmasters like boys who are good at foopball and shoot goals then they can shout ‘Pile in caruthers strate for goal’ or other weedy things from the touchline.}} <br> | ||
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*[[Molesworth self-adjusting thank-you letter]] | *[[Molesworth self-adjusting thank-you letter]] | ||
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth molesworth on Wikipedia] | *[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Molesworth molesworth on Wikipedia] | ||
{{ref}} | |||