Geoffrey Willans

Herbert Geoffrey Willans was an English author and journalist best known as the co-creator, with the illustrator Ronald Searle, of Nigel Molesworth, the "gorilla of 3b and curse of St. Custard's".He was educated at Blundells School, Tiverton, and became a schoolmaster there. Molesworth first appeared in Punch in the 1940s and was the protagonist and narrator of five books, beginning with 1953's Down with Skool!, followed by How to be Topp, Wizz for Atomms, and, posthumously, Back in the Jug Agane and the anthology, The Compleet Molesworth. 

Comic misspellings, erratic capitalization, and 1950s public schoolboy slang are threads running through all the books. According to Ronald Searle in his obituary: "His cunning was more refined than Herbert Geoffrey Willans was an English author and journalist, is best known as the co-creator, with the illustrator Ronald Searle, of Nigel Molesworth, the "gorilla of 3b and curse of St. Custard's".He was educated at Blundells School, Tiverton, and became a schoolmaster there. 

Molesworth first appeared in Punch in the 1940s and was the protagonist and narrator of five books, beginning with 1953's Down with Skool!, followed by How to be Topp, Wizz for Atomms, and, posthumously, Back in the Jug Agane and the anthology, The Compleet Molesworth. Comic misspellings, erratic capitalization, and 1950s public schoolboy slang are threads running through all the books. 

According to Ronald Searle in his obituary: "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 co-wrote the screenplay for the 1959 film The Bridal Path, which starred George Cole but died at the age of 47 before the film was released. 

He also wrote several other, mostly humorous, books, including The Dog's Ear Book (also with Searle), My Uncle Harry (an exploration of the British gentlemen's club), and Fasten Your Lapstraps! (an account of the early days of intercontinental flight), and Admiral on Horseback (a rather serious one about the navy). He was a keen amateur botanist, and spent so long in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew that the staff gave him a key. 

The Times newspaper reviews describe The Whistling Arrow as having a futuristic airplane as the 'heroine.' "It is his apparent strength in writing about planes and the people that flew them." The reviewer compares it with one of Evelyn Waugh's earlier novels.