A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF CAPTAIN W. E. JOHNS
PART THREE
Please note that this brief summary of Johns' amazing life is just
that, a brief summary. If you are interested in the full details of his life
you MUST read By Jove,
Biggles! - The Life of Captain W. E. Johns by Peter Berresford Ellis and Jennifer Schofield.
THE INTER-WAR YEARS
As editor of POPULAR FLYING magazine, Johns was an outspoken critic
of the Government's air policy in the 1930's. Appeasement could only lead to
war and of course, he was right. The monthly 'Popular Flying' soon became the
best selling aviation magazine in the world. By 1934, its circulation was
24,500 a month. In 1935, John Hamilton sold Popular Flying Ltd, as it then was,
to George Newnes Ltd and Johns was asked to stay on as editor. Johns also began
to contribute regular articles to MEN ONLY and to MY GARDEN magazine, where his regular column was
called 'The Passing Show'. On 12th January 1938 Doris and
Bill Johns moved to Colley Chase, Reigate Hill, Surrey. On 2nd April 1938, George Newnes Ltd launched a sister
paper to 'Popular Flying'. It was a weekly magazine called FLYING and Johns was asked to edit that as well. It took many of
the spill over articles for which there was no room in the monthly. From 19th February 1938, Johns was also writing a regular weekly
column for MODERN BOY called 'Let's Look Around'. As
well as all these commitments, Johns was also writing books at an astonishing
rate, some 40 between 1931 and 1939! He wrote many short stories, both for
adult magazines as well as for juvenile ones and many of these stories were
later collected into books. Johns' continued attacks on the Government upset
prominent politicians and they brought pressure to bear on George Newnes Ltd to
have him removed as editor of both of their flying magazines. His last
editorial for the weekly 'Flying' magazine was on 21st January 1939. Both magazines were to later fold during
the Wartime paper shortages.
THE SECOND WORLD WAR
At 46 Johns was too old for
active service. Johns became a lecturer to the Air Defence Cadet Corp (later to
become the Air Training Corps in 1941) and he wrote articles for their
magazine, the AIR DEFENCE CADET CORPS GAZETTE. His biggest contribution to the War was the
encouragement of young men to train to be pilots by virtue of his Biggles
books. Recognising this, the Air Ministry asked Johns to create a female
counter-part to aid recruitment to the W.A.A.F. (Women's Auxiliary Air Force)
and so Worrals appeared in 1941. The War Office didn't want to be left out of
this excellent recruiting method and so in 1943, commando officer Gimlet
appeared. The effect of Johns' books is not to be underestimated. Many pilots
were to say that their inspiration had been the Biggles books of W. E. Johns.
On Tuesday 3rd October
1939, Johns' son,
Jack, married Sabena Hammond, a nurse who looked after his mother. In 1941 John
Hamilton Ltd ceased trading, effectively being bombed out of business. Doris's
brother Howard Leigh, the artist, died at the age of 32 of cancer on Friday 6th February 1942. It was said in Johns’ biography that
Doris was worried about Bill’s business dealings. At this time, he wrote and
sold his Biggles books for a one off payment of £250 and received no
royalties. The biography says she
persuaded him to employ a literary agent and Johns went to see Peter Watt of A.
P. Watt. In fact, from a letter in my possession, I can confirm that the truth
of the situation is that Peter Watt wrote to Bill Johns, offering his services
in 1939. I have the letter, dated 28th
September 1939, from Peter Watt to Bill
Johns in my collection. A.P. Watt’s
first move was to seek to persuade Oxford University Press to give Johns
royalty payments but the phenomenal sales that Biggles books were to achieve
did not really happen until after the Second World War, so Oxford University
Press chose to let the Biggles books go and they were taken over by Hodder and
Stoughton. In later years, Oxford University Press let the rights of the 20
Biggles books they owned revert back to W. E. Johns, but he “lost” the rights
to the John Hamilton books having sold them outright. I can
say from letters in my collection that Johns sold the rights to the John
Hamilton books for a mere £25.00 each.
Those stories were bought and reprinted by the Thames Publishing Company
and later published by Dean & Son Ltd.
Johns had initially met an old friend from school and gone to stay with
him in Tomintoul in April 1944. In the
Autumn of 1944, after 5 years of bombing, Doris and Bill Johns moved to
Scotland where they stayed in the Richmond Hotel, Tomintoul, before taking a
lease on Pitchroy Lodge, Grantown-on-Spey, Morayshire. From
documents in my own collection, including the original solicitor’s bill for
drawing up the lease, I can say that Johns took out a 6 year lease on Pitchroy
Lodge in June 1947 at a cost of £2750 per year. The September 1944 issue of 'My Garden'
magazine carried no Johns’ column for the first time since 1936 and in February
1947 Johns wrote his last article for that periodical called 'The Show has
Passed' to explain his departure.
THE POST WAR YEARS
Johns continued to write his
books. For the post-war Biggles stories, Biggles was to join the 'Air Police'
which was not an original Johns' idea. The Air Police had been created by
writer, John Templer, author of 'Jaggers of the Air Police' in 1936).
Templer was a friend and former business partner of Johns. Johns sold serial
rights to various newspapers and magazines as well as one-off stories to the
vast number of children's annuals being published. Compilations of these
stories were regularly published in book form. In 1953, Johns moved back from
Scotland to a mansion at Park House, Hampton Court, which overlooked the Royal
Paddock. Johns often saw and heard the Queen and her family. On Monday 15th March 1954, Johns' son, Jack, died from a
combination of multiple sclerosis, diabetes and tuberculosis. Jack's mother was
not to die until Saturday
1st April 1961. By
this time, it was not really possible for Doris and Bill Johns to marry without
creating a scandal because it would reveal that they were not married. A
scandal would have damaged Johns' reputation and also his book sales. The
post-war years saw the sale of translation rights to the Biggles books to many
countries. They were extremely successful. In 1954, Johns wrote the first of a
series of science fiction stories and as a result stopped writing Worrals and
Gimlet stories. By 1964, the UNESCO Statistical Yearbook placed Biggles books
29th on a list of the most translated books in the world and Biggles was the
most popular juvenile hero in the world. However, sales in North America were
low and Johns never really cracked the American market. The books were
considered just 'too British'. Biggles stories were serialised on the radio and
also appeared in 1960 in a television series (although Johns' actual stories
were not used). In the mid 1960's Johns began to face criticism that his books
were racist and sexist as well as jingoistic although anybody who has read all
of the books knows that such criticisms cannot be sustained. It was on the Friday 21st June 1968 at 8.30 a.m. that William Earl Johns
(born Sunday 5th
February 1893) stopped
mid-sentence, whilst writing 'Biggles Does Some Homework' in order to make himself and Doris a cup of tea. He went
upstairs to her and sat in his armchair and suffered a fatal heart attack and
died immediately. He was 75 years old. Doris was to die on Friday 26th September 1969 from cancer.
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