Nigel Molesworth - St Custard's

St Custard's

Nigel is a schoolboy at St Custard's, a fictional (and terrible) prep school located in a carefully unspecified part of England. It is ruled with an iron fist by Headmaster Grimes (BA, Stoke on Trent), who is constantly in search of cash to supplement his income and has a part-time business running a whelk stall. Other masters include Sigismund Arbuthnot, the mad maths master, who frequently appears as Molesworth's nemesis in his daydreams.

St Custard's has 62 pupils and, according to Molesworth, "was built by a madman in 1836". Students include Grabber, the head boy and winner of the Mrs Joyful Prize for Rafia-work, whose father owns a publishing business; Peason, Molesworth's "grate frend" and companion on his frequently-imagined interplanetary adventures; Fotherington-Tomas, the school sissy; and Molesworth II, Nigel's annoying younger brother. The school's traditional local rivals are Porridge Court and Hogwarts (see below), who regularly beat them at sporting events.

Nigel's spelling is extremely uneven, a feature found endearing by fans. The phrase "as any fule kno", appended to many of Nigel's pronouncements, has achieved fame beyond its author, and can sometimes be seen in the mainstream British press (usually in a satirical context; the phrase often appears in Private Eye). It was also used as the title of a Deep Purple song, Any Fule Kno That.

The books in the series are, in order of publication:

• Down with Skool! A Guide to School Life for Tiny Pupils and their Parents (1953)
• How to be Topp: A Guide to Sukcess for Tiny Pupils, Including All There is to Kno about Space (1954)
• Whizz for Atomms: A Guide to Survival in the 20th Century for Fellow Pupils, their Doting Maters, Pompous Paters and Any Others who are Interested (1956)
  • Published in the U.S. as Molesworth's Guide to the Atommic Age
• Back in the Jug Agane (1959)
• The Compleet Molesworth (1958)
  • Molesworth (2000 Penguin reprint), ISBN 0-14-118600-3

They are part of a British tradition of children's books set at boarding schools (called school stories) which also includes the likes of the Billy Bunter stories and Jennings novels, and most recently the Harry Potter books (in fact the name Hogwarts appears in the Molesworth books as a rival school to St. Custard's). Unlike these others, however, the Molesworth books do not consist of linear storylines, but rather feature Molesworth's wisdom on a variety of topics, as well as his fanciful daydreams. The topics covered extend from boarding school life, to reflections on the culture of 1950s Britain. Television (then still relatively novel to British households), space travel and the atomic age, the Davy Crockett craze and "How to be a young Elizabethan" all feature, as well as more timeless topics such as Christmas, the French, journalism (with N. Molesworth, Ace Reporter), and girls.

Author Simon Brett later wrote two sequels to the series in which a grown-up Nigel offered his observations on subjects such as jobs, family, holidays and D.I.Y.

• Molesworth Rites Again (1983)
• How To Stay Topp (1987)