History Literature / Biggles

Biggles holds a place in British popular culture comparable with Flash Gordon in the US, Though franchising of the books in other languages, he is still equally well known in the Dutch and French spoeaking countries. Especially after the books spawned several series of Franco-Belgian comics.

Biggles has in many ways dated very badly. Very much a product of its time, Biggles embodies the British values of Decency, Fair Play and Courage, and the casual sexism and racism of British society in the 1930s, though Biggles himself is shown to have been born and raised in India and speak fluent Hindi. The books are now generally considered [[FairForItsDay fair for their day]].

** Averted with ''Ginger'' Hebblewaithe. although after WWII he marries a co-pilot's sister and becomes a father, his home life is only mentioned sparingly. Up to the last books, his spirit remains just as youthful and eager as in his first appearance as an 18-year old apprentice pilot.

* GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: After WWII, Biggles is invited by his superior Commodore Raymond to join the 'Air Police', a special brand of Scotland Yard focusing on crimes involving aircraft. Of course there has never been such an agency in real life, as in the books, the ''air Police'' only seems to consist out of Biggles and his team and Raymond as commanding officer and the only cases that ever come their way are almost perfectly suited to become adventure stories.

** Biggles is a borderline example, being eight months shy of his claimed seventeen years when he arrives as NewMeat at the Air Training School in ''Biggles Learns To Fly''. Sixteen is terribly young for the RFC, but not impossible, and in real life many teenagers joined the armed forces during WWI.

* SlidingScaleOfAdaptationModification: in the several comic books, tv sereis and radio plays based the stories.

* ImprobableAge: Biggles finishes the war a highly experienced and badly traumatised 19-year-old veteran. Noted in-universe when Biggles tries giving some tips to a newly arrived American captain.

* AcePilot: Biggles is an archetypical example. Not only is he a WWI ace in the military sense (having shot down five enemies), but even in more peaceful contexts his impressive piloting skills play an important part in the stories.

* CharacterDevelopment: And not just for the ContractualPurity reasons mentioned above. Biggles becomes [[OlderAndWiser appreciably smarter and less hot-headed with age.]]. In the later albums '''Algie''' becomes the most worn-out, aged and war-weary character, often staying behind to guard the camp as his comrades go out exploring.

* KidHero: Biggles is a borderline example, being eight months shy of his claimed seventeen years when he arrives as NewMeat at the Air Training School in ''Biggles Learns To Fly''. Most of the franchise is set some time after he reaches adulthood, however.
** Somewhat justified in that there are numerous cases of fourteen year olds winding up in the various armies. Sixteen is terribly young for the RFC, but not impossible.

* OldSoldier: Biggles ages naturally during the course of the books. His last excursion as an over-age and deniable James Bond is a mission into the Russian Gulag in 1965, when he would have been as old as the century, to liberate old antagonist Erich von Stalhein from Soviet incarceration.
* OnlyAFleshWound: Frequently invoked. In one egregious example, Ginger is shot through the thigh but still manages to outrun his pursuers for over a mile. his faithful chums locate him by follwing the TrailOfBlood.

%%%%* AcePilot:
* TheAlcoholic: Supposedly the reason he's never seen to drink in books written after the series started pursuing a younger demographic; he [[NoMoreForMe swore off strong drink]] after it nearly got him killed in action.

* AnachronicOrder: His origin story, ''Biggles Learns to Fly'', was not the first book to be published.

** this is parodied with several ''fake'' Biggles stories referenced in other books or media. Notably Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus has a sketch called "Biggles writes a letter" which at the end includes a commercial for the ''upcoming'' "Biggles Flies Undone" (Read aloud!)

* AmbiguouslyGay: Although in the first WWI adventure it is implied that Biggles had a fling with a French baronness/German FemmeFatale spy, by the end of the war, he seems to be completely disinterested in women and rather spends his time flying with 'the boys', Althoug this is handwaved by the fact that the Biggles stories are adventures primarily written for English schoolboys who at their age were generally uninterested in girls as well, there are many instances that a dirty mind looking for clues can interprete as to indicate that there was something more going on between Biggles, his cousin Algie, his protegé Ginger, the fobbish sometines effeminate Bertie and even his German [[FoeYayShipping favorite enemy Erich Von Stalhein]]
** The nicknames of Biggles companions being all more or less ambiguously tenderly male/female : Algie, Ginger, Bertie
** The fact that Algie is introduced as Biggles' ''cousin''
** In "The flight of the Condor", it is revealed that Biggles grew up in the house of his uncle Richard (which he calls 'Dick-pa'). Richard is unmarried but shares the house with his manservant.
** The team not only flies together and goes on secret missions together, they also on various occasions spend their holidays together, just the three (or four) of them without inviting anyone else, especially not any female acquaintances.
** It is a verifiable detail that only ''one'' woman even came close to seducing Biggles away from the manly embrace of his chums. A blonde FemmeFataleSpy called Ilse plays the FemmeFatale role, twice: on both occasions acting as agent for the dastardly villain, Count Erich von Stalhein of the German Intelligence Services.

Biggles was referenced multiple times on ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'' (thus paying homage both to Biggles' importance as British pop hero and to underline/mock the show's supposed "aviatorial" nature); he was also featured as "cardinal" in the infamous Spanish Inquisition sketches.

Biggles was deconstructed and subverted - most egregiously in the character of foul-mouthed alcoholic working-class Brummie Major Wooley, in Creator/DerekRobinson's trilogy of UsefulNotes/WW1 fighter pilot novels.

Biggles is spoofed by blogger Reed dé Buch in [[http://reeddebuch.blogspot.com/search/label/biggles Biggles Over Baghdad]], an ongoing series of short stories, setting Biggles in contemporary Iraq and Iran - definitively not part of the Biggles canon.

* AmbiguouslyGay: Although in the first WWI adventure it is implied that Biggles had a fling with a French baronness/German FemmeFatale spy, by the end of the war, he seems to be completely disinterested in women and rather spends his time flying with 'the boys', Althoug this is handwaved by the fact that the Biggles stories are adventures primarily written for English schoolboys who at their age were generally uninterested in girls as well, there are many instances that a dirty mind looking for clues can interprete as to indicate that there was something more going on between Biggles, his cousin Algie, his protegé Ginger, the fobbish sometines effeminate Bertie and even his German [[foeYayShipping favorite enemy Erich Von Stalhein]]

* GovernmentAgencyOfFiction: After WWII, Biggles is invited by his superior Commodore Raymond to join the 'Air Police', a special brand of Scotland Yard focusing on crimes involving aircraft. Of course there has never been such an agency in real life, as in the books, the ''air Police'' only seems to consist out of Biggles and his team and Raymond as commanding officer and the only cases they solve are almost perfectly suited to become adventure stories.

* ButtMonkey: Lord Bertram 'Bertie' Lissie. Going through the books, especially the post-war adventures for the 'Air Police' fans noted that of the four protagonists, Bertie always is the most likely to get shot, attacked, beaten or suffer some other unpleasantness on the hands of the adversaries. Yet, he does not seem to mind especially and always signs up for the next adventure.

* ChromosomeCasting: Justified in the early novels as all characters are military pilots and mechanics... ergo male. However in the interwar civilian adventures and especially later in the postwar adventures of the 'Air Police' female characters are barely present. As befits a line of stories primarily written for a boy's magazine, flying and crimefighting are exclusively male enterprises.

* PolarBearsAndPenguins: Biggles And The Pirates Of The South Pole mentions polar bears on the '''South''' Pole. When in 1991 Francis Bergese drew the comic book version of the adventure, he explicitly drew Biggles plane flying over an iceberg with icebears on it, explaining in a foreword that he HAD to draw the creatures from the North Pole because the book explicitly mentions them.

** Near Identical in the 1990's Franco-Belgian comic, especially the first albums written and drawn by Francis Bergese

Biggles originated in a series of short stories that Johns (himself a former airman) wrote for ''Popular Flying'' magazine, and the original intention was to provide the fighter pilots of the future with an entertaining way to remember the "tricks of the trade" learned the hard way during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI.

The books continued after the war, with Biggles now a member of the Special Air Police, and Johns continued writing until his death in 1968, though the later books are not as highly regarded.

Although originally written as a realistic Great War airman -- hard-drinking, running on pure nervous energy, often murderously vindictive towards the enemy, and only a matter of time until his number was up -- Biggles then went into ContractualPurity. He became a strict teetotaler, and one of the early stories was [[RetCon retconned]] to replace whisky with lemonade, leading to the bizarre idea of squadrons of young pilots risking their lives to win a crate of lemonade. Similarly, while Biggles had a brief affair in one of the early stories, his young fans were outraged that an Australian radio adaptation had Biggles "go soft" by having a romantic escapade.

Biggles holds a place in British popular culture comparable with Flash Gordon in the US, and it's probably not too much of a stretch to suggest that, if Biggles had been an American series, there would have been numerous screen adaptations by now. As it is, only a short-lived 1960s TV series and the SoBadItsGood 1986 ''Film/BigglesAdventuresInTime'' movie (in which Biggles is joined by a time-travelling American salesman) have been made.

* AccidentNotMurder: In one of the later short stories, the veteran pilot, now a policeman, is asked for his opinion on the death of a girl who had previously had an argument with her pilot boyfriend. She was hit on the head with a blunt instrument and died instantly. The boyfriend is being sought. Biggles reviews the case. The girl was found dead in her garden with no signs of intrusion or struggle. No weapon has been recovered. However, in the photographs is an unopened box of chocolates. Biggles asks about this. It has been disregarded by the police as of no significance, incidental. He asks if this was kept, and discovers one corner of the box is badly crushed out of shape. Then it becomes clear. The pilot boyfriend sought to make up the row with a romantic gesture, dropping a box of chocolates to her in her garden from several hundred feet up. He just aimed too well. Biggles notes it would be like hitting her with a brick, and points to people being killed in the wars by shrapnel, parts of damaged aircraft, or even spent bullet cases dropping from the air. The case now becomes not murder, but death by misadventure.
%%%%* AcePilot: The

* AmbiguouslyGay: Although in the first WWI adventure it is implied that Biggles had a fling with a French baronness/German FemmeFatale spy, by the end of the war, he seems to be completely disinterested in women and rather spends his time flying with 'the boys', Althoug this is handwaved by the fact that the Biggles stories are adventures primarily written for English schoolboys who at their age were generally uninterested in girls as well, there are many instances that by a dirty mind looking for clues can be interpreted as to indicate that there was something more going on between Biggles, his cousin Algie, his protegé Ginger, the fobbish sometines effeminate Bertie and even his German [[foeYayShipping favorite enemy Erich Von Stalhein]]

* UniversalDriversLicense: Played straight for the most part, though probably justified by Biggles having literally ''decades'' of experience in civil and military aviation alike, at least by the time World War 2 rolls around. It was a minor plot point in one volume that he wasn't Instrument Flight Rules-qualified, however.

* AmbiguouslyGay: Biggles being at least a non-practicing gay can be inferred from the books given a modern dirty mind. It is a verifiable detail that only ''one'' woman even came close to seducing Biggles away from the manly embrace of his chums. A blonde FemmeFataleSpy called Ilse plays the FemmeFatale role, twice: on both occasions acting as agent for the dastardly villain, Count Erich von Stalhein of the German Intelligence Services.

** Averted with ''Ginger'' Hebblewaithe. although after WWII he marries a co-pilot's sister and becomes a father, his home life is only mentioned sparingly. Up to the last books, he remains the ''junior'' of the team.

* CharacterDevelopment: And not just for the ContractualPurity reasons mentioned above. Biggles becomes [[OlderAndWiser appreciably smarter and less hot-headed with age.]]

%%%%* ImprobablePilotingSkills: Displayed by all four Aces.

* AccidentNoMurder: In one of the later short stories, the veteran pilot, now a policeman, is asked for his opinion on the death of a girl who had previously had an argument with her pilot boyfriend. She was hit on the head with a blunt instrument and died instantly. The boyfriend is being sought. Biggles reviews the case. The girl was found dead in her garden with no signs of intrusion or struggle. No weapon has been recovered. However, in the photographs is an unopened box of chocolates. Biggles asks about this. It has been disregarded by the police as of no significance, incidental. He asks if this was kept, and discovers one corner of the box is badly crushed out of shape. Then it becomes clear. The pilot boyfriend sought to make up the row with a romantic gesture, dropping a box of chocolates to her in her garden from several hundred feet up. He just aimed too well. Biggles notes it would be like hitting her with a brick, and points to people being killed in the wars by shrapnel, parts of damaged aircraft, or even spent bullet cases dropping from the air. The case now becomes not murder, but death by misadventure.