History Literature / TheBagthorpeSaga

Other family members include Henry and Celia's dull vicar brother Claud, his ultra-religious and SuperOCD-afflicted wife Penelope, and their two children Luke and Esther (who share InsufferableGenius tendencies with William, Tess, and Rosie; Luke has won ''Young Brain of Britain'', Esther is a published poet). As both Bagthorpe parents work, Unicorn House is looked after by Royal Family-obsessed housekeeper Mrs "Fozzy" Fosdyke, who may be a BookDumb {{Malaproper}} but is an immensely talented cook; her adult son Max is just plain BookDumb and has had several brushes with the law. Finally, there is Zero, the Bagthorpe family dog, who may possibly be the stupidest canine in history, but Jack loves him just the same.

''The Bagthorpe Saga'' is a series of ten comic novels by Helen Cresswell that follows the misadventures of the Bagthorpes, a family of {{Insufferable Genius}}es who live in Unicorn House in the fictional English village of Passingham (near the also fictional market town of Aysham) and whose self-absorption and ultra-competitive nature leaves a trail of chaos, destruction, and hilarity in their wake.

Supporting characters include Henry's {{Cloudcuckoolander}} sister Celia, who dabbles in poetry and pottery while meandering between reality and the world in her own mind; Celia is married to Russell Parker (usually referred to only as "Uncle Parker"), who is independently wealthy from "something in shares" and splits the role of OnlySaneMan with Jack. Their four-year-old daughter Daisy is fast growing into an EnfantTerrible, going through phases of pyromania, flooding, graffiti, and obsession with death, driving all of the Bagthorpes except Rosie to the brink of insanity. Other family members include Henry and Celia's dull vicar brother Claud, his wife Penelope, and their two children Luke and Esther (who share InsufferableGenius tendencies with William, Tess, and Rosie; Luke has won ''Young Brain of Britain'', Esther is a published poet); and Grandma Maud and Grandpa Alfred Bagthorpe, who moved in with Henry and Laura ten years ago on a "temporary" basis and respectively revel in and try to ignore the arguments and chaos that envelope the family on a regular basis. As both Bagthorpe parents work, the house is looked after by Royal Family-obsessed housekeeper Mrs "Fozzy" Fosdyke, who may be a BookDumb {{Malaproper}} but is an immensely talented cook. Finally, there is Zero, the family dog, who may possibly be the stupidest canine in history, but Jack loves him just the same.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Uncle Parker has a habit of driving expensive cars very fast; Grandma Bagthorpe has never forgiven him for running over her cat, Thomas, years before the events of ''Ordinary Jack''. He also has strong opinions about other categories of drivers; for example, hat-wearing drivers invariably drive pitifully slowly, and if the driver is wearing a flat cap, you can drive back home, start out along a different route, and ''still'' save time.

* DrivesLikeCrazy: Uncle Parker has a habit of driving expensive cars very fast; Grandma Bagthorpe has never forgiven him for running over her cat, Thomas, years before the events of ''Ordinary Jack''.

** In ''Absolute Zero'', when Uncle Parker wins a Caribbean cruise in a caption competition (and compounds the family's misery by leaving Daisy with them while he and Celia are away), Mr Bagthorpe leads the entire clan in trying to break as many Guinness World Records as possible to outdo his brother-in-law.
** ''Bagthorpes Unlimited'' sees even the three InsufferableGenius Bagthorpe siblings left feeling inadequate after a visit by their even more insufferably precocious (and dull) cousins Luke and Esther, so they spend the rest of the book hell-bent on achieving fame and immortality far beyond that of their cousins.

* ItRunsInTheFamily: Tess, Rosie and William are all somewhat eccentric, and their parents and grandparents might edge into mildly deranged, as might Daisy... They all (well, except Daisy) believe wholeheartedly in their genius as a family and individually, and take themselves very seriously. In one of the books in the sequence, they try to break as many Guinness World Records in a summer as they can... And in keeping with the trope, Jack and his ally Uncle Parker are the only sane ones people can bear to have anywhere near them. Also Grandpa (though he's less developed as a character).

Father Henry Bagthorpe is a scriptwriter for Creator/TheBBC, mother Laura is an agony aunt and part-time magistrate, and they encourage their children in all pursuits academic, athletic, and artistic, which Mr Bagthorpe refers to as "strings to their bow". Three of their four children have risen to the challenge - 16-year-old William excels at mathematics, plays a mean set of drums, and dabbles in electronics and ham radio; 14-year-old Tess has a black belt in judo, plays the oboe brilliantly, and speaks French with such fluency that she is determined to translate the complete works of Creator/{{Voltaire}} into English; and 10-year-old Rosie is catching up with William as a mathematician, plays the violin and the cello, and is a talented painter and photographer. The fourth Bagthorpe child, 12-year-old Jack, is the only "ordinary" one among them, excelling at nothing (except, perhaps, for storytelling) and thus falling neatly into the role of the OnlySaneMan in his family.

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Celia's grip on reality varies between "tenuous" and "non-existent". She maintains her figure with barefoot, Isadora Duncan-style dances in the morning dew, believes in fairy tales, and in ''Bagthorpes Liberated'' believes herself to be pregnant with twins after a visit by an angel. When her daughter Daisy locks her in the Bagthorpes' garden shed, she sees a game of noughts and crosses that previous "prisoners" Grandma Bagthorpe and Max Fosdyke scratched into the dirt and believes them to be primaeval symbols dating from the beginning of time.

* EnfantTerrible: Over the course of the books, Daisy goes through phases of pyromania, flooding the house, locking people in the garden shed (including her own mother), scrawling graffiti on the walls (Mr Bagthorpe says that if she writes a poem on ''his'' walls, she'll be in immediate need of an elegy), and obsession with death (which leaves even the usually mild Jack wishing her dead and buried). The only people at Unicorn House who tolerate (and even encourage) her are Rosie and Grandma Bagthorpe.

** William is a maths, drums, and electronics prodigy; Tess is a French, judo, and oboe prodigy; Rosie is a maths, violin, cello, painting, and photography prodigy. Unfortunately, ''they know it'', and while they're convinced of their own genius, almost everyone they know finds them impossible to be around. The headmaster at their school is so sick of their egotism that he leaves the comments section on their end-of-term reports blank for fear that anything complimentary will just inflate their egos further; they respond by steaming open the envelopes before Mr and Mrs Bagthorpe read them and forging gushing comments themselves.

* QuirkyHousehold: The Bagthorpe family almost all have one or more screws loose - Mr Bagthorpe is an arrogant, misanthropic disaster magnet, Mrs Bagthorpe seems to be able to dispense advice to anyone except her own family, William, Tess, and Rosie are regarded as {{Insufferable Genius}}es by everyone who knows them, Grandma Bagthorpe decided she and her husband should move in with Henry rather than Celia or Claud because she loves provoking Henry into loud arguments, and Zero the dog is so monumentally dim that he keeps mistaking Mr Bagthorpe's dictaphone microphones for a stick after being taught how to fetch. Unsurprisingly, the books are mostly told from the bemused perspective of the OnlySaneMan among them: self-declared "Ordinary" Jack.

Supporting characters include Henry's {{Cloudcuckoolander}} sister Celia, who dabbles in poetry and pottery while meandering between reality and the world in her own mind; Celia is married to Russell Parker (usually referred to only as "Uncle Parker"), who is independently wealthy from "something in shares" and splits the role of OnlySaneMan with Jack. Their four-year-old daughter Daisy is fast growing into an EnfantTerrible, going through phases of pyromania, flooding, graffiti, and obsession with death, driving all of the Bagthorpes except Rosie to the brink of insanity. Other family members include Henry and Celia's dull vicar brother Claud, his wife Penelope, and their two children Luke and Esther (who share InsufferableGenius tendencies with William, Tess, and Rosie; Luke has won ''Young Brain of Britain'', Esther is a published poet); and Grandma Maud and Grandpa Alfred Bagthorpe, who moved in with Henry and Laura ten years ago on a "temporary" basis and respectively revel in and try to ignore the arguments and chaos that envelopes the family on a regular basis. As both Bagthorpe parents work, the house is looked after by Royal Family-obsessed housekeeper Mrs "Fozzy" Fosdyke, who may be a BookDumb {{Malaproper}} but is an immensely talented cook. Finally, there is Zero, the family dog, who may possibly be the stupidest canine in history, but Jack loves him just the same.

* InsufferableGenius: William is a maths, drums, and electronics prodigy; Tess is a French, judo, and oboe prodigy; Rosie is a maths, violin, cello, painting, and photography prodigy. Unfortunately, ''they know it'', and while they're convinced of their own genius, almost everyone they know finds them impossible to be around. The headmaster at their school is so sick of their egotism that he leaves the comments section on their end-of-term reports blank for fear that anything complimentary will just inflate their egos further; they respond by steaming open the envelopes before Mr and Mrs Bagthorpe read them and forging gushing comments themselves.

* InsufferableGenius: William is a maths, drums, and electronics prodigy; Tess is a French, judo, and oboe prodigy; Daisy is a maths, violin, cello, painting, and photography prodigy. Unfortunately, ''they know it'', and while they're convinced of their own genius, almost everyone they know finds them impossible to be around. The headmaster at their school is so sick of their egotism that he leaves the comments section on their end-of-term reports blank for fear that anything complimentary will just inflate their egos further; they respond by steaming open the envelopes before Mr and Mrs Bagthorpe read them and forging gushing comments themselves.