Pleese let him have the mouth orgun you tuke of me.’Īdults, be prepared. At a moment of great personal danger concerning a cucumber, we find him writing his own will: ‘If I di I leeve everythin’ to Ginger. In these ten stories, we meet William forging a love ‘pome’, swaggering about with pockets full of caterpillars, delivering wild ‘lekchers’ to a band of Sunday School goody-goodies, even dutifully adopting a ‘norphan’ (only to fetch up with the once angelic-looking Clarence coated head to toe with cement powder). Only mild Mrs Brown tries to cling to a positive vision of this unruly member of her family, even mistaking his plea for stronger garters as concern for the neat appearance of his socks, rather than for their more effective use as catapults. His irritable brother, Robert, is infuriated by William’s well-meaning, but invariably catastrophic, attempts to help him court one after another of the neighbourhood beauties. Or, when he manifestly does – usually coated in mud, sawdust or pond slime – that he has nothing whatsoever to do with her. S’not fair to blame a person fr’only tryin’ to help.’Įthel, his snooty elder sister, does her very best to pretend William does not exist. The disasters that dog him are never his own fault. A born leader steeped in unfailing optimism, William hurls himself wholeheartedly into every mad endeavour, amusement or new ‘career’. She had a gift for bringing to William’s village, on one pretext after another, a host of extraordinary characters, all of whom somehow end up tangling with William and his motley gang of ‘Outlaws’. Richmal Crompton’s stories are rich, inventive and oh, so very funny. But I do know that he at once became my own imaginary brother, my closest secret friend. I don’t remember when I stole the book from her, and every other William book she ever had. On its brick-red cover was the emblem of a cheery-looking William wearing his school cap awry.

Susan was given her first set of William stories for Christmas in 1953. But no one told me, so I learned to read along with the others, and have spent most of my waking hours since with my head in a book. The health visitor thought of it merely as the simplest form of babysitting. Possibly to save my mother’s sanity, I was sent to the local infant school well before time. When my sister Susan was six and I was three, my parents tried for a son and had, instead, triplet girls.

William the bad richmal crompton