Herbert Geoffrey Willans, RNVR, (4 February 1911 – 6 August 1958), an English writer and journalist, is best known as the creator of Nigel Molesworth, the "goriller of 3B" and "curse of St. Custard's", as in the four books with illustrations by Ronald Searle.
Willans was born in Smyrna (now İzmir) in Turkey, where his father was a superintendent of the Ottoman Aidan Railway.
During the Second World War he took part in the Greek campaign and the Battle of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, serving on the corvette HMS Peony.
A review in The Times described his novel The Whistling Arrow (1957) as having a futuristic aeroplane as the 'heroine'; "It is his apparent strength in writing about planes and the people that flew them."
[6] The idea of a 'whistling arrow' was popularised by the Walt Disney Studio film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952), starring Richard Todd, where arrows that whistled were used as signals between Robin Hood and his outlaw band.