He was asked to join the Wesleyan Leeds mission, which for some years had been reconstructed with the ministry of Samuel Chadwick.
[4][5] Martin became a Methodist minister in 1903, and then served as a missionary in South Africa: he chose reconstruction work after the Second Anglo-Boer War, over his father's wish that he should go to Fiji.
He is plagued by a group of enemies concerned with puncturing his pretensions, and driving home the charge, true enough, that he once stole a bicycle.
He is the sworn enemy of the inhabitants of Badfort, an enormous derelict fortress that blights the landscape in front of Homeward.
Living in there are the Badfort gang, nominally headed by the Hateman family, Beaver, Nailrod Snr, Nailrod Jnr, Filljug, and Sigismund, with the support of Flabskin, Oily Joe, the dwarvish, cowardly, skewer-throwing Isidore Hitmouse, the scheming ghost Hootman, and Jellytussle, an animated mound of bluish jelly.
[13] The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (1984) commented on its "wildest schoolboy-style inventions and implausibilities, narrated with dead-pan humour.
"[10] The Economist noted in 2005 that the stories "which focus on the doings of the eponymous hero, an elephant and benevolent dictator, were first published in the 1960s, and still enjoy a cult following.
"[14] Imogen Russell Williams wrote in 2007 "If there was ever a children's series generating fanatical, "cult" adoration, this is it.
[16][17] The reprint had the support of — and contributions from — several authors and illustrators, including Neil Gaiman, Justin Pollard, Garth Nix, Martin Rowson, Andy Riley, Kate Summerscale, and Richard Ingrams.
In 1932 the Time and Mirror folded, and later that year Stella married Ralph Nixon Currey, a friend of the family.