Jennings (novel series)

The Jennings series is a collection of novels written by Anthony Buckeridge (1912–2004) as children's literature about the humorous escapades of J. C. T. Jennings, a schoolboy at Linbury Court preparatory school, located near the fictional town of Dunhambury in Sussex, England.

The characters were originally created for radio and appeared in a regular series on Children's Hour from the late 1940s.

In the earliest novels in the series there are some Latin puns (typically omitted from later reprints), but Buckeridge discontinued these, apparently to maximise their appeal.

The earlier novels present an idealised version of rural or small-town, middle-class English life in the years between the Second World War and the social revolution of the 1960s; the later ones are still rooted in this era (as Buckeridge admitted) but reflect the changing times surprisingly well.

[6] "Jennings' Little Hut" was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2010, narrated by Mark Williams.

The novels proved popular in other countries; in Germany Jennings is Fredy, and in France he became Bennett.

Jennings was especially popular in Norway, where the main character became Stompa and the novels were rewritten with Norwegian locations.