I thought that The Papers Of A.J. Wentworth BA was gently amusing, but the cover quote of “One of the funniest books ever,” from the Sunday Express is stretching it a bit.

Wentworth is a hapless, inept and hopelessly unaware schoolmaster in a small boys’ boarding school in 1938. Mainly told in the first person by Wentworth himself, we get accounts of various “mishaps” as the boys amuse themselves at his expense, while Wentworth pompously tries to preserve his dignity, oblivious of the fact that the rest of the world is laughing at him. It is very neatly done and cleverly written, so that I recognised some traits of teachers I have known and the attitudes of the boys.

For me this a brief, lightly amusing read rather than laugh-out-loud funny, but there is actually some rather acute character observation underpinning it. Not a classic, then, but certainly worth a read.

(My thanks to Prelude Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

The Papers of A.J. Wentworth BA was first published as a humorous contemporaneous study of life in a boy’s boarding school immediately before England joined World War Two. It was serialized in Punch magazine over several years.

Poor Wentworth is an overwhelmed teacher who frequently loses his temper with his young charges. In a roomful of Bart Simpsons, Mason is the worst prankster and malcontent. Wentworth throws things at his students and seems perpetually lost.

I guess this passed for humor in between the two world wars in England. Now it is best read as a historical document of a time never to return. The Papers of A.J. Wentworth BA is not funny to a modern audience and is also filled with British’isms incomprehensible to modern American readers. It is a pass for me unless you are researching the time period for an English literature class. 2 stars.

Thanks to Farrago and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

This was an interesting read. While not my favorite, it was entertaining. It was humourous at times and I found myself laughing. I would recommend it.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

If you want some light humour after a hard day then The Papers of AJ Wentworth BA is definitely worth reading.

The book is the chronicles of a teacher or master from before the War and is full of little bits of light hearted humour and cute observations.

Recommended

“The Papers of A.J Wentworth, B.A.” by H.F. Ellis follows the misadventures of A.J. Wentworth, a maths teacher at the Burgrove School for boys in England on the eve of World War II. Told in the form of Wentworth’s diary entries, with occasional interjections by other teachers and the friend who has been tasked with compiling and publishing his notes, the book is an episodic series of mishaps that the accident-prone and misunderstanding-generating Wentworth finds himself embroiled in. A quote on the cover calls it “the funniest book ever,” which I think is quite the overstatement—for me, the stories were mildly amusing but never laugh-out-loud funny, and the character of Wentworth himself, who is self-righteous and priggish, is hard to feel much sympathy for. Part of the problem may be that these stories are bit dated, since they were first published in Punch magazine in the 1930s and later in The New Yorker in the 1950s. I also think they’re better suited to being read in small installments as they would have been in their original magazine format; as a book, the episodes have a way of blending together. Perfectly fine and a quick read, but I much preferred Graeme Simsion’s recent “Rosie” trilogy about genetics professor Don Tillman, another teacher who is hapless and socially inept but, crucially, is a lovable character who had me rooting for him from the start.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Farrago Press for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review.

I used to enjoy these old Punch tales of an accident-prone prep school teacher and find them quite funny, but my taste has changed.

They probably still have appeal, but to me the interest was historic more than anything.

A short read, and probably best in small instalments.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrago for the digital review copy.

A mildly humorous collection of tales of a school master at a school for boys shortly before World War Two.

This is quite a short book, and whilst sections of it did make me laugh (the umbrella fishing incident is particularly entertaining), some parts of it I found rather dull. However, it was a pleasant way to pass a couple of hours, and would probably be much more humorous to others.

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.