Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does...When Sir Humphrey Strange, 8th Baronet and squire of Batch Magna, departs this world for the Upper House, what’s left of his estate passes, through the ancient law of entailment, to distant relative Humph, an amiable, overweight short-order cook from the Bronx.Sir Humphrey Franklin T. Strange, 9th Baronet and squire of Batch Magna, as Humph now most remarkably finds himself to be, is persuaded b...

Titus Llewellyn-Gwlynne, actor/manager of the Red Lion Theatre, has lost a backer who was going to fund a theatrical tour – when unexpected salvation appears.Their home theatre in the East End of London having been bombed during the war, The Red Lion Touring Company embarks on a tour of Britain to take a play written by their new benefactress into the provinces.As they make their vagabond, singing way, they remain unaware that they leave behind in London a man consumed with...

Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does...Life in an old steam boat deep in the Welsh Borders holds numerous charms, but the Commander’s wife Priny is suffering from arthritis, a condition not at all improved by their water-based lifestyle. The couple take up an offer from Humphrey, the squire of Batch Hall, of a straight swap: their boat, the Batch Castle, for one of the Masters’ Cottages facing their beloved river.The Cas...

Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does...A hapless gang of crooks, led by pawnbroker Harold Sneed, have managed pull off ‘the big one’: a wages snatch at a factory in Shrewsbury. Two gang members take the money back to Birmingham by train, changing at a station almost on the doorstep of Sir Humphrey of Batch Hall.It’s there that things start to unravel. The money goes missing. Misunderstanding follows misunderstanding, until it leads t...

Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does...When the old squire of Batch Magna died, the life of distant relative Humphrey, an amiable, overweight short-order cook from the Bronx, turned into a movie. Now, as Sir Humphrey, he has acquired not only a new title but also a new love: the Honourable Clementine Wroxley. He and Clem plan to marry, settle into Batch Hall and begin a new life together.Their finances at this early stage rest on the...

Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does...Sir Humphrey has offered to play Father Christmas at the local hospital, but disaster strikes when he realises he won’t be able to buy the sack of toys he’d promised the children.Rupert, a gentleman of the road, is found asleep in an old car in the Hall’s coach house. He is scrubbed up and given a room at the Hall, where two guests are already staying: a businessman and his rather young female c...

The classic fictional memoirs of a hapless schoolmaster.There is chalk in his fingernails and paper darts fill the air as A.J. Wentworth, mathematics master at Burgrove Preparatory School, unwittingly opens the doors that lead not to knowledge but to chaos and confusion.In his collected papers he sets out the truth about the fishing incident in the boot room, the real story about the theft of the headmaster’s potted plant, and even the answ...

Sorcerer Christaan De Rein's return to Liverpool does not go well, starting with the fact that his trusted apprentice, Higgins, dies on the way. Then again, Higgins dies a lot. Of course, Rein doesn't expect to be welcomed with open arms after being banished for nine years, but a cryptic summons from The Musician herself cannot go unanswered.But when Rein arrives all is in chaos. People with fairy blood are turning up dead. The Forum Magicae is undone and the Curators sieged.

The second of the humorous fictional memoirs of a hapless schoolmaster.A. J. Wentworth, formerly teacher of mathematics at Burgrove prep school for boys, now passes his retirement years in a typically English rural village where somehow he seems unable to stay out of trouble.Wentworth lurches from mishap to misunderstanding, whether at the Conservative Association or the local dramatic society, the cricket club dinner or the vicarage Christ...

When Wisconsin veterinarian Doc dies, his family learns that to inherit his fortune, they must decipher the cryptic codicil he added to his will---"Take Doofus squirrel-fishing." And they can only do that by talking to Doc's friends, reading the memoir Doc wrote of a Christmas season decades earlier, searching through Doc's correspondence, and discovering clues around them.Humor abounds as this mismatched lot tries to find time in their hectic lives to work together to solve the pu...

Mr Edgar Finchley, unmarried clerk, aged 45, is told to take a holiday for the first time in his life. He decides to go to the seaside. But Fate has other plans in store…From his abduction by a cheerful crook, to his smuggling escapade off the south coast, the timid but plucky Mr Finchley is plunged into a series of the most astonishing and extraordinary adventures.His rural adventure takes him gradually westward through the English country...

Book 2 of the classic trilogy of humorous adventuresAn ebullient Mr Finchley is about to propose marriage to a lady he had rescued from mishap, when he is sent to Paris by his firm.There he manages to upset a boat, adopt a stray orphan and get himself kidnapped. The fine tangle he gets into takes some unravelling! Only when eventually back in London does he complete the proposal of marriage that was interrupted at the start....