Biggles delivers the goods
Biggles took to the skies long before James Bond came to life in the imagination of Ian Fleming. A great British hero, invented by prolific writer Captain W. E. Johns, was fighting our country’s enemies. Through over a hundred books ( many now sought-after by collectors), Biggles along with his cousin Algernon (Algy) Lacey and the young Ginger Hebblethwaite were adventurers in a white European male-dominated world - far removed from gay cultural developments to come.
While Johns, a First World War pilot (who reached the rank of Lieutenant), went on to pursue a settled heterosexual lifestyle, closer reading of his stories may surprise us in their suggestion of a hero very much in tune with the modern gay movement, even down to some dubious titles: Biggles Gets His Men (1950 ), Biggles Takes It Rough (1961 ), Biggles Takes A Hand (1962 ), and Biggles Sees Too Much (1968 ).
No one could doubt James Bond’s liking for women (reflecting Fleming’s own sexual fantasies), laid on with a trowel in character names like Pussy Galore. By complete contrast, in one book Biggles comments that he much prefers smoking to contact with the opposite sex!
Fast forwarding to the 2005 tv episode of Dr Who which introduced Captain Jack, an RAF volunteer, and we find a character who is a conscious tribute to Biggles, even to the point of having a friend called Algy. Gay actor John Barrowman has since made the role of Captain Jack ( in Dr Who and the Torchwood series) very much his own.
Captain Jack kisses another man
William Earl Johns (1893-1968) introduced Biggles in a 1932 flying magazine article called ‘The White Fokker’. Earlier books had a certain realism derived from Johns’ experiences of being shot down and taken as a prisoner of war in 1918, and references to swearing and alcohol use were often left out of later reprints. The virile youthfulness and manly resourcefulness of our hero was consistently maintained, however, supported by some notable illustrators and dustwrapper designers - a quality not lost on young readers developing into gay men.
A Wikipedia entry on Johns mentions a rare storyline in which Biggles falls for a female German spy, Marie Janis. Questions of his possible asexuality or homosexuality are quashed by making him a romantic hero who remains loyal to this woman from his past. An Australian radio series produced under license in the 1950s, but not written by Johns, had to be quickly taken off the air when angry boys objected to Biggles being given a blonde girlfriend.
There is a camp quaintness about Biggles which cannot fail to appeal to adult gay readers, even down to the way the decorated for valour flying ace regularly “ejaculates” rather than merely says things.
I have a Kingston Library reprint of Biggles and The Black Peril which has a very attractive wrapper depicting our handsome hero peering defiantly at a mysterious plane hovering in a blue sky over a summery English landscape. Yes, it simply turns me on. There’s nothing like being in the cockpit with Biggles:
“He jerked the throttle wide open, and the bellow of the engine increased in volume as it jumped from cruising to maximum speed….”
The book opens with Algy telling us that,
“Biggles had rung him up that morning to suggest a joy-ride, a proposal to which he had readily agreed”….”the man who was tied to him by bonds of friendship that only years of peril could forge.”
Soon Ginger makes his first appearance:
“Well, strike me pink!” gasped Ginger. “Biggles in the flesh! This is my lucky day and no mistake; I know all about you, so you needn’t tell me any more….You’ve got a pal names Algy something or other, haven’t you? Where’s he?”
While nothing overtly sexual ever occurs, the portrayal of male bonding makes the tales a joy. By the end of the book the teenager Ginger has been firmly adopted by Algy and Biggles and is contemplating learning to fly:
”…as long as I can fly, that’s all I care. When I get my hands on a joystick I shall be able to hold my own wirh you guys on the next show we do.
“Well, I’m taking the amphibian tomorrow for complete overhaul; I’ll take you down with me, if you like,” concluded Biggles.
“O.K., big boy! cried Ginger enthusiastically. “
So I think it’s high time we reclaimed Biggles for the gay fold. If Johns was still writing today I imagine he might come up with titles like Biggles Tackles The Taliban, or why not simply an ungrudging Biggles Out And Proud?
John Hartley
(c) Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
June 5th, 2011 at 11:13 am
Thanks for your interest in my blog DM - I like to get responses, and critical ones invite debate, which is all to the good.
It appears that you grew up reading Biggles’ adventures during years when gay matters were rarely discussed, and negatively when they were. I’m aware that Biggles flirted with a few female characters in his career, but it’s possible to view him in a new light these days.
I don’t know if you are gay yourself, but by your own admission you were impatient when our hero showed any hint of interest in women.
Two of the greatest adventure stories for boys, R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island and Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, contain very few female characters, and yet the men in those books would hardly stimulate any gay interest today. Biggles, however, to me has all the potential for man on man sex which lifts him out of an earlier era and its parlance.
There may not be much call now for Biggles “nobbling the Hun”, as you put it DM, but a gay readership certainly needs its heros, and it matters a lot how they see him today.
June 2nd, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Sorry if it came across a bit aggresive! I just don’t remember anything suggesting that he was gay, or indeed even camp, other than perhaps some phrases that would have been used in common parlance at the time without any sexuality based connotation. Actually, it makes no odds, they are adventure stories pure and simple, and it makes zero difference how each reader perceives the hero!
June 2nd, 2011 at 3:38 pm
A little harsh DM. Maybe Biggles was bi? Anyway that whole leather jacket aviator look is very fetching imo
June 1st, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Cant edit my previous post, so - In \’Biggles fails to return\’, Biggles gets jiggy with an Italian Princess, and Ginger falls in love with a French girl who cares for him after he gets shot. There are more examples, I just cant remember them. I suggest the Author does a little more research in future, rather than basing a article on incorrent conventional wisdom.
June 1st, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Nonsense - Biggles actually had several other female love interests apart from the spy Mary Janis; The Princess of Moltovia for one, off the top of my head. Besides, sexuality plays no part in adventure books written for ten year old boys - I remember being intensly irritated by his relationship with Mary at that age. Why the hell was he messing about with a girl when he should have been out nobbling the Hun!