Reginald Arkell

"Reginald Arkell" (1882-1959) was a British script writer and comic novelist who wrote many musical plays for the London theatre. The most popular of those was an adaptation of the spoof history book "1066 and All That": "1066—and all that: A Musical Comedy based on that Memorable History by Sellar and Yeatman". He was the author of "A Cottage in the Country" and the Green Fingers series of garden verse.

He was born on 14 October 1882 at Lechlade, Gloucestershire, England, was educated at Burford Grammar School and married actress Elizabeth Arkell. He died on 1 May 1959 at Cricklade, England.

Works

*"The Round House" (1958) (novel?)
*"Charley Moon" (1956?) (novel)
*"The Miracle Of Merriford" (1956) (novel)
*"Collected Green Fingers" (1956) (poems)
*"Trumpets Over Merriford" (1955) (novel)
*"Come to the ball; or, Harlequin" (1951) (adaptation of Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus)
*"Old Herbaceous" (1950, republished 2002)
*"Green fingers Again" (1943) (poems)
*"Percy Ponsonby" (1939) (TV series)
*"1066 And All That" (1939) (TV version)
*"The Street Singer" or "Interval for Romance" (1937) (film musical which starred Arthur Tracy)
*"Smash and Grab" (1937) (film)
*"Green fingers, and other poems" (1934) (includes "Roses at Owlpen")
*"The Last Waltz" (1936) (film of the musical comedy)
*"1066 And All That" (1935) (revue)
*"A Kingdom for a Cow" (1935) (adaptation of Kurt Weill's operetta Der Kuhhandel)
*"Playing the Games" (1935) (humour)
*"Bridge Without Sighs" (1934) (A Harmless Handbook to the game, written in rhyme)
*"Richard Jefferies" (1933) (biography)
*"Winter Sportings" (1929)
*"Columbine - A Fantasy of Summertime" (1928) (adaptation for radio)
*"The Blue Train" (1927) (musical, music by Robert Stolz, additional lyrics by Ivy St. Helier)
*"Frasquita" (1925) (operetta, music by Franz Lehár)
*"Our Nell" (1924) (musical play, music by Ivor Novello and Harold Fraser-Simson)
*"The tragedy of Mr. Punch" (1923) (play)
*"Columbine" (1922) (play)
*"Catherine" (1922) (musical play, music by Tchaikovsky)
*"The Last Waltz" (1922) (musical comedy, music by Oscar Straus)
*"The Holidays" (Children's poem in "The Captain" Dec 1910)

"Old Herbaceous"

"Old Herbaceous" is a classic British novel of the garden, with a title character as outsized and unforgettable as P. G. Wodehouse’s immortal manservant, Jeeves. Born at the dusk of the Victorian era, Bert Pinnegar, an awkward orphan child with one leg a tad longer than the other, rises from inauspicious schoolboy days spent picking wildflowers and dodging angry farmers to become the legendary head gardener “Old Herbaceous,” the most esteemed flower-show judge in the county and a famed horticultural wizard capable of producing dazzling April strawberries from the greenhouse and the exact morning glories his Lady spies on the French Riviera, “so blue, so blue it positively hurts.”

Sprinkled with nuggets of gardening wisdom, "Old Herbaceous" is a witty comic portrait of the most archetypal—and crotchety—head gardener ever to plant a row of bulbs at a British country house.

External links

* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/guide/articles/p/percyponsonby_7775220.shtml BBC page on "Percy Ponsonby"]
*imdb name|id=0035043|name=Reginald Arkell