H. F. Ellis

Humphry Francis Ellis MBE (July 17, 1907 – December 8, 2000) was an English comic writer, best known for his creation of A.J. Wentworth, the ineffectual schoolmaster whose fictional diaries were first published in Punch magazine.

Life

Humphry Francis Ellis was born in Metheringham, Lincolnshire. After gaining a Double first in Classics at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1930, Ellis went to Marlborough College to teach. Punch magazine first accepted a submission in 1931, and he left to become a staff writer on the magazine in 1933, the same year he married Barbara Hasseldine. Ellis became Literary and Deputy Editor in 1949, a post which he held until 1953, when he resigned in protest at the appointment of Malcolm Muggeridge as editor. It was during this period that he developed the character of A.J. Wentworth, inspired by his experience as a schoolmaster, and "The Papers of A.J. Wentworth B.A." were first published in book form in 1949.

"Punch" magazine continued to publish Ellis's work, but from 1954 he found a more lucrative market in "The New Yorker", where the Wentworth stories proved very popular.

The Wentworth stories were read out on the BBC Radio 4 programme "Woman's Hour" by the actor Arthur Lowe, who went on to play Wentworth in a BBC sitcom called AJ Wentworth BA in 1982. Only six episodes were made.

He was a rugby football Blue at University, and subsequently played for the town of Richmond and for Kent. H.F. Ellis died in Taunton in 2000, but not before The Papers of A.J. Wentworth B.A. were republished by Prion Press.

A.J. Wentworth B.A.

A.J. Wentworth B.A., a gauche, diffident and rather ineffectual mathematics teacher, works at Burgrove Preparatory School in the fictional county of Wilminster, and his diaries recount the trials of teaching Pythagoras to unruly schoolboys, as well as Wentworth's experiences as an officer in the Second World War, and later his life in retirement.

References

Obituary of H.F. Ellis in The Independent newspaper by Miles Kington, December 9, 2000.