Posted by Laurence Monkhouse on April 24, 2005 at 20:46:46 from 217.137.108.64 user Laurence_.
In Reply to: Re: Susan posted by John Wilson on April 24, 2005 at 06:38:56:
Biggles - and to some degree Algy - were indeed WW1 fighter aces but Ginger certainly wasn't. He appears some 10 years after the end of that War in 'The Black Peril' as a street urchin whose gutter instincts extract Biggles and Algy from a dreadful fate at the hands of Russian airborne spies. As a reward he is taught to fly and joins the team, usually rescuing the others at some critical point in each adventure. The reader is obviously supposed to identify with him.
The Air Police books are set after WW2, and apart from the first two are just not worth reading.
(That of course opens the door to those who may choose to argue that Biggles is not worth reading at all, being politically incorrect right from the beginning!)