Posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on May 02, 2003 at 16:41:55 from 195.93.32.8 user ACB.
In Reply to: Re: How Old Is Captain Flint? posted by John Nichols on May 02, 2003 at 14:48:31:
I have always assumed that he did indeed serve in WW1, as (I likewise assume) did Bob Blackett, who did not come back. I know that this makes Nancy Blackett slightly older than she should be, but I definitely think that AR's intention was to make the Blackett girls orphans of the Great War, as so many children of the 20's were.
I go on to speculate that Captain Flint does earn a living, either as a geologist (cf Oscar Gnosspelius) or as a journalist (cf AR himself) and that this accounts for his gallivanting off to foreign parts, his trunk with its amazing assortment of labels, and his going bump in a gig against the coast of Borneo. He spends too much time in England, and visits too many exotic places, to be a regular colonial civil servant or businessman. Since children do no consider the mere writing of stories to be a grown up way of earning a living, (at least, mine don't!) they create a more interesting set of things for him to do.
"Mixed Moss" is of course SA itself....CF is AR...which lends some sort of support to my hypothesis.