‘W

HY can’t grown-ups just give me stuff, let me do what I like and then go away A LOT?” The cry from the Just William books has echoed down the generations and inspired TV, radio and audio book adaptations.

William Brown was the 11-year-old boy with a talent for getting into trouble even when he was trying his best to do the right thing. He was encouraged by the local vicar not to tell any lies in William’s Truthful Christmas only to cause even more uproar when asked by his aunt and uncle how he liked his present of a book of church history and geometry set. He truthfully replied: “I’m not int’rested in Church History, an I’ve got something like those at school. Not that I’d want ‘em if I hadn’t em.”

He then went on to truthfully tell another woman she was fatter than her photo and had more lines. The fallout from the whole experience led to him finally declaring“I’ve done with it. I’m goin’ back to deceit”.

The naughty schoolboy was the creation of Richmal Crompton. The clergyman’s daughter from Bury was born 130 years ago on November 15, 1890. She never married or had children of her own but worked as a teacher at all-girls school Bromley High School before turning to writing full-time after polio left her lame in her right leg.

Her Just William stories were hugely popular and she brought out 39 books over the years. Her first short story, Rice Mould, was published in 1919 in Home Magazine and her last, William The Lawless, came out in 1970, a year after her death.

The enduring appeal of William and his friends Ginger, Douglas and Henry, aka The Outlaws, have seen the stories endlessly adapted for film, TV and radio.

A young Dennis Waterman got his first big TV break starring in the 1962 BBC series William when he was 14. Episodes featured titles like William and the Parrots and William the Counterspy. Dennis Gilmore took over the role for the second series of black-and-white half-hour episodes.

Even earlier Roddy McDowall was just 12 when he played William’s best friend Ginger in the 1940 movie Just William with Richard Lupino in the title role while John Clark was William in 1946 with Jacqueline Boyer as his nemesis Violet Elizabeth Bott and a cast that included Dad’s Army John Le Mesurier.