Words May Fly Abroad: The Unique Career of J.L. Carr

Born at Thirsk, educated at Carlton Miniott village school in the North Riding and at Castleford Secondary School. Teacher. RAF Officer, Headmaster, Publisher and Novelist. Author of Carr’s County Maps, over ninety Pocket Books and eight novels.
                                       —From the Pocket Book on J.L. Carr 

It was that excellent, lisping dandy, Frank Muir, the one who co-wrote Take It from Here, the 1950s radio show, with Denis Norden—I listened to it from the age of ten, on my crystal set—who introduced me to Jim Carr. He told us all to read The Harpole Report, Carr’s novel based very loosely on his experience as a primary school headmaster in Kettering. (That thing about the crystal set is a dramatic truth but not true in any other way, something Carr himself went in for rather.)

Let us start with his name. His Sunday Best name was Joseph Lloyd Carr, the Joseph of which he soon got rid of. Joseph for Joseph…