Biggles – Charter Pilot by W. E. Johns is an anthology of short stories which was first published in 1943 by Oxford University Press. It comprises stories that were serialised in Boy's Own Paper from 1941 to 1944.
Most of the stories were adapted as comic strips in French by Artima in various of their small format comic series: Biggles, Olympic, Temeraire, Jacques Rogy, Tex Bill, Thierry, and perhaps more unusually, in King, where Gimlet King and his friends replace Biggles and co. as the main characters.
Synopsis[]
During the spare moments in the mess of 666 Sqn, typically after a good dinner, Ginger tells his squadron mates about the exploits of Biggles, Algy and himself while acting as a charter pilot for the eccentric scientist Dr Augustus Duck as he sets out to explore strange phenomenon around the world. The reader is left to assess the plausibility of some of the stories--story telling in a pilots' mess after a good dinner inevitably involves some exaggeration.
The following stories are narrated at various times by Ginger:
- The Adventure of the Enchanted Island
- The Adventure of the Abominable Caveman
- The Adventure of the Horticultural Hermits
- The Adventure of the Crooning Crocodile
- The Adventure of the Oxidized Grotto
- The Adventure of the Purple Cloud
- The Adventure of the Patagonian Giants
- The Adventure of the Musty Mammoth
- The Adventure of the Luminous Lily
- The Adventure of the Suspicious Volcano
- The Adventure of the Haunted Creek
- The Adventure of the Golden Shirts
- The Adventure of the Inquisitive Dodos
- The Adventure of the Counterfeit Crusaders
- The Adventure of the Green Horse
- The Adventure of the Silent Death
Editions[]
International titles[]
- Danish: Biggles flyver Jorden rundt (Branner & Korch 1948)
- French: Les exploits de Biggles (Presses de la Cité 1952)
- Swedish: Biggles märkligaste uppdrag (Wahlströms 1984)
- Czech: Biggles mezi bojovými starty (Riopress 2004)