Here is a list of many of the current Club members, Click here to see a list of past members.
Malcolm Barrow |
I joined LOBBC in 2002 and have been a regular member since.My childhood reading habits remain an active nostalgic memory to this day. Throughout my childhood in the 1950s I was an avid reader of every comic I could get my hands on, reading weekly, from cover to cover, copies of the Beano, Dandy, Rover, Hotspur, Eagle and Radio Fun, and adding anything else I could occasionally lay my hands on. I bought every copy of the short lived Rocket, and treasured this archive until it was accidentally thrown away in a loft clearance.On holiday in a rented holiday home in 1953, aged 8, I found the owners’ daughter had left an almost complete archive of The Girl’s Own Paper and I avidly read through it for much of my 2 weeks holiday. My favourite children’s authors – as a child! – included Enid Blyton (up to the age of about 7), Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, Malcolm Saville, Lewis Carroll, Richmal Crompton, WE Johns, CS Lewis, Edward Lear, AA Milne, E Nesbitt, Arthur Ransome and Mark Twain, from the age of about 11 moving on to enjoy particularly Walter Scott, RL Stevenson, CS Forester, Harrison Ainsworth, HG Wells, Jim Corbett, and Edgar Allan Poe. I was introduced to the writing of Frank Richards (under his various pen-names) by my erudite grandfather William Henry Whiter and his two sons, my uncles Ben and Bob, who together founded the LOBBC. I am fascinated by the world of the first decades of the 20th century and love the way Frank Richards’ stories recreate the lost values of that age. I also have a strong interest in the cinema of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, and radio and television of the same period. |
Nigel Colman |
Chairman in 2012, Nigel has this to say about himself: I joined the Club some in 2005, having been a lifelong admirer of the works of Charles Hamilton, AKA Frank Richards, Martin Clifford, Owen Conquest et al. It’s been wonderful to meet fellow enthusiasts and to be given the opportunity to expand my knowledge of this fascinating man. |
Roger Coombes |
Roger joined the Club in 1997 and has been Treasurer and Chairman on several occasions in the past. He enjoys the writing of E S Brooks and is collecting Nelson Lee Libraries as well as his Norman Conquest (as Berkeley Gray) and Ironsides (as Victor Gunn) detective novels. Roger prefers Nelson Lee Library and St Frank’s stories to Magnet and Gem.He has come to the old story papers late in life. At the grammar school which he attended in the 1960s pupils were kept away from ‘popular’ writers (he was once reprimanded when caught reading Biggles) as boys were meant to read only the classics! Fortunately, Roger found solace in the Eagle (NOT a comic but a ‘picture strip weekly’!). and has been a devotee of Dan Dare, Luck of the Legion and the others, ever since. He appreciates the comic art of the 1950s, especially the greats like the three Franks (Hampson, Bellamy and Humphris), Martin Aitchison, Ron Embleton and Don Lawrence. Ken Reid is his favourite ‘funny’ artist. Now retired, Roger is busy discovering children’s authors he missed – due to those zealous and forceful teachers – such as Malcolm Saville, Monica Edwards, Geoffrey Trease and Violet Needham, as well as Hamilton and Brooks. Retirement, however, has not quelled his passion for Rupert, who celebrated his 90th anniversary in November 2010. Roger has been a member of the Followers of Rupert since 1984 and writes regularly for the Nutwood Newsletter. He is also a fan of old time wireless – Children’s Hour, Paul Temple, Journey into Space, Hancock’s Half Hour, etc. and claims to be addicted to The Archers. Roger has long since abandoned most TV! . |
Len Cooper |
Current London OBBC Chairman, former custodian of the Hamiltonian Library and fan of all things Hamiltonian, since reading Billy Bunter’s Christmas Party in the mid 1960s.”I had a 25 year break from Bunter, until fortuitously discovering the brilliant Frank Richards – The Chap Behind the Chums, in 1997, whereupon I found out that Frank Richards was one of many pen-names of the Master!” Joined the Club in 1999. |
Wilf Davey |
A Midlands branch of OBBC started sometime around 1950. The instigator was a man called Jack Corbett and meetings initially took place in a store room above his shop which sold office fittings near central Birmingham. My father Ted became active in the Club until about 1970. I forget most of the other members except Tom Porter. I made enjoyable visits from time to time.I have memories of taking part in the filming of a feature for the BBC’s TV programme “Nationwide”. It was presented by John Morgan but, while being great fun, the aim was frivolous. They wanted to hear about a fat schoolboy whose greed and stupidity were a source of laughter for his schoolmates. I was familiar with 80 copies of the Magnet from the 1930s bought by my father at the time of publication and lovingly read by the family throughout the war and later. Once the OBBC world was opened up to us post-war, additional copies were purchased, leaving the collection of Magnets I have today. I also have a number of other books, story papers and comics from my early years and supplemented later. I have fragile copies of the Hotspur, Wizard, Rover, Adventure, BOP, Scout magazine and various picture comics. The Midlands Club probably lacked the depth of expertise in boy’s literature of London and Leeds. I remain in awe of those whose knowledge of publications from the first half of the twentieth century was and is so enriching. |
John Lester |
John Lester joined The London Old Boys Book Club in 2011 and has been secretary since 2012. He writes regular articles for The Nutwood Newsletter (reflecting his liking for Rupert) and The Enid Blyton Society Journal. He also contributes to and edits Biggles Flies Again (the magazine for works by Captain W. E. Johns) and The Friars Chronicles (for the works of Charles Hamilton, best known as Frank Richards, the creator of Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School).He is also interested in a number of other children’s authors and a range of comics and story papers from the 1950s. In contrast to this he is also a member of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK) as a consequence of doing a PhD thesis on Joseph Conrad, which was published by Macmillan in 1988 with the title Conrad and Religion. John spent nearly twenty years in New Zealand, where he attended university and trained as a secondary school teacher (in Christchurch). He is a member of the Baha’i Faith, the most recent of the world religions, and his travels in that cause have taken him to many different countries (such as the Solomon Islands and Samoa) and furnished him with many exotic settings for his nine finished novels, which remain unpublished. |
Alan Pratt |
Hi, I’m Alan Pratt and I’ve been a club member since 1988. I’ve been a Hamilton fan since I read the Cassell Bunter books as a boy: the Magnets came later via the Howard Baker reprints. I also enjoy detective stories, not just those featuring Sexton Blake but novels from the “Golden Age” of crime fiction by writers such as Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Ellery Queen and Gerald Verner to name but a few.I’m a big western fan and am a keen collector of the cowboy comics published in the forties and fifties. I enjoy watching B western movies featuring the likes of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and episodes of television series like The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid and Bonanza. I feel privileged to have discovered the OBBC. It’s great to know that there are other like-minded people out there, all doing their bit to keep this fascinating hobby alive! Long live the Club! |