Ravette, 31 Dec 1985
Paperback
ISBN-10: 0906710731
ISBN-13: 978-0906710739
Order now from Amazon UK
My father had three of Cecil Hunt’s Howlers books – one inscribed and presented to him on his thirteenth birthday in 1929, and long since missing its cover – and he had passed them on to me with other mementos of his childhood. I read them and re-read them. I must have understood relatively little of them at first, since howlers are funny only if you know what their perpetrators were striving to say. The mistranslations of Latin were a closed book to me – and to some extent still are – but they are hilarious in their sheer inventiveness.
I treasured these three books and later acquired others by Cecil Hunt. I also tracked down his widow, Kathleen, and found out something about Cecil. He was born in 1902 and, like myself, had worked both as a publisher and a writer. He had been employed by the publishers Blackie and then by Ernest Benn and in the 1930s was Fiction Editor of the Daily Mail and the Evening News. He was a prolific writer who turned his hand not only to humour (independently and with the famous illustrator, William Heath Robinson), but also to novels (under his own name and two pseudonyms), quiz books, books on the writing profession, proverbs, prayers, epitaphs and word origins – a total of nearly 60 books. He started a literary agency which Kathleen kept ticking over while he served in the army during the Second World War. After the War he continued writing and lectured extensively on the craft of the writer. He was also a driving force in establishing the Writer’s Summer School, an institution which flourishes today. Cecil Hunt died in 1954.
It was as the compiler of the Howler books that Cecil Hunt achieved his greatest success and fame. In the first volume of his autobiography – published at the early age of 33 – he described how he had been jotting down howlers for years, filling exercise books with them, but with no real intention of publishing them. Ernest Benn, for whom he was working, published the first book, Howlers, as a one shilling and sixpence paperback in August 1928. It was a runaway bestseller that surprised not only the publishers (who seemed to have issued it almost as a favour to their employee) but also Cecil himself. Benn sold 10,000 copies before publication, and over 9,000 in the week before Christmas. They were hesitant about the potential of a follow-up book, but when Sir Ernest Benn heard that Cecil had received numerous offers from other publishers, he signed up a second collection, which was as successful as the first. These were followed by no fewer than ten books of howlers, some of them illustrated by his friend, the eminent Jersey artist, Edmund Blampied.
The word ‘howlers’ has been used to describe glaring, and especially funny blunders made by school children since the 1890s. A few books on them had appeared before Cecil Hunt started collecting them, but he was evidently unaware of their existence. He was often accused of inventing his howlers, but he received them from teachers and other correspondents and claimed that as far as he could ascertain they were entirely genuine. (Whether his contributors were as scrupulous about authenticity is another matter, and, like most jokes, it is now impossible to establish their origins.) He had many imitators in the 1930s and his books have been heavily plundered by others ever since, but they outsold all their rivals and have remained popular: some were reissued as recently as the 1960s and all the originals are in demand among book collectors.
The anonymous originators of howlers demonstrate cynicism, exasperation at the stupid questioning of teachers, logical responses and inventive genius – as well (especially in the case of translations) occasional desperation.
As the Press often reports, howlers are alive and flourishing in British schools: the first man on the moon is said to be none other than Louis Armstrong, and we are introduced to that heroine of desert warfare, ‘Florence of Arabia’. Only references to computers, TV stars and contemporary events distinguish today’s howlers from those collected by Hunt almost 80 years ago.
(Adapted from my introduction to the book)
The History of Britain (according to children)
The Romans drove the pixies over Hadrian’s Wall.
Edward the Professor was King of England.
William the Conjuror was crowned king of England.
The Normans were famous for introducing the Frugal System.
As a penance for the death of Thomas Becket, Henry II walked on his bear feet to Canterbury.
King John ground the people down under heavy taxis.
The Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offence.
Robert the Bruce was a Scot who kept a performing spider.
Edward III would have been King of France if his mother had been a man.
John Wycliffe taught that all men ought to be the same height.
In midevil times most of the people were alliterate.
The victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.
Henery Percy was sometimes called Hotsupe.
The Poll Tax was to be paid by everybody who had a head.
After hanging everybody in the Peasants’ Revolt, the King rode up to them and said, “I will be your leader.”
Say briefly what you know about the Princes in the Tower. Two. Smothered.
During the Reformation every clergyman was compelled to receive thirty nine articles.
The Pope called Henry “Fido, the Offensive”.
Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee.
Latimer was a martyr who was tied to the stake and said to Ridley, “Cheer up, brother Ridley, you’ll soon be dead!”
Mary Queen of Scots was playing golf with her husband when news was brought to her of the birth of her son and heir.
Queen Elizabeth was a vurgin queen, and she was never marrid. She was so fond of dresses that she was never seen without one on. She was beautefull and clever with a red hed and freckles.
Queen Elizabeth liked Sir Walter Raleigh so she made him one of her nights.
Sir Walter Raleigh laid down his cloak. Her Majesty remarked to Sir Walter, “I am afraid I have spoiled your cloak”, to which the gallant knight replied, “Dieu et mon droit,” which means, “My God, and you’re right!”
Sir Walter Raleigh invented potatoes, tobacco and bicycles.
Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100-foot clipper.
Drake went to Cadiz to sign the King’s beard.
Drake was playing bowels when the Armada was sighted in the Channel. Asked why he did not come, he replied that his bowels were more important.
When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted “hurrah.”
Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.
Shakespeare lived in Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors.
Bassanio sang a beautiful song called, “Tell me, where is fancy bread?”
The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
King James I was very unclean in his habits. He never washed his hands and married Anne of Denmark.
Christopher Robin built St Paul’s.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes.
The Black Hole of Calcutta was when fifty Englishmen were shut into a small room with one small widow. Only four of them came out alive.
John Keats wrote an ode to the Greasy Urn.
The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by a surf, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.
