A J Wentworth, BA
 This was Arthur Lowe's last sitcom, made shortly before his death on 16 April
1982 and screened posthumously.
The role was just right for him,
combining a gentle humour with the subtle blend of bumble,
pleasant foolishness, earnestness and pomposity that Lowe had so
perfected in Dad's Army and Bless Me, Father.
His role was
that of a magnanimous mortar-boarded mathematics master at
Burgrove, a boys'' preparatory school in rural Wilminster, in the
1940s.
A J (Arthur James) Wentworth is keen on school pride but
poor at disciplining his boys, and both his kindliness and
accident-prone nature are taken advantage of by the boys of 3A.
Just as
bad, his ways are not entirely understood by his fellow teachers
and the snobbish headmaster (nicknamed ''Squid'' by the boys), nor
by matron, Wentworth's sworn enemy.
The episodes were
adapted by Basil Boothroyd from the finely crafted pieces written
by his contemporary, H F Ellis, which first appeared in the
magazine Punch and were subsequently compiled into two books,
The
Papers Of A J Wentworth, BA (published 1949) and The Papers Of A J
Wentworth, BA (Ret'd) (1962).
The pair were combined into a
single edition in 1980.
Arthur Lowe had read selections from the
books in the daily literary slot in the BBC radio programme Woman's
Hour, and, entirely appropriately, one of the A J
Wentworth pieces was read by Harry Andrews - the veteran stage and
screen actor who played the headmaster in this sitcom - at Lowe's
memorial service.
EPISODES
A Day In The Life Of AJ Wentworth BA | Mud Larks | Problems,
Problems | 3A Goes To War | Founder's Day | The Outsider
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