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Uncle Cleans Up

Uncle Cleans Up

It is a time of rejoicing at Homeward, the Labyrinthine castle-city that is as magical as Oz and as full of wonders as Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Uncle, the wise, kind, generous, and fabulously rich elephant who rules over Homeward, has joined with his many friends to celebrate their triumph over the ruffians in neighbouring Badfort.

Still, there's plenty of cleaning up to do in Homeward: the waterworks are tainted with vinegar, housing is scarce, and the Dwarftown Railway is terribly overcrowded - meanwhile the Badfort crowd has devised its most diabolical plan yet. Uncle will need all the help he can get from his faithful assistant Old Monkey and from Goodman the literate cat-and possibly a wizard's spell - to get through this mess.

Reviews

  • A riot of nonsense and adventure, may well become a classic in the great English nonsense tradition

    Observer

  • Joyously surreal, set in landscapes full of toffee, deferential choirs of badgers, heavenly water-slides and velvet chairs . . . Their pachydermous protagonist governs a benevolent plutocracy- but the books' great joy is the frequent sly and subtle lampooning of his capitalist pomp

    Guardian

  • The books are very funny, installing a large cast of unlikely characters . . . in a world of mildly squiffy logic . . . And the illustrations are among Quentin Blake’s best work, scrawls and splotches that finally and unarguably distil character. But most important, this is political satire of a high order — Animal Farm for pre-teens, but wittier and more relevant to our own world

    Independent

  • Few books are laugh-out-loud funny; fewer still are the children's books that have you stifling titters on the train . . . Uncle is a brilliantly sustained exercise in nonsense, played with the straightest of faces

    Financial Times

  • You ask any class "Who's heard of Alice in Wonderland" and up goes a forest of hands. Uncle is on the same level and should be more widely read and enjoyed

    The Junior Bookshelf

More from this Author

About the Author

J. P. Martin

J.P.Martin was born in Scarborough in 1879. He became a Methodist minister in 1902 and served as a missionary in South Africa and as an army chaplain in Palestine in 1918 at the time when Allenby and T.E. Lawrence overwhelmed the Turks. J.P.Martin and his wife Nancy moved circuits every three years and worked among miners and slum dwellers, as well as among the comfortably off. He started telling the Uncle stories before the First World War and in 1934 the writers Stella Martin and R.N Currey urged him to write them down; it took thirty years before they got them accepted by Jonathan Cape in the satire rich sixties. Reviewers welcomed each of the six books as they were published between 1964 and 1973 with comparisons to Edward Lear and Alice. The Observer described him as 'a master in the great English nonsense tradition.' J.P.Martin was 84 when Uncle was published and he charmed everyone on radio and television. He was able to enjoy his late success before he died two years later in 1966.

J. P. Martin

R N Currey

Born in Mafeking in 1907, R.N. Currey was a soldier, poet and at one time a school teacher in Colchester.

R N Currey

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