The problem with Professor Branestawm | Science and nature books

The problem with Professor Branestawm

Norman Hunter’s Professor Branestawm has been on and off our bookshelves and the BBC since 1933. Why do we keep coming back to him?

I was about half way into a PhD on British children’s science literature before I even heard of Professor Branestawm. I’d mention my work at conferences and older academics would say “ah, children’s science books eh, well you simply must write about Branestawm.”

Brane-what? But I dug around the back of some libraries, Googled, asked around, and discovered a series of fiction books which had impressively run steadily from 1933 to the 1980s.

The first book, The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm, was based on stories first read on the BBC’s Children’s Hour. They were written by Norman Hunter, who’d worked in advertising and as a stage magician after serving in World War One in his late teens. He was sometimes styled as ‘Hunter, teller of tales.’ Indeed, the British Library copy of the 1933 edition has ‘teller of tales’ pencilled in on the frontispiece.

The stories were translated into several languages, including Polish, Swedish, Italian, German and Thai. There was a TV show in the 1960s. A study in the 1970s cited Branestawm in the top 20 stories read aloud in British primary schools, alongside Narnia, The Borrowers, various works by Dahl and even beating Just William. Hunter’s stories’ approach to race, gender and class might have kept them off school bookshelves from the mid 1980s onwards — which I guess is why I had missed them as a kid — but the character does still occasionally crop up as a cultural reference for describing scientists. But they’ve largely stayed in print, and a new adaptation is on TV this evening, so I thought it was time to dig out my notes.

Hunter’s stories centre on the character of Professor Branestawm, a scientist (or engineer, his specialism is ambiguous) who lives in a small English village. Typically the stories describe Branestawm inventing something or trying to go about some form of social life like attending a party or returning a library book. Either he gets terribly confused, or he confuses other people in the process (often both), to hilarious consequences. The humour is light, but it’s played for laughs, and Branestawm is a figure of fun.

In most cases, the invention goes wrong and causes some form of havoc. In the 1970 collection, The Peculiar Triumph of Professor Branestawm, we unusually find inventions which do actually work (albeit not in the way they were supposed to) but these were ‘invented’ by child readers, winners of a competition run by the publisher to design a machine to be featured in a story. Branestawm’s not really an evil scientist character though, you’re not meant to be scared by his inventions.

As with any long-standing character — Dr Who, Superman, James Bond— some features stay the same, and others change, as the world changes around them. Branestawm’s publication life spans some quite profound changes to science and society, making his shifts in character interesting to track.

The most obvious example of changing to the time is probably how James Adams’ 1937 illustrations seem heavily influenced by images of Freud. That’s a bit of an anomaly though, W. Heath Robinson’s 1933 illustrations set the pattern for most depictions of Branestawm, whatever the big name scientist of the day happened to be.

A slightly more subtle change, but probably more enduring, is the way the character’s attitudes to other people shift over time. The mid-20th century period the series spans was one of immense change in the social relations of science, and I think we can see that echoed in the development of the character.

A key feature of Branestawm, and basis for much of the humour of the books, is that he is a social outsider. He is, for many of his fans, the epitome of the absent-minded professor. He finds it hard to communicate with people, and often has conversations at cross-purposes. He walks into a swimming pool because he is thinking too much about finding a library. When he discovers the library, he tries to buy a bun there, thinking it is a bakery. He finds social life difficult, cumbersome and confusing and often feels out of place and lost.

If anything, the 1930s Branestawm is outright terrified of people. Characters from the rest of the village, when we see them, are shown to like him, but generally he hides from social life. He has a housekeeper, Mrs Flittersnoop and a best friend, Colonel Deadshott, but generally chooses to be left alone to work with his ‘inventions’. But by the 1970s and 1980s we see him out and about, interacting in more public spaces of libraries, school and parks. He even hosts parties with jelly and ice-cream.

The 1930s inventions tend to be based in Branestawm’s home, designed to solve problems on running the house; in the 1970s, inventions are on a larger scale, working for public good of whole village, not just himself, based in the outdoors, in the centre of social life (parks, shopping streets, school). He lectures at an institute for science, and other scientist characters are brought in. There are references to the links between science and the military, as well as commercial culture, and a greater sense of specialisation.

For all his occasional seriousness, Branestawm clearly has a sense of fun. He is quite childlike, especially in the 1930s stories. When the fair visits town, he is desperate to go. He later has too much trifle and ginger beer. At bedtime he drinks cocoa and falls out of bed. His lack of social understanding can be quite childlike too. In the Heath Robinson images of Branestawm, he is often shown wearing clothes which are too big for him; as if he were playing at fancy dress, not quite grown into adult roles. The early illustrations show both Branestawm and the Colonel as reasonably short compared to other characters, and they often crouch over slightly, without the more confident posture of an adult. In one picture Branestawm is shown wearing a ‘trouser elevator contraption’ — a set of braces attached to a fishing rod mechanism, which stops baggy clothes, falling down — which has he effect of bunching the trousers around his bottom, making him look as if he is wearing a nappy. He’s cute.

Another point that doesn’t change is that Branestawm’s inventions tend to be quite magical. This is part of the appeal of the character, though it also makes him distant, something other people could possibly understand. A 1976 spin off activity book, Professor Branestawm’s Do-It-Yourself Handbook, includes several instructions for ‘science experiments’ which are largely magic tricks. This probably reflects Hunter’s history as a conjurer, and stage tricks are a long-standing trope in kids science, but I sometimes wonder if Branestawn helped ingrain it. And it offers the scientist character with a fair bit of power.

It’s worth stressing that Branestawm’s is generally played as endearing, even when he blows up people’s houses. He is somehow other worldly, and that’s meant to be part of the fun. He lives to his own rules. A naughty child who gets away with breaking things, eating food outside of mealtimes and writing on his shirt-cuffs. Crucially, we’re invited to admire this. He’s a figure of fun, but not in a dismissive, anti-science way. Quite the opposite.

Branestawm is not part of a concerted public relations campaign for science, but a similar character could easily be applied so. There is a sense that the inability to interact with society is a necessary consequence for scientific achievement, and by that vein, also socially acceptable.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, scientists became more central to public life, but at the same time, more distant from them too. The strange ambivalence of Branestawm — not evil scientist to be feared, or part of the family — seems to fit quite well to that. And it’s perhaps no surprise he’s back too, because rather than developing to forge new relationships with wider society, if anything the social structures of science are regressing, playing the tune of hierarchies of old.

I’m looking forward to seeing what’s the same and what’s different in this latest version. But we might ask ourselves if we still want to laugh at these strange professors who we somehow allow to live outside of society. I’m not sure I’m a fan of Professor Branestawm, or exactly thrilled to see him back.

Dr Alice Bell used to be an academic in science communication and policy. This is an edited version of a 2013 paper published in Knowledges in Publics, edited by Lorraine and Simon Locke.

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