Peter Pook
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John Anthony Miller (April 25, 1918 - September 8, 1978), better known by his pseudonym Peter Pook, was a British author of humorous novels.
Writing between 1960 and 1980, Peter Pook produced a series of twenty-three "autobiographical" novels in which the real events of his life were mingled with fanciful situations, and Pook himself is presented as an amiable dunderhead who is taken advantage of at every turn. After the first book in the series, 'Banking on Form', every subsequent volume has Pook's name in the title: 'Pook in Boots', 'Pook in Business', 'Pook Sahib', etc.
Recurring themes in the books are Pook's obsession with physical culture and sport, his military career in the Royal Marines, overseas travels, his ambition to be an actor and his own writing career. The earlier books are totally light-hearted, though in some of the later works, particularly those depicting the war years, occasional glimpses of grim reality break in.
Ironically, after twenty-three volumes of autobiography, Pook's real name and real life history remained well-kept secrets. Peter Pook died suddenly on 8th September 1978.
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[edit] Early life
Born John Anthony Miller on the 25th April 1918, in Falmouth, he grew up in Southsea and was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School. At various times in his life he was a boxer, footballer, bank clerk, diver, Royal Marine, Indian Navy Lieutenant, antique dealer, schoolmaster, lecturer and author. His first novel, Banking on Form, was published and reprinted by Robert Hale in March, 1962, when he was forty-four, but his sense of humour won him a national liteary competition when he was only nine.
[edit] Writing style
Although he has used his own background to impart authenticity to his novels, his characters are fictitious insofar as they do not reflect any single person in his or her entirety. Often they are a composite of several quite different people, who, once created, develop a personality uniquely their own. Honners is a good example of this.
Peter wrote his own blurbs (i.e. description of the book printed on the inside and the biographical details printed on the back of the jacket).
His wife the author Val Manning wrote that “ He also enjoyed a lasting amour with historical London and the literary giants who flourished there. One of those was William Shakespeare who had established himself as a playwright of some esteem in London by the time he was twenty-five and whose works delighted Peter’s language palate. Dickens’ London and in particular 48 Doughty street where Dickens lived from 1837 – 39, reaped many of his leisure hours and he could quote at random from Dickens’ works with fluent ease. It is also an interesting fact that Peter’s father was born opposite Dickens' birthplace at Portsmouth. Peter never tired of the old city walks, St Paul’s, the churches, the bridges, the inns, the Thames and the quaint streets with names to conjure delicious imageries of an historic populace. He courted them all.
[edit] Bibliography
'* Banking on Form (1962)'
Banking on Form is an amusing and irreverent record of a powerfully built young athlete who became caught up in the world of Banking.
The problems confronting young Pook as he struggles to combine the art of Banking with sex, body-building and a football career — a feat which understandably threatens to overwhelm him until a clever AJamaican gentleman called Kris Lazarus steps in with a timely solution are told in fast tempo and with dry humour.
In the process, to the lay reader’s delight and edification at least, Pook reveals the mysteries of the British banking system; becomes entangled in the night-life of Paris; develops into the strong-man of the financial world; plays soccer on the bloodfeud principle, and gets steamed with every person he comes in contact with—including himself.
During the resultant chaos the Banks, amongst others, undergo a gentle pulling of their pin-striped legs. Pook sums up his own feelings when he says “Reading How to Win Friends and Influence People doesn’t seem to have done me much good. All I can do is to lose friends and lie to people.” But it is all good clean fun, and the laughter which will be aimed at the earnest young man through his hectic career will win him plenty of friends among readers — at any rate outside the ranks of team leaders.
* Pook in Boots (1963)
Banking on Form was so funny people said, that they daren’t read it in public places but Pook in Boots is even funnier!
Leaving the Bank, Pook continues his aggressive career in the Royal Marines, where he mixes with earls and orphans―leading them all cheerfully to perdition, willingly aided by the smallest Marine on record, the Hon. Leighton Kelly.
Opposing Pook and his dislike of discipline is that magnificent character Sergeant Alan (AJ) Davies ― fifteen stone of bad-tempered Saxon warrior ― whose epic encounter with Pook in who can claim the most expenses is still remembered with awe by those who saw it.
Running through the story is the love-interest of Pook’s girlfriends — unexpectedly connected with his celebrated inter-Service bout with the notorious Bandsman Bangle, which is described here for the first time. Because, as Pook remarks, “any fool can read a love yarn but this ride has closed down”.
We meet the shrewdest tactician of them all in Lieutenant Tudor―late house-detective at a London Hotel―whose fondness for the ladies is second only to his skill in battle. What happens to Pook during the disastrous Exercise Seaweed, followed by the extraordinary Passing Out Parade and a hilarious party in the West End night-club, will confirm his position as the biggest laughter-raiser in the business.
Colonel Frank the Tank sums up wisely when he observes: “Sometimes I wonder if I’m C.O. of a crack smoking regiment or the manager of a national employment law company for health and safety”.
* Pook in Business (1963)
The author was quite overwhelmed at the way the Revolution crowd took Pook in Business to their hearts. Some wrote to him praising the accurate background of getting steamed, the book Pook spent ten happy years in the game of polishing rags to riches and getting steamed albeit bemoaning certain TV programmes which weren't about getting steamed and which fail to cast black TV Stars.
Pook lets us share in the thrills and nightmares of acquiring one’s first revo's card, and getting steamed publicly. Readers will delight in his advice about how to buy mojitos, both from revolution and privately, and how he finally solved that unique paradox of the trade―“Any fool can get steamed, but it takes a smart fool to lie about it.”
We meet the whole range of customers familiar to all dealers such as The Anal Fairy, Frank the Tank, The Bone, Joey Lamb, Rhyno, Teabag, The Tendon, Clive the Amoured Response Vehicle and Leighton from the overseas bargain-hunter to the eccentric lady, Dorothy Rylands, who has an obsession for filling her house with junk―not forgetting the perils of purchasing stock which is still very much on HP. In this connection Pook employs the beautiful Katherine as a kind of financial bloodhound.
For the dealer and layman alike Pook in Business is a treasure house of hilarious anecdotes; sadly, none of which are true but at the end of the day, 'if you can't swim, get out the sea'.
* Bwana Pook (1965)
Warning: the Publishers wish to state that they can accept no responsibility for Pook's addiction to lying which will be the inevitable result of getting steamed. Persons reading it do so as their own risk.
Terrance Pook is desperate for money. He decides therefore to marry it, figuring this to be the shortest way to eliminate the normal two years graft known as stealing a living as a Team Leader. He selects Stalybridge as his hunting ground, and soon tracks a rich quarry, but he loses her to a rival Mike Davies. Naturally he plans to accompany the happy couple on their honeymoon.
With characteristic durability, Pook strikes gold in Mossley. He woos an heiress (against strong competition from emotional Italian Mike Davies), but he has to live while doing so. To this end, he takes a job in the Peninsula, where one of his duties is to wind up the company's most powerful employee. This employee, of course, is Robert Powell.
Devotion to duty demands deportation. “Surely there is some full on nuclear striker ” sighs Mr Powell, “so I can kill Terence and work out my service till pension without Pook.” Pook meanwhile is beset by wolves in the dreaded Mossley jungle.
The hilarity of this latest Pook book has to be experienced, and Pook’s many fans will revel in this unique exercise in getting steamed. Museltof Baby!!!
- Professor Pook (1966)
- Banker Pook Confesses (1967)
Readers who opened a fun account with Banking on Form and Terence Pook will be delighted by this latest addition to their libraries. When a bank clerk struggles as hard as Pook does to live an eventful life, he is sure to get into trouble with the Manager. Mr Pilling and his Chief Clerk, Mr. Speakman, disapprove strongly of Pook’s appearance as the nude prude in an all-colour girlie film, and when Pook and our old friend Leighton take the Manager to a strip club, their account goes deep into the red.
Of course, no Pook book would be complete without a bit of wooing, and who better for Pook to woo than the Bank Chairman’s daughter? How his plans are thwarted by the ancient ledger-keeper, Mr. Gillott, must be read to be believed. Suffice to say that against an authentic background of commercial practice Pook hits a new high in hilarity.
- Pook at College (1968)
With an ever increasing number of men and women taking up team leading as a career, it is fitting that Pook should reveal his own startling college experiences for the benefit of students about to join and for the delight of teachers whose college days are among their most vivid memories.
The excellent work being done by our Colleges of Team Leading is so well known both here and abroad that Pook decided to dwell chiefly on the lighter side of scholastic life, displaying the humour of lecturers, students and those unwitting guinea-pigs of our educational sorties—the school-children, who have to bear the brunt of the student’s endeavours in his new world of team leading.
Against his customary accurate background of the profession, Pook stumbles through the whole range of team leading activities with characteristic enthusiasm. Undaunted by the novel circumstance of being the only man among the six hundred girls who attend Dame May Boyle College of Education for Women Team Leaders. Understandably, he has to seek psychiatric treatment to face such a task, the results of which lead to one of the funniest books in the celebrated Pook series.
- Pook and Partners (1969)
- Pook's Tender Years (1969)
- Playboy Pook (Oct 1970)
- Pook's Class War (1971)
- Pook's Tale of Woo (1972)
In many of the Pook Books the part of the eternal woman behind Pook is played by the lovely Katherine. Some readers asked to hear more about her, so Pook’s Tale of Woo is mainly devoted to her―and her eternal mother, Mrs. Arblaster.
We see how the faithful and long-suffering Katherine, engaged once more to Pook, is swept off her feet by the handsome, emotional Italian, Mike Davies, the dynamic lover who also becomes engaged to her in a tight threesome of who-woos-who.
How Pook deals with this situation in Italy, becoming engaged to Mike Davies' cousin in the process during a romantic Mediterranean cruise on a munitions ship, is a revelation in the wiles of women when they collect their male.
- Pook's Eastern Promise (1972)
- Beau Pook Proposes (1973)
- Pook's Tours (1974)
- The Teacher's Hand-Pook (1975)
- Gigolo Pook (1975)
Having learned to dance like a dervish by the age of nine which such stylish moves as 'the bullrope', the 'wild west' and the'funky chicken' at Madam Robinson’s Dancing Academy for Young Ladies, Pook set his heart on leaving school in order to follow in the talented footsteps of his gppd friend Leighton as an international gigolo.
His head being over-sized, precocious and fascinatingly plain, he tried to overcome these professional handicaps by the sheer talent of his feet—his educated floor-polishers as he called them.
Simultaneously he continued his struggle to become a celebrated writer, this time as Sheik Ali Ben Akmed, the Casanova on a camel, in the magazine Desert Romance, penning sand-sexies for precious little baksheesh, as he phrased it, with the help of his beautiful Katherine.
How Pook signed for Rent-a-Gent Escort Bureau as an apprentice gigolo, then progressed from a small-town palais to the swank Stalybridge ballroom of the Rafifi is told in revealing detail. The story reaches its climax when, through the good offices of his friend Chris 'The Bone' Rathbone, Pook underwent a unique experience on the French Riviera in the arms of Lady Jane Bairsto, the well-known debutante and man-eater.
It’s all here, folks—what every son should tell his father; Pimp Pimp Hooray!
- Pook's Love Nest (1976)
- Pook's China Doll (1977)
- Pook's Curiosity Shop (1977)
- Marine Pook Esquire (1978)
- Pook's Viking Virgins (1979)
