As usual the RAF top brass don't know what to do with maverick flying ace and well-known loose cannon Major Bartholomew Bandy. They pack him off to a squadron where everything's as smart as paint and the flying record barely registers, thinking it'll keep him out of their hair. But after a shaky start Bart gets a firm grip on things - one of those things being the adjutant, who jealously guards his own private and baroquely magnificent WC. With old pal Dick Milestone, Bart reinvigorates the superbly turned out but demoralized pilots, who start doing some serious flying and very serious damage to the enemy, in the notoriously tricky new Dolphin Camels. With the blackest of black comedy and seat-of-the pants escapades, Donald Jack's series about a young pilot makes the War to End All Wars come roaring to life. What people are saying about The Bandy Papers: "Reading can lead to involuntary bursts of loud laughter." "Very descriptive, full of air combats and written with a fine eye for period detail . . . there is quite simply no finer book of its kind. Highly recommended." "It is clear that Bandy likely should've been killed several times, but very likely the Grim Reaper was laughing too hard to hold his scythe straight . . ." "Hysterically funny! . . . each book is another installment in the continuing saga of a Canadian and his adventures in war, the world, and women." "I have yet to find another author with the wit and humor of Donald Jack." Editorial reviews: "I enjoyed every word . . . terrifically funny." P.G. Wodehouse "Jack does more than play it for laughs . . . The mingling of humor and horror is like a clown tap-dancing on a coffin, but Jack is skillful enough to get away with it." Time Magazine "Funny. Very. Donald Jack has as light a touch with this fragile art as his hero has on throttle of a Sopwith Camel. Excessive corn is avoided in favour of wit and a delight in life." New York Times "Bartholomew Bandy is the most remarkable hero (or anti-hero) since Harold Lloyd impersonated the Freshman." Chicago Tribune "To know Bandy is to love him . . . you tend to gallop through and come hurtling out at the end panting for more." The Sunday Sun "For those to whom Bandy is a newcomer, what a treat is in store." Toronto Star

Strangely horse-faced World War I flying ace Bart Bandy finds himself kicked upstairs - to everyone's appalled surprise - and made a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Flying Corps. But not for long. Persuaded to give a school speech on the many shortcomings of Field Marshal Haig, Bart finds Fortune's Wheel definitely on the turn and soon he is once more heading for the hell of the trenches - this time on a bicycle. With the daredevil commander of the 13th Bicycle Brigade, Bob Craig, there follow a series of edge-of-the-seat adventures, always accompanied by what Craig later refers to fondly as "brilliant exchanges of utter nonsense". Donald Jack's blackly humorous Bandy memoirs are classics of their kind. Against an unshrinkingly depicted backdrop of war and its horrors, his anti-hero's adventures are both gripping and shockingly funny. What people are saying about The Bandy Papers: "Reading can lead to involuntary bursts of loud laughter." "Very descriptive, full of air combats and written with a fine eye for period detail . . . there is quite simply no finer book of its kind. Highly recommended." "It is clear that Bandy likely should've been killed several times, but very likely the Grim Reaper was laughing too hard to hold his scythe straight . . ." "Hysterically funny! . . . each book is another installment in the continuing saga of a Canadian and his adventures in war, the world, and women." "I have yet to find another author with the wit and humor of Donald Jack." Editorial reviews: "I enjoyed every word . . . terrifically funny." P.G. Wodehouse "Jack does more than play it for laughs . . . The mingling of humor and horror is like a clown tap-dancing on a coffin, but Jack is skillful enough to get away with it." Time Magazine "Funny. Very. Donald Jack has as light a touch with this fragile art as his hero has on throttle of a Sopwith Camel. Excessive corn is avoided in favour of wit and a delight in life." New York Times "Bartholomew Bandy is the most remarkable hero (or anti-hero) since Harold Lloyd impersonated the Freshman." Chicago Tribune "To know Bandy is to love him . . . you tend to gallop through and come hurtling out at the end panting for more." The Sunday Sun "For those to whom Bandy is a newcomer, what a treat is in store." Toronto Star

"I enjoyed every word . . . terrifically funny." P.G. Wodehouse With his disturbingly horse-like face and a pious distaste for strong drink and bad language, young Bartholomew Bandy doesn't seem cut out for life in the armed services, as we meet him at the start of the First World War. Yet he not only survives the dangers and squalor of the infantry trenches, he positively thrives in the Royal Flying Corps, revealing a surprising aptitude for splitarsing Sopwith Camels and shooting down the Hun. He even manages to get the girl. Through it all he never loses his greatest ability - to open his mouth and put his foot in it. Donald Jack's blackly humorous Bandy memoirs are classics of their kind. Against an unshrinkingly depicted backdrop of war and its horrors, his anti-hero's adventures are both gripping and shockingly funny. What people are saying about The Bandy Papers: "Reading can lead to involuntary bursts of loud laughter." "Very descriptive, full of air combats and written with a fine eye for period detail . . . there is quite simply no finer book of its kind. Highly recommended." "It is clear that Bandy likely should've been killed several times, but very likely the Grim Reaper was laughing too hard to hold his scythe straight . . ." "Hysterically funny! . . . each book is another installment in the continuing saga of a Canadian and his adventures in war, the world, and women." "I have yet to find another author with the wit and humor of Donald Jack." Editorial reviews: "Jack does more than play it for laughs . . . The mingling of humor and horror is like a clown tap-dancing on a coffin, but Jack is skillful enough to get away with it." Time Magazine "Funny. Very. Donald Jack has as light a touch with this fragile art as his hero has on throttle of a Sopwith Camel. Excessive corn is avoided in favour of wit and a delight in life." New York Times "Bartholomew Bandy is the most remarkable hero (or anti-hero) since Harold Lloyd impersonated the Freshman." Chicago Tribune "To know Bandy is to love him . . . you tend to gallop through and come hurtling out at the end panting for more." The Sunday Sun "For those to whom Bandy is a newcomer, what a treat is in store." Toronto Star

Back home in Gallop to set up an aircraft company, Bandy finds himself having to get involved in all sorts of unsavoury business, from rum-running to running for Parliament, before he finally finds himself running from the law...

The Great War may be finished, but Bartholomew Bandy isn't. After not quite succeeding in defeating communism in Russia, he's returning to the New World when he meets shy, awkward Cissie Chaffington, whose first glimmerings of interest in aviation appear when she sends a cooked duck soaring through the ship's first-class dining room. More than just terminal embarrassment stands in the way of their happiness, however. Her father, for example, takes a violent dislike to Bandy - even before Bandy blows up Cyril Chaffington's hotel. And then who should turn up but the diminutive Dasha, the former Bolshevik (sort of) nurse whom Bandy married (sort of) in Russia, where she betrayed him (more or less) to the mercy (or lack thereof) of the Red Cavalry. Between sorting all of this out, carrying airmail, and trying to start his own aviation business while dodging flappers and bootleggers, Bandy hardly has time to be a silent movie star... This edition includes Banner's Headline, a radio play by Donald Jack published here for the first time. In it we discover what happens when Arthur Banner, a rocket scientist, gets passed over for promotion one too many times, and decides to resign to work on a project of his own.

In print for the first time, Donald Jack's comedy The Canvas Barricade was the first modern play performed on the main stage of the Stratford Festival (1961). The original cast included Peter Donat, Kate Reid, Jack Creley, Amelia Hall, Zoe Caldwell, and Bruno Gerussi. Misty Woodenbridge, a painter, has rejected the materialism of modern society for life in a tent by the Ottawa River, where he lives as carefree as the fabled grasshopper, eating stolen apples and painting masterpieces. But as summer draws to an end, reality rears its ugly head, and Misty must choose between starving in his tent and moving to the city with his fiance. Meanwhile, his in-laws-to-be smell a cash cow when a mysterious art buyer begins snapping up Misty's work - and naturally they keep the money. Out of kind consideration for Misty's artistic ideals, of course.

It's 1924 and our hero has made the USA too hot for him, thanks to his part in the Great Booze Robbery and his havoc-creating spell as an MP. Exile is urgently advisable.
In his only asset, a giant seaplane, Bandy sets off for Europe. His arrival in England makes a great splash - literally - as he lands in the Channel to rescue a downed pilot. But his fortunes are restored when the rescued pilot proves to be the son of the Maharajah of Jhamjarh, an Indian potentate and The Second Richest Man in the World. How Bandy creates an air force for the Indian state and becomes involved in working with Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald against the Chief of Air Staff is the stuff of Bandy's stranger-than-fiction memoirs.
Full of a sense of England in the 1920s, this is a worthy addition to the library of Bandyana. And he Gets the Girl!

It's 1925, and Bandy has finally found a secure post-war job: commander of the Maharajah of Jhamjarh's new air force. The only problem is, the British Raj is not so happy with him for setting up a rival air power inside British India. Between the impractical Maharajah, the British viceroy, and the Great Game being played by the neighbouring state of Khaliwar, Bandy has his hands full trying to keep his employer -- and himself -- out of deadly danger.

"On the way back to the Front I ran over a general." With this opening line you know that Bartholomew Bandy is back, with a vengeance. It may be 1918 and the war may be grinding on, but Bandy will make a difference. Now he's in charge of his own squadron of Sopwith Dolphins, but although the hated Hun is pressing fiercely, Bandy's prime enemy, as usual, is his own Top Brass.
Unable to cope with him, the military commanders post him to Russia, where the Western powers are intervening in the Civil War. Bandy has an exciting spell with the Allied forces in Russia, fighting Bolsheviks, capturing trains, meeting Trotsky, facing Communist firing squads, and, most terrifying of all, being a love slave to the diminutive Dasha Fillipovna.

Bandy is back It's 1940, and the intrepid air ace of WWI is eager to join the fight against Germany. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think Bandy is too old to be flying Spitfires, and should go quietly into retirement to polish his medals and knighthoods. Bandy, however, has other ideas, and uses his friends and/or enemies in high places to manoeuvre himself into the Battle of Britain. Between being mistaken for a Nazi spy, a communist, or a Chelsea pensioner, Bandy has as much trouble on the ground as he has in the air with the Luftwaffe, and when his son arrives on the scene, his troubles only get worse. This edition also includes Donald Jack's novelette "Where Did Rafe Madison Go?" Jack wrote the story just as the fate of the Avro Arrow jet fighter was still up in the air (the first test flight taking place in March '58, and the programme's termination coming only four months after the story was published). In "Where Did Rafe Madison Go?" Jack imagines a future delta-winged descendant of the Arrow, the CF-108, and takes us through the RCAF court martial that is trying to uncover the explanation for the plane's mysterious disappearance, an incident that even the pilot, Rafe Madison, doesn't understand.

At long last -- the ninth and final volume of the Bandy Papers, Stalin Versus Me, in which quintessential Canadian hero Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy has one final fling with death, despair, and destruction, in the final year of the Second World War. In the aftermath of the Normandy invasion, Bandy continues to bob through the ranks like a cork at sea, persecuted by one of his pilots and pursued by Gwinny, who just can't understand why her attempt to have him convicted of treason has soured their relationship. Love rears its (elegant, Belgian) head again, the King needs a man of tact and discretion for a delicate post-war job in Germany, and there's an embarrassing parcel of ladies undies to explain, not to mention just why a half-clothed Bandy (unfortunately, not the right half) is in bed with George Garanine, that lazy, loveable, failed Bandy-assassin. From Normandy to Brussels to Yalta to Moscow, Bandy's career path is as labyrinthine as ever, strewn with bottles, battles, and brasshat blood-pressure. Of most crucial concern to our hero, as 1944 draws to a close and 1945 sees the last grim push of the war beginning -- boozing pal Philby of the SIS couldn't possibly have any reason to get Bandy sent to the Yalta Conference except as a translator, right? And Stalin can't really be out to get Bandy, just because he happens to know that a certain Soviet leader was once a Tsarist agent provocateur. After all, we all know Uncle Joe isn't the type to hold a grudge. Will Bandy survive? Will he get the, er, mature, middle-aged lady (unaccountably still in love with her lazy, loveable, long-lost husband?) Will a plane be purloined? Will his last few hairs hold out?

Peace has broken out and World War I flying ace and all-round chancer Bartholomew Bandy isn't exactly making a success of being a commercial pilot in the USA. But when a job lot of aircraft bits purchased with the last of his pay turns out to be a complete Vickers Vimy bomber, he feels his luck has changed. With the help of his very tall, very sweet girlfriend Cissie, and the hindrance of his very short, very bad and beautiful girlfriend Dasha, Bart smashes (literally) straight into the exciting new world of the movies. Not an ideal career for someone whose face, as he says himself, resembles that of a Tibetan yak, but then absolutely nothing about Bart is ideal. With the blackest of black comedy and seat-of-the pants escapades, Donald Jack's series about a young pilot is uniquely funny and compelling. What people are saying about The Bandy Papers: "Reading can lead to involuntary bursts of loud laughter." "Very descriptive, full of air combats and written with a fine eye for period detail . . . there is quite simply no finer book of its kind. Highly recommended." "It is clear that Bandy likely should've been killed several times, but very likely the Grim Reaper was laughing too hard to hold his scythe straight . . ." "Hysterically funny! . . . each book is another installment in the continuing saga of a Canadian and his adventures in war, the world, and women." "I have yet to find another author with the wit and humor of Donald Jack." Editorial reviews: "I enjoyed every word . . . terrifically funny." P.G. Wodehouse "Jack does more than play it for laughs . . . The mingling of humor and horror is like a clown tap-dancing on a coffin, but Jack is skillful enough to get away with it." Time Magazine "Funny. Very. Donald Jack has as light a touch with this fragile art as his hero has on throttle of a Sopwith Camel. Excessive corn is avoided in favour of wit and a delight in life." New York Times "Bartholomew Bandy is the most remarkable hero (or anti-hero) since Harold Lloyd impersonated the Freshman." Chicago Tribune "To know Bandy is to love him . . . you tend to gallop through and come hurtling out at the end panting for more." The Sunday Sun "For those to whom Bandy is a newcomer, what a treat is in store." Toronto Star