The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm

Wacky inventor problems. Your good natured crazy inventor guy and kids collection here, quite entertaining. From automated cricket bowling machines to schemes to prevent library fines when you have misplaced the same book from a dozen different libraries. A fair bit of fun to be had in your 'jolly good, wot' style of English humour.

Professor Branestawm is the archetypal eccentric English professor. The stories are about his amazing inventions which always go wrong and lead to amusing results. For example, he once invented a pancake-making machine which goes berserk at its inauguration: " 'Whizz pop whizz pop pop pop poppety pop pop,' faster and ever so much faster flew the pancakes. Thicker and thicker. Bigger and bigger. They came out flatways and edgeways. They shot high in the air and stuck to the ceiling. One sailed across the room and hit the Vicar in the waistcoat, where it may or may not have reminded him of the ironholders for the South Crashbania natives. Pop poppety, pop pop pop. It was like a machine gun but much more sploshy. The Professor struggled out of his pancake just in time for another one to drop over him. Two pancakes were on the clock, four were draped over the light. The Mayor was eating his way through a complete set of pancakes of varying sizes that had fallen in front of him. The four firemen put their helmets on and brandished their axes, but only succeeded in smashing two cups, one saucer and the sugar basin. Mrs Flittersnoop put her head gingerly out from under the table and was immediately gummed to the carpet by a three-foot pancake two inches thick that had just shot out." This book is a compendium of 14 such short stories. The language may in places be a little dated, but its originality makes it a classic. My father read it to me and I hope my children share it with theirs. If you can obtain a copy with the original Heath Robinson illustrations, all the better.