Bradshaw’s Guide to the BookWorld by Commander Trafford Bradshaw
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| Thanks to Wikipedia |
Author: Commander Trafford Bradshaw CBE
Publisher: Not known
Source book: The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Commander Bradshaw is a fictional character; he’s a trusted Jurisfiction agent and started life in a boys’ own adventure series. There is Bradshaw of the Congo; Bradshaw Hunts Big Game (Collins, 1878, 4/6d, illustrated); and Bradshaw Defies the Kaiser. Commander Bradshaw has been married to a mountain gorilla called Melanie for over fifty years.
When Bradshaw takes Thursday Next home for tea she notes his house has a veranda facing the setting sun. The land surrounding his house is wild with scrub and whistling thorns, with herds of wildebeest and zebra wandering across the landscape. Thursday advises them that anyone who can’t accept that the woman you love it a gorilla isn’t worth counting as a friend. And anyway, Melanie sounds lovely. She bakes lemon drizzle cake.
When Trafford and Melanie Bradshaw attend the 923rd Annual BookWorld Awards, Melanie wears a Chanel cocktail dress. You can’t go wrong with a little black dress.
The Bradshaws celebrate their golden wedding anniversary on page 221 of Bradshaw and the Diamond of M’shala (Something Rotten).
Anyway, despite being fictional he managed to write his Guide to the BookWorld.
‘Imagino Transference Recording Device: A machine used to write books in the Well, the ITRD resembles a large horn (typically eight feet across and made of brass) attached to a polished mahogany mixing board a little like a church organ but with many more stops and levers. As the story is enacted in front of the collecting horn, the actions, dialogue, humour, pathos, etc, are collected, mixed and transmitted as raw data to Text Grand Central where the wordsmiths hammer it into readable story code. Once done it is beamed direct to the author’s pen or typewriter, and from there through a live footnoterphone link back to the Well as plain text. The page is read and if all is well, it is added to the manuscript and the characters move on. The beauty of the system is that the author never suspects a thing - they think they do all the work.’
According to Miss Haversham, Bradshaw has a terrible sense of direction. Hence his habit of carrying maps wherever he goes.
In First Among Sequels we find Two Years among the Umpopo; Tilarpia, the Devil Fish of Lake Rudolph; and The Man-eaters of Nakuru. There are 23 Commander Bradshaw books altogether but, given the jingoistic and imperialist nature of the plots, the works he appears in are rarely, if ever, read these days.
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| Thanks to the 12th Royal Lancers Pistol Team with the Duke of Connaught’s Cup Cairo 1930s and Sonny Brook on Flickr |
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