Uncle and Claudius the Camel

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Summary

Uncle does not often go on holiday as very few hotels provide beds big enough for elephants. At Sunset Beach he hopes for a real rest and change, but almost at once fifty camels, led by the courteous Claudius, arrive with news of trouble at his great castle of Homeward.

From this moment his attempts to have a holiday are interrupted by one unexpected happening after another. Uncle and his faithful followers rescue holiday-makers from the sinister Wheel House, use paraballoons at the Fun Fair, and face a fearful monster at Water-Step Hill. There’s the noisy braying affair of Idleass and Hot Donk; Fishy William at Comfort Cove; breakfast with the miraculous Singing Flower; high tea with the Glenmore Giraffes. A succession of fantastic adventures lead to the awesome moment when Uncle is chained and helpless at the mercy of the Badfort Crowd in Beaver Hateman’s Chamber of Horrors. Can Uncle possibly escape this time?

Reviews

A riot of nonsense and adventure, may well become a classic in the great English nonsense tradition
Observer

About the author

J. P. Martin

J.P.Martin was born in Scarborough in 1879. He became a Methodist minister in 1902 and served as a missionary in South Africa and as an army chaplain in Palestine in 1918 at the time when Allenby and T.E. Lawrence overwhelmed the Turks. J.P.Martin and his wife Nancy moved circuits every three years and worked among miners and slum dwellers, as well as among the comfortably off.

He started telling the Uncle stories before the First World War and in 1934 the writers Stella Martin and R.N Currey urged him to write them down; it took thirty years before they got them accepted by Jonathan Cape in the satire rich sixties. Reviewers welcomed each of the six books as they were published between 1964 and 1973 with comparisons to Edward Lear and Alice. The Observer described him as 'a master in the great English nonsense tradition.'

J.P.Martin was 84 when Uncle was published and he charmed everyone on radio and television. He was able to enjoy his late success before he died two years later in 1966.

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