I say, old chap...

Like, I suspect, many a male of my generation, I was brought up on the Biggles books of Captain W E Johns.  And damned good they were too.  But what I've only now found out is that what Captain Johns actually wrote was heavily "sanitised" by his publisher - perhaps with a view to being suitable for a juvenile audience.  So "My God!" (which back then would have scandalised polite society) became "My Gosh!", and Biggles drank lemonade rather than the whisky which was in the original Johns stories.  Johns himself was a WWI pilot in the RFC (which later became the RAF) and therefore knew exactly what he was writing about.  It would be really interesting to be able to read the uncensored versions of the stories. The only puzzle is where the "Captain" came from - there was no such rank in the RFC or RAF - see also my post of 9th July 2009.