Lady Penelope's Secret Files - Lady Penelope, 1966

Lady Penelope's Secret Files: TV Century 21, 1967

Hello, this is Lady Penelope speaking to you from one of the vaults beneath my mansion. In this strong room, shelf upon shelf is filled with my private files...dossiers on all the cases in which I have been involved.

During its first nine months, text stories appeared in the pages of Lady Penelope. They covered two pages of each issue, accompanied by monochrome illustrations, and, with the exception of three single-issue titles, they were multipart stories. In them, children would, through accident, become involved in strange or sinister happenings, which would bring them to the attention of Lady Penelope. And that provided the method of fitting them in with the overall format of the comic, for the stories were presented as Secret Files from the vaults beneath Lady Penelope's Mansion.

There was no set tone. Some were thrillers in which the protagonists would become entangled in the schemes of thieves or foreign agents. Of this type the first story, Flinch From Every Shadow (right) is unrelentingly dark, with the heroine in danger of being murdered at any moment. But there were lighter stories too. What Did That Dog Say? stands out as a superb comedy story with some wonderful dialogue. In one scene, the heroine, Cathy Thomson, is trying to prove to her mother that she can understand the language of dogs. She asks one of the dogs, Fritz, to think of something unusual to do. She can then tell her mother what it is, and when Fritz does it, that will prove her claim. Fritz agrees, and says, 'Let me see. Yes, I shall go back to the orchard, and bring you a rotten apple. They're great fun, by the way.' Cathy's reply is hilarious: 'Perfect. But I shan't keep it, or treasure it, or anything like that.'

Unsurprisingly, this story caught the imagination of readers, and some wrote in to Lady Penelope saying how much they had enjoyed it. How could it miss, with its combination of humour and theme? After all, who wouldn't want to be able to talk to dogs! Such was the interest, Cathy Thomson would eventually get her own weekly comic strip in which she continued to talk to dogs, later extending the ability to include cats.

So, clearly the stories were read and enjoyed. But how many of us didn't bother at the time? As a child, I read comics for the strips, but the text stories never looked interesting enough. It's only now, many years later, that I can see what I missed. There are some excellent and well thought out ideas here, with good writing. There's even one story with a surprise ending involving... but no, I won't say here because that would spoil things.

Lady Penelope's Secret Files guide

File 7624
Flinch From Every Shadow
Writer: Unknown. Artist: John Canning, 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.1 (January 22nd 1966) to issue No.7 (March 5th 1966).

Sandy Barton witnesses a diamond robbery in which a man is killed. The thieves capture Sandy and leave England in a small aircraft, but the plane crashes in the Pyrenees mountains. Sandy escapes with the diamonds, aided by a student farmer, Gerard Ledru. The leader of the thieves, Numeral 1, pursues, determined to kill her. He has tricked the police into helping track her down, and all looks lost until Sandy knocks on the door of Lady Penelope's home in Spain...

File 8228
What Did That Dog Say?
Writer: Angus Allan. Artist: John Canning, 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.8 (March 12th 1966) to issue No.13 (April 16th 1966).
Lady Penelope Dossiers Looking through her great grandfather's sea chest in the attic, Cathy Thomson finds a ring which gives her the ability to understand the language of dogs. Meanwhile, a foreign agent named Richter has escaped from Moorhurst Maximum Security Jail. The guard who tracking him is found injured and unconscious, and only his Alsatian knows what happened, so Lady Penelope asks Cathy to persuade the dog to track down the spy..
Notes:
• At the end of the story, Cathy looses the ring while rescuing Richter from falling over a waterfall, and can no longer understand what dogs say.
• If you've thought until now that text stories in comics are space-fillers, think again. This is a cleverly written and very funny story. The dialogue between Cathy and the dogs is hilarious, and the ending is poignant. Not to be missed.
• We are shown Lady Penelope's mischievous side. Asked to perform the opening ceremony of the Templeton Dog Show, Penelope intends to borrow a mongrel dog and dress it up so that it looks better than 'any one of their Poodles, Borzois or Pekes!'
• So far, this is the only story where the author has been identified: it was written by Angus Allan.
• Readers wrote in to Lady Penelope saying how much they liked this story. This interest led to Cathy Thomson returning in her own weekly comic strip.

File 9473/GO
Don't Look Now, But...
Writer: Unknown. Artist(s): Unknown, 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.14 (April 23rd 1966) to issue No.17 (May 14th 1966).
Lady Penelope Dossiers Ginny Morris and her two cousins, Derek and Sue, are on a hiking holiday on the Yorkshire Moors. Lost, they come across an old house, unaware that it is being used a secret base by two foreign agents. The agents try to frighten the children away by pretending to be ghosts, but the three do not scare so easily and are keener than ever to explore the house. This leads to them helping Lady Penelope halt a leak of information from the nearby Moorland Rocket Research Station.
Notes:
• The style of the illustration for part 1 is markedly different from parts 2 and 3, but both remain unidentified.

File 92946
Stop Press
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Chris Higham (?), 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.18 (May 21st 1966) to issue No.22 (June 18th 1966).
Patsy and Wilf Taylor run their own newspaper, The Brandon Estate Chronicle. While hunting for news, they discover that market gardener, Harbin, and his friend Professor Krebner have developed a virus which makes plants grow to gigantic size in seconds. They plan to cultivate giant Venus Fly Trap plants from insect eaters to man-eaters. However, Lady Penelope points out the weak spot in this sinister plan: weed killer!
Notes:
• Very good. Builds up to the dastardly plan and there seems to be nothing to stop it. And then Lady Penelope nonchalantly mentions the big flaw. Wonderful!

File 29491
Nobody Stopped The Train
Writer: Unknown. Artist: John Canning, 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.23 (June 25th 1966).
Lady Penelope Dossiers Susie Miller is travelling by train to Ilmingham. Although she doesn't know it, the other passenger in the compartment is Parker, Lady Penelope's butler and chauffeur. To her surprise, Susie finds herself getting off the train at Lower Kersham, quite against her will. Her ticket is punched, and the train leaves. Then a guard calls to her: there has been a terrible train crash. Susie uses her first aid skills to help the injured. Later, an old porter leads her back to the platform and onto a waiting train, where she falls asleep. When she wakes, it's to find herself in the train with Parker. Susie asks him if he had got off at Kersham too, but Parker tells her the train never stopped there. There had been a railway accident at Kersham twenty years ago, and a mysterious girl had helped people and then vanished. She must have read about it somewhere and then dreamt it. However, when the train does reach Ilmingham, the ticket collector is bewildered to find that Susie's ticket has been punched with the mark of Lower Kersham.
Notes:
• The title may have a double meaning, referring both to Susie's train not stopping at Lower Kersham, and to the accident which happened there twenty years previously.

File 83021
Private and Confidential
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Chris Higham (?), 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.24 (July 2nd 1966).
Sandra Lacey writes a number of letters to Lady penelope Creighton-Ward in which she explains her reasons for thinking that Mr Baker, the science master at her school, is a spy. But Sandra has got it all the wrong way around: Mr Baker is working for Lady Penelope, helping her to track a security leak!
Notes:
• The story is told in four letters written by Sandra to Lady Penelope.
• The question is, why did Sandra think Lady Penelope would have anything to do with foiling spies?

File 1
The Start of a Scrapbook...
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Chris Higham (?), 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.25 (July 9th 1966).
Lady Penelope Dossiers I am sure you will enjoy reading this week's story, taken from my top secret files. I have called this incident 'The Start of a Scrapbook' for a very special reason. I leave you to find out why...
Commander E. T. K. Barrington, chief of Scotland Yard's Fraud Squad, refuses to take his young niece on a raid, despite her desperate pleas. He also refuses to stop calling her 'Nell' in affection, even though the girl doesn't want to be called by that name. However, when Commander Barrington sets out to arrest Plater Mulvaney and his bunch of international forgers, Nell hides in the back of the Black Maria. It's just as well she did, for the raid goes badly wrong and is about to be shot by Mulvaney, until Nell uses a pitchfork to pin the crook against a cellar wall, saving the day. Years later, Lady Penelope is reading about this in a file marked with the number '1', and thinks she really should look her uncle up one of these days... even if he does still call her 'Nell'!
Notes:
• This is the only story not to be given a file number in its introduction, cleverly disguising the subject of the dossier. The reviewer for this page admits to not catching on until the end.
• Nell's uncle tells her to stay at home and watch 'Agent Zero Nine' on television.

Lady Penelope Dossiers File 99212
The Wrong Beach
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Unknown, 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.26 (July 16th 1966) to issue No.31 (August 20th 1966).
Linda Tyrell is on a sailing holiday with her parents in their yacht, Flamingo. She makes friends with a local boy, Tim Perkins. While her parents are on shore, Linda is cast adrift in the yacht with Tim. They land on the Normandy coastline, and find a gang of international crooks who are smuggling stolen art treasures to Russia!

File Number 77737
Hi Folks... Meet Mavis!
Writer: Unknown. Artist: Chris Higham (?), 2 pages b/w.
Lady Penelope issue No.32 (August 27th 1966) to issue No.35 (September 17th 1966)..
Carol Campbell and her parents get a letter telling them that Uncle Jeremiah is returning from Africa with Mavis. They think Mavis is his daughter, but she is actually a chimpanzee! Mavis causes havoc, including driving FAB One to follow Carol to school, and is likely to end up in a zoo... until she helps an engineer realise a dam is in danger of collapsing!