'In keeping with the post-Maastricht spirit, Red Fox have resurrected from the cultural memory bank a figure who will show the foreigners just what we Britishers are capable of when we're pushed too far: yes, along with phonics, skinheads and compulsory formal grammar, Biggles is back!'

Thus began my first attempt at a review of these books before I decided that I'd better collect some children's impressions of them before foaming at the pen. Johns declared that he intended to 'give boys what they want to read rather than what their elders and betters think they should read' and my assessors, consisting of Year 6 and 7 boys and girls, seemed to agree. Only one boy refused to go beyond the front cover; the others, sometimes nudged by parents eager to read the books themselves, raced through these tales and enjoyed them. The adventures span two world wars with a couple of international escapades between them, and the pattern of battle, capture, escape and just revenge is constant across them all.

'You know he's going to win in the end because he's so good,' said one girl, 'but the books keep you guessing about how he's going to do it.' Johns' ability to maintain this narrative tension, despite his improbable plots and rusty language, was impressive enough to carry me through the six titles, but the 'goodness' of Biggles and his pals is more problematic.

The author's camouflaged intention was to 'teach the boy to become a man' in keeping with 'the traditions of British sportsmanship'. (Only Biggles and Co. features a significant female character.) Accordingly, our heroes go out of their way to avoid unnecessary violence, never using a weapon when a right hook will suffice, and Biggles frequently alludes to the horrors or war (quite convincingly in Biggles Learns to Fly). However, Captain Johns strives to loop the moral loop of reconciling these sentiments with a celebration of the exhilaration of combat, and in spite of Red Fox's 'sensitive editing', the books are riddled with an unreflected chauvinism that many readers may consider pernicious. In Biggles in Spain, Johns is politically correct enough to have Ginger shooting down fascists for the International Brigade, but his Spanish comrades are castigated for their idleness and garlicky breath. In Biggles in the Orient, Biggles departs from minimum force by executing two Japanese 'scum' who mock the corpse of a British pilot. Germans are referred to as Huns throughout, though an author's note explains that this should not be regarded as a derogatory term.

I found that the children, when prompted, were able to relate expressions of hatred to their historical context. 'He was writing about the war when people did do horrible things to each other,' one boy said. 'Perhaps he should have written that things are different now,' another added, displaying a naivety that demonstrates the need to approach these text cautiously. Ellis and Williams, the biographers from whom I have taken my quotations [By Jove, Biggles! Ellis and Williams, W H Allen, 1981], state that 'it is fatal to approach Johns without a sense of humour' and indeed, Biggles' remark at the end of a death-defying adventure, that 'it's because any Britisher would do what we've just done that the old Empire keeps on going,' was greeted with some healthy laughter. Personally, I think the humour should be complemented with hard-edged questioning. I wouldn't spend precious book-fund money on the series unless the intention is to develop critical literacy by exploring the prejudices underlying Johns' work, and comparing his account of warfare with others written from a less sexist and jingoistic stance. I wonder if it's possible to do this without detracting from the readers' enjoyment or belittling the heroism of the models on whom Biggles is based?

The books are bound to be popular, and with a total of 96 titles in the canon, they might well become as ubiquitous as Blyton or Dahl. Have your responses ready.