John Mainwaring John Mainwaring John Mainwaring (1724–1807) was an English theologian and the first biographer of the composer Georg Friedrich Händel in any language. He was a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and became rector of the parish of Church Stretton, Shropshire, and, later professor of Divinity at Cambridge. In 1760, one year after Handel was buried in Westminster Abbey he published anonymously a biography 'Memoirs of the Life of the Late George Frederic Handel'. More than half of this biography is focused on the years before 1712, when Handel moved to London. Therefore, it is supposed he received information from
Captain Mainwaring set in 1968, Mainwaring, who was born in 1885, would have been 82 years old then and 60 at the end of the Second World War. In a radio sequel to "Dad's Army", "It Sticks Out Half a Mile", which is set in 1948 (three years after the Second World War ended), it is revealed that Mainwaring spent two years manufacturing cuckoo clocks in Switzerland. However, the first episode of "Dad's Army" shines light on Mainwaring's future: briefly set in the then present-day 1968, it features Mainwaring as guest of honour at the launch of Walmington's "I'm Backing Britain" campaign,