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 Warden because he is a greengrocer. Mainwaring is generally ill at ease in social situations that require him to communicate with people on an equal social level and this is probably the main reason for his lack of promotion. Mainwaring is prudish and repressed and can be judgmental about people who do not share his moral outlook. Contrastingly Wilson is portrayed as flirtatious with women and has slightly more bohemian ideas about sexual morality (as he is in a secret relationship with Private Pike's mother.) We discover in "When You've Got to Go" that Mrs Mainwaring was the daughter of