They are part of a British tradition of children's books set at boarding schools (school stories), which includes the Billy Bunter stories, the Jennings novels and most recently the Harry Potter books. Unlike these others, however, the Molesworth books do not consist of linear storylines but rather feature Molesworth's wisdom on a variety of topics as well as his fanciful daydreams. The topics covered extend from boarding-school life to reflections on the culture of 1950s Britain. Television (then still relatively novel to British households), the start of space travel and the atomic age, the Davy Crockett craze and "How to be a young Elizabethan" all feature, as well as more timeless topics such as Christmas, the French, journalism (with N. Molesworth, Ace Reporter) and Gurls.