Captain George Mainwaring (pronounced 'Mannering') is a fictional bank manager and Home Guard platoon commander portrayed by Arthur Lowe on the BBC television sitcom Dad's Army, set in the fictional seaside town of Walmington-On-Sea during World War Two. He has become widely accepted and regarded as a classic British comic character owing to both the popularity of Dad's Army throughout the years and Lowe's portrayal of him in this show. A Home Guard is a part-time civilian reserve military force similar to a militia. ... Arthur Lowe (September 22, 1915—April 15, 1982) was a British actor. ... Corporate logo of the British Broadcasting Corporation. ... A sitcom or situation comedy is a genre of comedy performance originally devised for radio but today typically found on television. ... Dad’s Army was a British sitcom about the Home Guard in World War II, written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast on BBC television between 1968 and 1977. ... The Three Graces, here in a painting by Sandro Botticelli, were the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility in Greek mythology. ... Seaside, the marine shoreline of a Sea, may refer to one of several communities, including: Seaside, Oregon Seaside, California Seaside, Florida This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... German soldiers at the Battle of Stalingrad World War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the worlds nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. ...

Personality

Mainwaring is a pompous, blustering figure filled with a somewhat overdeveloped sense of his own importance, fuelled by both his social status in Walmington-on-Sea as the local bank manager, and his status as the Captain and commander of the local Home Guard volunteer unit. He is extremely class conscious and something of a snob, considering himself to be upper-middle class and thus displaying something of a tendency to look down on anyone whom he considers to be beneath him (this may be attributed to his working class background and the intense struggle he faced to lift himself beyond this). Unfortunately for him, his pomposity and snobbery tend to work against him, as he is frequently dependent on those whom he considers beneath him, and his arrogant attitude is frequently punctured by circumstance and the people around him. He is also somewhat prudish and repressed, and can be extremely judgemental about people whom he believes do not share his moral outlook. Class ASCII art NFO header by a!b. ... A snob, guilty of snobbery or snobbism, is a person who imitates the manners, adopts the world-view and affects the lifestyle of a social class of people to which that person does not by right belong. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Middle Class. ... Modesty describes a set of culturally determined values that relate to the presentation of the self to others. ...

As a bank manager, he is shown to be highly efficient (if somewhat ruthless and stingy); as a military commander, however, he is frequently shown to be barely competent at the best of times, as his plans and strategy frequently result in chaos. Despite this, however, he considers himself to be an excellent military tactician and, given his height and background, is frequently demonstrated to possess a Napolean Complex. He is fiercely patriotic, and this can lead to xenophobia on his part (he is not too keen on the French, the Russians, the Americans and, of course, the Germans). Patriotism is a feeling of love and devotion to ones own homeland (patria, the land of ones fathers). ... Xenophobia denotes a phobic attitude toward strangers or of the unknown and comes from the Greek words ξένος (xenos), meaning foreigner, stranger, and φόβος (phobos), meaning fear. ...

However, for all this, Mainwaring is not an entirely unlikeable or unsympathetic character; it is frequently implied that he is trapped in a loveless and unhappy marriage to Elizabeth, his never-seen wife. And whilst his competence in military matters can be (and frequently is) called into question, his sheer bravery and courage cannot be denied; he is frequently willing to put himself in harms way for the sake of his country and his platoon, and has frequently demonstrated that he is willing to take the same risks that he will order his men to undertake.