Captain George Mainwaring () is a fictional Home Guard captain, first portrayed by Arthur Lowe in the BBC television sitcom Dad's Army. In the 2016 movie he is played by Toby Jones and in the 2019 remake of three missing episodes he is played by Kevin McNally. Mainwaring is the bank manager and Home Guard platoon commander, in the fictional seaside town of Walmington-on-Sea during the Second World War.
He is considered a classic British comic character owing to the continuing currency of Dad's Army via regular repeats and Lowe's portrayal. Many of his quotes, such as, "You stupid boy!", are engrained in British popular culture. In a 2001 Channel 4 poll Captain Mainwaring was ranked 21st on their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.
Personality
Mainwaring was born in 1885 to Edmund Mainwaring and is a pompous, blustering figure with an overdeveloped sense of his importance, fuelled by his social status in Walmington-on-Sea as the bank manager and his status as captain and commander of the local Home Guard volunteer unit. He became commander of his home guard unit by saying that he had served as a captain in the last British conflict, despite serving 'somewhere in the Orkneys' during the Great War and only being deployed to France in 1919, the year after the armistice was signed. He was later officially designated as the captain by the GHQ, in the episode "Room at the Bottom", after his brief reduction in rank. Despite his claim to be the son of a master tailor, it is revealed that his father was a poor draper and a heavy drinker, as is his profligate brother, Barry, who is a travelling salesman specialising in novelty toys. He has many redeeming qualities: he is essentially brave, loyal and industrious, generally kind-hearted beneath the bluster and unfailingly patriotic.
Mainwaring believes in following rules and orders, sometimes to a ludicrous degree and is class-conscious and a snob. Being educated at the local Grammar School – as a scholarship student – he considers himself middle class and looks down on anyone he considers beneath him, which may be because he struggled to rise above his working class background. He claims to be the son of a successful tailor in Eastbourne, but Lance Corporal Jones reveals that Mainwaring's father was actually a poor draper who sold badly-made workmen's trousers and Barry Mainwaring confirms this. "If I had a title I'd be on the board of directors at the bank!" he shouts at Sergeant Wilson when the latter gains a title in the episode "The Honourable Man". Despite his arrogance being encouraged by his status as the bank manager (having started as a clerk and working his way up to assistant chief clerk, chief clerk and eventually manager), Mainwaring reveals in the same episode that he considers it a mere "tinpot branch" and his career is at a seemingly permanent standstill, as revealed in "A. Wilson (Manager)?": whenever he applies for promotions he is always turned down due to his unimpressive background. Mainwaring's pomposity and snobbery work against him, as he is frequently dependent on those in the Home Guard that he considers beneath him, such as Sergeant Wilson, his chief clerk at the bank with whom he shares an antagonistic friendship and Private Walker, a black-marketeer who interrupts during Mainwaring's lectures with a quip or a sly revelation that Mainwaring is benefiting from underhand deals. Mainwaring is particularly jealous of Wilson, who is more relaxed and charming and possesses combat experience that Mainwaring does not and takes every opportunity to remind his sergeant who is the senior.
As a bank manager, he is efficient if ruthless and stingy; as a military commander he can at first glance be seen as barely competent, confused by the 24-hour clock, his plans often resulting in chaos. Mainwaring nonetheless managed to pull a group of local shopkeepers "up by their bootstraps" to become some kind of fighting unit.
Mainwaring has no combat experience, which causes tension with the other members of the Home Guard, particularly Wilson, who was a decorated captain in the Royal Artillery (Mons, Gallipoli) during the First World War. Mainwaring did, however, serve in the Army of Occupation in France, "during the whole of 1919 – somebody had to clear up the mess." He volunteered to enlist in 1914 but was rejected with poor eyesight. (During the Second World War, John Le Mesurier, who played Wilson, had been a captain while Arthur Lowe was a Sergeant Major. Lowe tried to enlist in the Merchant Navy prior to the Second World War but was also rejected with poor eyesight.)