Arthur Dent

Arthur spends the next several years, still wearing his dressing gown, helplessly launched from crisis to crisis while trying to straighten out his lifestyle. He rather enjoys tea, but seems to have trouble obtaining it in the far reaches of the galaxy.

In the radio, LP and television versions of the story Arthur is played by Simon Jones, no relation to Peter Jones, the voice of the Guide.

In all versions of the series, Arthur and Ford eventually find themselves back on Earth - but two million years in the past, marooned with a group of aliens who were voted off their own planet and whose involvement in the evolution of the human race offers a horrifyingly plausible explanation for much that is wrong with Earth in the twentieth century.

The original radio series and the television series end at this point, although a second radio series was made in which Ford and Arthur are rescued by Ford's cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox and have further adventures, and which ends with Arthur stealing Zaphod's spaceship (which Zaphod had himself stolen) and striking out on his own.

In the novels, Ford and Arthur escape prehistoric earth via an eddy in space-time that deposits them in the middle of Lord's cricket ground at the climax of the final ever match in the Ashes series, days before the destruction of Earth. Having escaped the destruction of Earth once more and survived further adventures, Arthur eventually finds himself once more back on Earth, which has mysteriously been recreated. Here he falls in love with a woman named Fenchurch and seems set to live happily ever after - at least until the following, and final, novel, Mostly Harmless, in which Earth is destroyed again and everybody dies.

External link

• BBCi's page on Arthur Dent

Referenced By