[Robb_K]

!/
Here is an article on 'Wizard' as English slang. But no origin. I've never heard anyone say it, but only come across it in British children's papers and books.
Unraveling the Magic: Understanding the Meaning of ‘Wizard’ in British Slang
https://slangsensei.com/wizard-british-slang-meaning/

2/

  Were civilians not involved in the War Effort actually allowed to travel to Australia, with The Japanese Navy so close?   

Well, by that time you could fly to Australia. Many stops along the way.
However, there were at least one shipload of children shipped out from the UK. The idea was to protect them from bombing or potential invasion. What happened to many of them when they got here later became a major scandal. Sent to institutions where they were abused. Not necessarily sexually.
Also, I believe that at least one shipload of Jews was sent out here, and that story is quite sobering also.
Australia was seen as a refuge from the horrors of Europe.

Those scenarios of shipping potential war victims to safety fit my definition of "War effort".  Also, I'm sure that regular commercial passenger airplane flights were severely curtailed, with planes being used to ship Canadian and US troops, carry important war-related mail, arms, and provisions to The UK.

[SuperScrounge]

Here is an article on 'Wizard' as English slang. But no origin. I've never heard anyone say it, but only come across it in British children's papers and books.

Interesting article.

I only remember hearing it used in a sketch of the Dave Allen At Large show (I tried to find just the sketch on YouTube, but if it's there it's probably as part of a full episode).

IIRC the sketch has a man rub a lamp and a Genie appears. He says, "Wizard!" and a wizard appears. He says, "Golly!" and a golly* appears. He says, "Devil take me!" and the devil appears and takes him away.

* This is probably the reason why the sketch itself can't be found on YouTube, the blackface appearance of the golly.

[crashryan]

I think that there was always a big appetite for adventurer heroine stories as well, even after the influence of the war started to wane - usually in a boarding school setting in these early years.

That's what puzzles me about Hultons' weekly Girl, the sister weekly to the Eagle. It was published from 1951 to 1954. To quote Wikipedia:

"The lead strip was originally Kitty Hawke and her All-Girl Air Crew, drawn in full colour by Ray Bailey, about a group of women running a charter airline. The strip was not very popular — it was apparently felt to be too masculine — and it was moved to the black-and-white interior pages, replaced on the cover by the schoolgirl strip Wendy and Jinx, written by Michael and Valerie Hastings and drawn by Bailey."

The Kitty Hawke stories are pretty good, placing the women at the forefront of the action rather than in a secondary role (e.g. as stewardesses). I wonder if the decision to de-fang the series came from male editors uncomfortable with the strip's "masculinity" rather than from the readers. This was 1951 after all.

[crashryan]

Here is an article on 'Wizard' as English slang. But no origin. I've never heard anyone say it, but only come across it in British children's papers and books.
Unraveling the Magic: Understanding the Meaning of ‘Wizard’ in British Slang
https://slangsensei.com/wizard-british-slang-meaning/

Moving off-topic, that article struck me as having that odd apparently-precise-but-actually-generic cadence I associate with AI-generated text.

Reading other articles on the site, for example the one on Italian slang, strengthened that impression. It's something about the way a key phrase (e.g."Italian idioms and expressions") is repeated verbatim throughout the article, and the way specific issues like "taboo phrases" are addressed in vague terms that could apply equally to almost any language. I may be wrong, of course. Back when everyone was posting advice on Search Engine Optimization techniques like repetitive key phrases were presented as making it easier for Googlers to find your website. Either way it doesn't sound like an individual human wrote this stuff.

[Robb_K]

Here is an article on 'Wizard' as English slang. But no origin. I've never heard anyone say it, but only come across it in British children's papers and books.

Interesting article.

I only remember hearing it used in a sketch of the Dave Allen At Large show (I tried to find just the sketch on YouTube, but if it's there it's probably as part of a full episode).

IIRC the sketch has a man rub a lamp and a Genie appears. He says, "Wizard!" and a wizard appears. He says, "Golly!" and a golly* appears. He says, "Devil take me!" and the devil appears and takes him away.

* This is probably the reason why the sketch itself can't be found on YouTube, the blackface appearance of the golly.

What is a "Golly"

[Robb_K]

Here is an article on 'Wizard' as English slang. But no origin. I've never heard anyone say it, but only come across it in British children's papers and books.
Unraveling the Magic: Understanding the Meaning of ‘Wizard’ in British Slang
https://slangsensei.com/wizard-british-slang-meaning/

Moving off-topic, that article struck me as having that odd apparently-precise-but-actually-generic cadence I associate with AI-generated text.

Reading other articles on the site, for example the one on Italian slang, strengthened that impression. It's something about the way a key phrase (e.g."Italian idioms and expressions") is repeated verbatim throughout the article, and the way specific issues like "taboo phrases" are addressed in vague terms that could apply equally to almost any language. I may be wrong, of course. Back when everyone was posting advice on Search Engine Optimization techniques like repetitive key phrases were presented as making it easier for Googlers to find your website. Either way it doesn't sound like an individual human wrote this stuff.

I went to your link but didn't notice any clews that would lead me to believe that the individual explanations were assembled from different sources (although I saw nothing that would indicate that they weren't.  I was also happy to find that what I surmised just from the context of the sentences in which the term was used, that my feeling was correct, that it just meant "clever", or "cleverly done", adding an element of achievement.

[SuperScrounge]

What is a "Golly"

Short for Golliwog.