Comments on: Malcolm Saville

By: Carrie

Carrie — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 20:48:07 +0000

A couple of weekends ago I was in a village on the Essex-Suffolk borders and encountered a toyshop with an impressive range of gollies. I contemplated getting one for a liberal friend who has just given birth as a kind of ironic commentary on societal development, but couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Despite this article (March 06) about the sale of said toys being racist ……. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/04/ngolly04.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/04/ixhome.html)

… it appears that sales are buoyant:

http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/golly2.htm

There are also some fascinating images of Enid Blyton’s Noddy before and after being ‘cleansed’:

http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/POLITICALLY_INCORRECT.htm

By: Doug K

Doug K — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:35:50 +0000

I have a 1930s edition of the Arthur Ransome ‘Coot Club’, reread it every few years for a sort of holiday.
Also have a collection of his fishing columns for the Manchester Guardian, which includes a translation of some pre-revolutionary essays on fishing in Russia, by an aristocrat remembering his childhood. Time machines.

None of this connects in any way to my children’s experiences in 21st century America, ranking up there with dinosaurs as tales of far-off and forgotten times. The current crop of kids books seems to me dreadfully formulaic, on the other hand so were all the books I read as a child of empire, Famous Four and all.

Noddy incidentally has been cleaned up, golliwogs are replaced with goblins, and Dinah Doll is a charming little black doll running a china stall in Toytown.

By: paul

paul — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:28:30 +0000

Sadly, teacher friends tell me that as one of the lead characters is called titty (short for elizabeth in the thirties but totally snigger material now) its just not readable out loud now.

Well, my sheltered children don’t know that yet ;-) Another character being named Dick is going to provoke giggles later, as well.

The self-reliance was what I liked most, and the more egalitarian status of boys to girls. Yes, Susan fussed like a mother but she had responsibility.

My father grew up around that same time in England and while the world’s ills may have been glossed over a little, it’s a pretty accurate representation. Kids did go off and have those adventures and kindly adults looked out for them without worrying too much.

By: Andrew J King

Andrew J King — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:26:49 +0000

What I liked about finding out about the real-life background of Ransome’s work was that his real world was much more cosmopolitan than the stories, even though those contain a lot of his libertarian tendencies. I guess he was toning down the real world for the sensitivities of his audience -being a drinking buddy of Lenin’s, married to Trotsky’s administrative aide and a friend of Syrian professionals didn’t sit easy with his conservative public.
On another angle, I was raised on Kipling’s Puck stories ~~dark dark dark! -But not the simple imperial jingoist he is usually painted as. Too much in love with Carlyle’s hero~~worshipping but too much an anglo-indian to buy the Empire propaganda and clever enough to write in a conservative voice with a message of equality and tolerance. Most of his audience never got the point. For example he uses his experience of the Raj to depict the Roman occupation of Britain -superb irony in every sentence. Throughout, an amazing education in history, realpolitik, and cultural communication -told in a way that rips your own immediate reality away from you and wraps you in another time so intensely you can hardly believe it was just a book. There are moments in all of the stories that come back to me over and over again because they are so apt to situations met in real life, and the historical characters, from an ironage shepherd, through a norman conquest Jewish financier to a tudor craftsman feel like people I know personally. Hot and dangerous stuff, but my god what an education . . .

By: ajay

ajay — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:31:53 +0000

In the first Swallows & Amazons book, I always admired the response of the (absent) father who is asked, by telegram, by his wife whether he thinks the children should be allowed to go sailing:

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN

By: chris y

chris y — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:18:20 +0000

I found out that the world depicted didn’t exist even then

Well, they were fiction, y’know, like made up stories?

By: magistra

magistra — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 08:02:09 +0000

My (hazy) memory of Malcolm Saville’s books is of them as adventure stories. (I think several were set around Rye, in East Sussex). So I’d say in plot they were more like Enid Blyton than the one you’ve read, though they still have the combination of children and adults working together, unlike Blyton. I can’t remember any aspects of social commentary, but they did so inspire my brother as a boy that he wrote several books in the same style (whereas I’m not sure whether he ever read Enid Blyton and he certainly wasn’t a big fan).

By: dearieme

dearieme — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 03:57:26 +0000

Richmal Crompton’s “Just William” series: none better, surely?

By: grackel

grackel — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 01:45:54 +0000

I read a series of these books as a child from a small library in Colorado. I remember little except that the boy and girl siblings, summering in the country, meet a free-spirited ‘wild” girl named, I think, Tansy. I fell helplessly in love with her but to this day have no idea who the author was or what the series.

By: Frances

Frances — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:29:45 +0000

I found the swallows and amazons books amazing because they were the only books around that i can remember in the early 60s that had girls as equal protagonists with absolutely no fuss. OK Susan kept making boiled eggs and sanwiches but no argument – Nancy really was the wildest character around. The lead boy was so much more sensible and tame. Sadly, teacher friends tell me that as one of the lead characters is called titty (short for elizabeth in the thirties but totally snigger material now) its just not readable out loud now.

And one of my friends lived downstairs from the daughter of Barbara Altounyan who was really John in true life – in Newcastle on tyne in 1980s.

By: Adelheid

Adelheid — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:25:31 +0000

Actually, while certain plots are repeated, there is a distinct difference in quality of the St Clares’s in comparison with Mallory Towers. (MT series is better). But Blyton in general is completely trumped by the Big Four of school stories: Angela Brazil, Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Elsie J Oxenham and (my favourite) Elinor M Brent-Dyer.

There was indeed an appendectomy in the Mallory Towers series – Sally Hope has her appendix out in “First Term at Mallory Towers”.

By: y

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 20:42:18 +0000

I loved the Ransome books as a child, but as an adult I managed to do a little more research into their making, and I found out that the world depicted didn’t exist even then—for example, the real-life model for the British naval officer’s son was actually a Syrian doctor’s daughter. Neverthless, I am still quite fond of the books—Swallows and Amazons itself, in particular, I think of as something of a narrative gem.

By: paul

paul — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:37:38 +0000

what, no Arthur Ransom/Swallows and Amazons? I read all but one of these to my two enthusiasts and I found them to be very readable (I started them with We didn't mean to go to sea, the best of the lot for adventure, resourcefulness, and a meaningful resolution). Adults are resources to be drawn upon, willing co-conspirators, at times. The children are smart, brave, and work well together, despite diverse backgrounds. They are dated, as they were written in the 30s, and that world no longer exists. But they are still well worth a look.

By: otto

otto — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:30:13 +0000

Thanks.

Would I be out of place to mention Andrew Taylor’s Lydmouth series here? It’s a detective series, written since 1995 or so, set in a 1950s village, but with all the class and gender conflicts left in, which the ‘classic’ ‘cozy’ detective stories of Miss Marple etc leave out. Not children’s books, but with something of the same alteration to the received version of post-war Britain as Harry mentions here.

By: Jimmy Doyle

Jimmy Doyle — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 19:29:55 +0000

I loved the Lone Pine adventures when I was about 10, but I haven’t revisited. I even tried to join the Lone Pine Club but I think it was defunct by then.