‘A minor literary figure. Not worth a full-length biography’.   GBS writing about JMB.

‘There's no pleasure in reading Enid Blyton's style. There's no sense of delight or joy in the language.’   Philip Pulman

A talented and complex individual like J.M. Barrie can create rich and mysterious books. A Window in Thrums, the Tommy volumes, The Little White Bird and Peter Pan all illustrate this and invite a meticulous (and imaginative) biographer, such as Andrew Birkin shows himself to be in The Lost Boys, to piece together the links between an author’s life and his works.

I wonder if any of Barrie’s readers have also been seduced by the work of Enid Blyton when they were children. The Magic Faraway Tree, the Mystery series featuring Fatty and the Find-Outers, Noddy, the Malory Towers books, the Secret Seven, the Famous Five, to name but a few of her better known creations.  Alas, it would take someone with the longevity of Peter Pan to read all 600 of her books.

I read a fair few myself while researching Looking For Enid, which was published in 2007. A bit like Andrew, perhaps, I’ve returned to a subject I don’t want to let go of, and have set up a website to allow me to continue my investigation into what made Enid tick (so phenomenally). Fundamentally, what I’m doing is a literary celebration, though it’s packed with geography (thank-you Google Maps), book collecting, biography, anecdote, previously unpublished photographs, and more. For anyone who thinks they might be interested, the link is http://www.enidblyton.me.uk/index.html 

Blyton was said by some not to possess an ounce of maternal spirit. When Enid’s daughter, Gillian, performed the part of Captain Hook in her school year’s production of Peter Pan, she wrote in her diary that her mother had been very supportive of her acting efforts, ending with the words: ‘She was very nice and I love her.’ That was in 1946. Shortly after, Blyton wrote Third Year at Malory Towers where two girls, who have ambitions to be a singer and an actress, come crashing down to earth and have to face the prospect of being ‘ordinary’.  Gillian read the Malory Towers novels hot off her mother’s typewriter, and it may have been this that allowed her to write in her diary in October 1947, after she’d been given a small part in Dear Brutus: ‘Virginia said she thought I was the best actress in the school. Last year I would have been thrilled at this, but now I think its flattery, because I know I can’t act well.’ Good old Mother Enid, then. Personal encouragement, on the one hand; a marvelously fluent morality tale for the whole world to read, on the other. I think Gillian was lucky to have a genius for a mother.

Famously, Peter Pan begins with the line: ‘All children, except one, grow up’. In my opinion, The Mystery of Holly Lane begins almost as promisingly:

"Bets – don’t gobble your porridge like that!" said Mrs Hilton. "There’s no hurry, surely!"
"Well there is mother,” said Bets. "I’ve got to go and meet Fatty’s train this morning. Have you forgotten that he’s coming home today?"

Coming home. He’s coming home. Fatty’s coming home….

Love to you all from,
Duncan McLaren