Confessions...

Honestly, here we all are trying to read good books...books that I can hold my head up and be proud to say I've read through these challenging times, and then what happens...

This...

The trouble was that in an effort to avoid switching on the lunchtime news one day I persuaded Bookhound that now was a good time for me to see just one episode of Malory Towers. The BBC have generously made all episodes available at once. I loaded it with caveats...I'll watch the rest on my iPad.... it will probably be awful... you'll hate it but you mustn't mock.... 

And so we watched the first episode...

The next day we watched the second episode...

On the third day Bookhound says 'Is it time for lunch and 'your' serial...'

Note the 'your'...

And so it has carried on and Bookhound will possibly slaughter me for revealing this...but he gets as excited as I do about the lacrosse match, and the Open Day...and what will happen to nasty Gwendoline next...and who will Darrell lose her temper with now...and there you have it. It's a whole new world for a man raised on Anthony Buckeridge's Jennings and the world of Biggles, but it's a return to a familiar world for me as life at Malory Towers, the Cornish clifftop school, unfolds.

First Term at Malory Towers was published in 1946, and the series has never been out of print since, I'm now wondering if there is some sort of theory about the penchant for books about girl's boarding schools in the period immediately after a war.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This occurred to me having recently read Erica Wins Through by Josephine Elder published in the 1920s. Maybe its about security and safety and re-establishing the order...perhaps creating a new version. I'm sure someone has written a PhD on the subject. Various new themes have been introduced to the Malory Towers TV series, including a back story for Darrell and a bit of scandal at a previous school. And whilst pranks prevail discipline is still paramount (and matron is vile) but girls are encouraged and praised for standing up for what is right and fair in the finest traditions of boarding school stories.

Reading very lightly around the subject  I was interested to find a piece, in a collection of essays on the subject of  school stories, by Rosemary Auchmuty outlining the undreamt-of educational opportunities that these schools represented for girls...

'a chance to study seriously, perhaps to aim for university or a career, which in turn offered an alternative to marriage and money of one's own. Games brought girls the comradeship of the team and new physical freedoms. It is easy to underestimate how revolutionary all this was in the 1920s when only a quarter of all girls enjoyed a secondary education.'

Girls could be successful because all things were possible within the all-female educational environment, and the scope of a girl's ambition (or lack of it) is a contrast neatly played out between Darrell and Gwendoline in the TV series.

For whatever reason the indoor scenes were filmed in Toronto whilst the outdoor scenes were filmed at Hartland Abbey in North Devon, and the setting is pitch perfect having also been used for the upcoming film of Rebecca, Sense and Sensibility, The Night Manager and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

It's all a right old wallow I can tell you, smart uniforms, predictable plots, midnight feasts, wandering ghosts and happy outcomes but entirely enjoyable.

I read the books over and again as a child, copies long gone, but for old time's sake I downloaded a sample to my Kindle, started reading and before I knew it I'd found a bargain box set on eBay and couldn't stop myself. Six in the series written by Enid Blyton and another six sequels added at a later date. Enid Blyton was forbidden reading at my state primary school, considered to be a 'poor writer' by the headteacher, though fortunately my parents saw it differently, and the library had an endless supply. It was much later in my life that my dad confessed that he had read them all while I was asleep so that he could join in the conversation with me...and that he had loved them all too. Needless to say our own children were suitably inducted into the world of Enid, both books and videos, because shouldn't all children experience that sense of freedom and adventure so beloved by the Famous Five.

I smiled when I read this recently in the monthly Letter sent out a by 'a publisher'...

'And we were SO surprised when a very very intellectual friend of mine said she was hugely enjoying Anne of Green Gables on Netflix....'

Don't be in the least bit surprised I say. Firstly Anne is the absolute heroine and aren't we all Kindred Spirits right now, and even the 'very very' intellectual need something that offers consolation and safety and certainty. Malory Towers is proving to be our unashamedly nostalgic antidote to so much else at the moment and I'm wondering if you have found your antidotes too...

In that little book of essays on school stories there is a delightful one by Adele Geras. Adele has this to say about the pleasure of reading books like this...

'I do not think it's possible to over-emphasise the pleasure - sometimes a rather guilty pleasure - of having no roughage at all to chew on in a book ..it's just like eating meringues all day long...the last thing we liked was the distinct possibility that we ourselves would end up in a school just like Malory Towers...'

Sadly Adele's re-reading of In the Fifth at Malory Towers as an adult found them distinctly lacking, and she suggests they are best left behind in childhood...too late, I've bought them now, but maybe Adele didn't have a plague in progress, and after all the charity shops will be open again and in need one day. I'll have a go.

Meanwhile, it's perfectly fine to confess your secret antidotes here because I'd love some more suggestions...