As a child, I read every book I could lay my hands on, but my enduring favourite author was Enid Blyton. I adored her books, and longed to live in her world. After reading the Malory Towers books, I begged my parents to send me to boarding school where I could make new friends with whom I would share harmless pranks and regular midnight feasts.
Because of the Famous Five, I dreamed of adult-free camping holidays, sleeping on bracken beds, and existing on ginger beer and ice-cream with lashings of chocolate sauce.
It was easy to lose myself in Enid Blyton's stories, which rattled along comfortably, unchallenging and yet remained totally engaging. She portrayed a world far simpler than the one we live in now, and if I'm honest, simpler than the one I knew as a child. In Blyton's world, children ramble freely through the countryside, unbothered by tedious parents texting and annoying them. Every lane has friendly circus folk camping at the bottom of it and there are underground caves waiting to be discovered beneath every field. Smugglers and robbers are generally harmless, and easily foiled by a few children.
Who wouldn't be seduced by words like this from Mr Galliano's Circus?
"Oh, I wish I lived in a caravan!" said Jimmy longingly. "How lovely it must be to live in a house that has wheels and can go away down the lanes and through the towns, and stand still in fields at night!"
Of course, Enid Blyton's book are easy to criticize. During Five on a Hike Together, Julian tells George:
"You may look like a boy and behave like a boy, but you're a girl all the same. And like it or not, girls have got to be taken care of."
I could quote many passages that are equally offensive to modern readers. I would never condone her sexist or racist attitudes, and I was disappointed when I read that, in real life, Enid Blyton was a rather unpleasant character – but I can't change the past. As a child, I was most happy when I had an Enid Blyton book in my hand: and as she wrote more than 700 of them, I was very often happy.
We sometimes become carried away with notions of worthiness in children's books, and get all snobby about literary merit. We shouldn't let ourselves forget, however, that anyone who writes books that children love to read, is doing something very right. Reading continues to be one of my greatest pleasures, and it all started with Enid.
Is Enid Blyton the best writer in the world? Absolutely not. Has she been an inspiration to me? She jolly well has.
