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21 Dec 05 - 10:36 AM (#1632148) Subject: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: alanabit It looks as if the Famous Five have not waned in popularity. I used to read them as a kid and now I read them to my six year old son. It is quite an eye opener to me to see how awful some of the writing is. It does not seem to matter much to my son though, as we rip through one book and into the next. Did anyone else here read them to their children? |
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21 Dec 05 - 10:41 AM (#1632154) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Firecat I read them when I was a kid! And that wasn't THAT long ago (I'm 22 in about a fortnight). |
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21 Dec 05 - 10:55 AM (#1632168) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST, Topsie I had one of them. I read it over and over again. I asked for more but my mother (who clearly didn't understand me} went to a book shop and looked at them and decided they were 'too boyish'. She bought me a very tame Enid Blyton book about a school with only six children, who did things like going on 'nature walks' and growing beans on blotting paper. |
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21 Dec 05 - 11:18 AM (#1632188) Subject: RE: BS: Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Piers They are extremely dated perhaps, but I think they are well written - especially compared to the Potter books. |
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21 Dec 05 - 11:23 AM (#1632191) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: mack/misophist Now that you've piqued our interest, how about being a little more specific? |
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21 Dec 05 - 12:33 PM (#1632245) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST, Topsie It might be interesting to compare modern editions with the originals to see if they have been 'tweeked', such as updating views of how girls are supposed to behave. |
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21 Dec 05 - 12:44 PM (#1632263) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Emma B "Five go Mad in Dorset" - brilliant! |
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21 Dec 05 - 01:52 PM (#1632290) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Rapparee I've heard of the Fab Four, but not these guys. Are they like The Bobbsey Twins or something? |
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21 Dec 05 - 02:04 PM (#1632301) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: alanabit The Famous Five, as described in the linked article, were four cousins and a dog in a series of children's books by Enid Blyton. These days, they are a pretty soft target for satirists. They were and are phenomenally popular in the UK. Another famous character, for younger children, was Noddy, who invariably met his friend Big Ears. The Famous Five were the sort of kids who could only have been invented in their age (late forties/early fifties). They attended boarding schools and spent all their holidays together. Invariably they ran into a wicked criminal, whom they eventually helped to get exposed. They never said rude words, ("bother" and "blow" are the closest to expletives), never smoked a cigarette and never drank anything stronger than ginger beer. After being threatened with a gun by a dangerous criminal, they would invariably say something like, "I was a little bit nervous at first, I don't mind telling you. But looking back, it seems jolly exciting, don't you think?" If you take into account that the oldest must have been twelve, when they started, by my reckoning, they must have been in their mid twenties by the time they left school. In those days, that was no problem for a children's author, because it was before sex was invented (I believe). To a Brit, the books are quite funny. They are trite, have barely any adjectives and have characterisation which would barely distinguish a horse from a rabbit. To Americans, they must seem rather bizarre. Okay Mack/Misophist? |
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21 Dec 05 - 03:07 PM (#1632350) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST David Hunter from Crossroads cast as Uncle Quentin in The Comic Strip spoof. Classic stuff. Must have tore through nearly everything the lovely Enid penned, and still picking them up in charity shops for my kids. You grew out of The Secret Seven and into The Famous Five, a rite of passage indeed. |
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21 Dec 05 - 03:17 PM (#1632362) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Little Hawk My Gawd....!!! Sounds bloody awful. I must say I had never heard of those books at all until I saw this thread today, and it doesn't sound like I missed much except for a good laugh. ;-) The worst written children's books I ever read were the "Bomba the Jungle Boy" series. So bad, you would have to read them yourself to believe it. It would be interesting to compare those with The Famous Five, and see which commits the worst crimes upon children's literature. |
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21 Dec 05 - 04:14 PM (#1632408) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: TheBigPinkLad They are extremely dated perhaps, but I think they are well written - especially compared to the Potter books. You're kidding, right? |
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21 Dec 05 - 04:23 PM (#1632415) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: John MacKenzie Wasn't there a character called Titty in these books? G. |
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21 Dec 05 - 04:26 PM (#1632419) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST Five does Dallas? |
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21 Dec 05 - 05:39 PM (#1632446) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST, Topsie Tittie was in the Arthur Ransome books - Swallows and Amazons etc. Much better than Enid Blyton. |
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22 Dec 05 - 03:39 AM (#1632696) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: jonm Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb. |
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22 Dec 05 - 06:26 AM (#1632768) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: MBSLynne VERY English. I preferred the Secret Seven myself, but my kids loved the Famous Five too. I like them more now than I did as a kid...pure nostalgia. I sincerely hope they haven't 'tweaked' them due to current political correctness..they reflect the time in which they were written and to change them for modern thinking would be to lose their essence. Love Lynne |
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22 Dec 05 - 07:26 AM (#1632790) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Trevor Anybody read the Malcolm Saville books about 'The Lone Pine Club'? They whetted my imagination to the point that I borrowed my first Ordnance Survey map from the library when I was about 11, and have ended up living in Shropshire, more or less where they are set. |
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22 Dec 05 - 07:41 AM (#1632795) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST, Topsie Yes, I read the 'Lone Pine' books as well. I also read books by Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock - written by two boarding school girls inspired by Arthur Ransome, set on Exmoor but in a fantasy Persia based on the poem 'Sohrab and Rustum'. |
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22 Dec 05 - 09:30 AM (#1632854) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Gervase I'm surprised no-one's mentioned the lovely spoof on the Famous Five by our very own Chordstrangler - Mickey McConnell - in this thread. Not only did he write "Only Our Rivers Run Free", "The First Good Friday", "Peter Pan and Me" and a host of others, he also gave us this gem! |
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22 Dec 05 - 11:29 AM (#1632945) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Gervase ...and, of course, there's the Guardian's own piss-take of the Famous Five today. |
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22 Dec 05 - 12:37 PM (#1633033) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Little Hawk LOL! I must say I don't think I have EVER heard of a children's book series I would have been less likely too read than the fecking Famous Five. EEEEE-YAUGGGGH! My blood curdles in horror at the mere thought of it. I was a real intellectual snob when I was a kid. I read Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, C.S. Forester, Rudyard Kipling, H. Ryder Haggard, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I refused to read ANY of the typical "children's" mystery books such as Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, the Famous Five, Lassie, Rin Tin Tin or any other such dreck. I was above that sort of thing. Totally above it. I regarded such books with utter contempt and loathing. I could not imagine why anyone read them...not then, not now. They were ludicrous. One's brains might well turn to mush if one read them. The fact is, I don't think I ever really had a childhood, in the conventional sense... ;-) I grew up in some sort of University-consciousness history professor time warp bubble. Whether this was good or bad remains debatable. |
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22 Dec 05 - 12:48 PM (#1633042) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Little Hawk And here's that lovely song composed by Mickey... ENID BLYTON Dear old Enid Blyton, I thought of you today as I helped my eldest kid to put her books and toys away For there upon the bookshelf, I could scarce believe my eyes were dozens of adventure books about your Famous Five. And it swept me backwards through the years for I had read them too and marvelled at their bravery and deeds of derring-do But nowadays its just as well that your'e not still alive to see what time and life have done unto your Famous Five. Now Julian was the leader with a good staunch British heart he got a scholarship to Oxford where he studied rather hard. He took law and criminology until one fateful day he suddenly discovered that crime does really pay. So he opened massage parlours in Bradford, York and Leeds where fat old men and Swedish girls do foul and filthy deeds. Now he peddles dirty movies, plastic macs and whips and chains Oh Enid love I'm not surprised you hang your head in shame. (alternate first verse to be sung with great caution) Now Julian was the leader with a good staunch British heart He got a scholarship to Sandhurst where he studied mighty hard When he joined the British Army it wasn't hard to guess that he'd end up being commissioned into the SAS. When they sent him down to South Armagh, poor Julian was fooled for he didn't know the Paddies don't play Enid Blyton's rules. And when the smoke had cleared away, few remains were to be seen so they buried him in Amsterdam, New York and Aberdeen. Georgina hated being a girl and that's why, I suppose she told everyone to call her "George" and dressed up in men's clothes. But in our youthful innocence in those far-off distant days we never realised that brave Georgina was a Gay. She came out of the closet when she met a girl named Jill who is now her live-in lover in a flat in Notting Hill And she says she's very happy, says its great to be alive the odds seemed much against it when she joined the Famous Five. Now Anne, she was the quiet one who lived in mortal dread of smugglers and jewel thieves and foreigners with beards. Her nerves got taut as fiddle strings from all the stress and strain so they put her in a madhouse for the criminally insane. And Tim, the faithful terrier at last ran out of luck when he bared his teeth and argued with a forty-three-ton truck. Poor Tim found out the hard way what is meant by overdrive Farewell four-footed, furry, faithful, foolish,flattened, F........k'd up Phantom Famous Five. Poor Dick could never settle after all the things he'd seen he was into booze and Evostick by the time he was thirteen. He had been dried out three dozen times when he reached twenty-two so he went off to South Africa like all the losers do. And I'm not surprised he's happy there, in fact it is his right. don't all the bad guys dress in black and the good guys dress in white. If he stays away from black wimmen and white rum, he might survive in that spirit of peace and freedom much beloved by Famous Five. outro... For the Five stood for integrity, the Five fought the good fight in the days the bad guys dressed in black and the good guys dressed in white So Enid love its just as well that your'e not still alive to see what time and life has done unto your Famous Five. |
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22 Dec 05 - 12:59 PM (#1633053) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Little Hawk What does the name "Enid Blighton" summon up in your mind? It makes me think of a case of really severe constipation. |
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22 Dec 05 - 02:50 PM (#1633148) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST,Janine I couldn't indentify with them at all: Anne was far too soppy and I couldn't understand why Georgina wanted to be a boy. All the 'goodies' are frighfully middle class and the 'baddies' dreadfully working class with uncouth regional accents. What a snob E.B. must have been. Great poem Little Hawk. I don't remember the Secret Seven Lynne; were they in a similar vein? Janine |
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23 Dec 05 - 04:44 AM (#1633612) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Grab For my sins, I read the lot when I was a kid - we had a very good second-hand bookshop near us where I could pick up tat like that for between 10p and 50p a book. I preferred the Hardy Boys though, but I'd read anything that would stay still long enough - my sister got all the Mallory Towers books and crap like that (does some series about a trilingual boarding school in Austria who move to Britain at the start of WW2 ring any bells with anyone?), and I read those too. Actually, the best books around then were the Arthur Ransome books, but there weren't enough of those to last long. "If not duffers won't drown. If duffers better drowned." Graham. |
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23 Dec 05 - 04:53 AM (#1633617) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST, Topsie I also read some of the 'Abbey School' books by Elsie J. Oxenham, about a girls' boarding school where they did Morris dancing (not to be confused with similarly titled boks by Angela Brazil). |
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23 Dec 05 - 05:49 AM (#1633647) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: MBSLynne Yes Janine, Secret Seven were similar...a group of kids (and the obligatory dog) who had a secret club and exciting adventures. Enid Blyton wasn't a snob particularly...you are making the mistake that so many people do when looking at things in the past, of seeing them through modern eyes. True if you wrote or thought like that NOW you would certainly be a snob, but in those days it's the way things were. Different attitudes, different social codes altogether. Yes I read, and loved the Lone Pine books...I've been trying to get hold of them for my kids. I also loved the Monica Edwards books about Tamzin and Rissa and lots of horses and ponies. Love Lynne |
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23 Dec 05 - 06:29 AM (#1633674) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Trevor MBSL, have a look here. 'Witchend' is just across the valley from where I live. |
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23 Dec 05 - 06:40 AM (#1633683) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Trevor Lynne, if you're interested in getting the books you could have a look at this site. |
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23 Dec 05 - 09:58 AM (#1633774) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST I loved the mallory towers books too. Those above who have never heard of the lovely enid are missing the point, probably 99.9% of kids who devoured these books had never seen a boarding school or a tuck box! It was a way to transport you into another world of midnight feasts and lacrosse. Anyone remember her meatier offerings of The Castle of Adventure, The River of Adventure etc etc etc. Am going to have to check them out for the kids now. Happy Days with no TV and no computer games. Just our imaginations and a torch under the covers. |
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23 Dec 05 - 12:22 PM (#1633878) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Grab Yeah, the "Adventure" series was a bit more entertaining. Still pretty silly though, in hindsight. |
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23 Dec 05 - 03:19 PM (#1634030) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Nigel Parsons Just a slight correction to Alanabit, earlier. The Famous Five, as described in the linked article, were four cousins and a dog in a series of children's books by Enid Blyton. Julian, Dick & Anne were siblings, George (Georgina)was their cousin. CHEERS, and a bottle of fizzy pop Nigel |
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23 Dec 05 - 07:08 PM (#1634189) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST Lashings of ginger beer and homemade lemonade. |
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24 Dec 05 - 04:50 AM (#1634389) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: MBSLynne And ices..don't forget ices. Thanks Trevor...late Yule pressies for the kids maybe? I rather liked the Rilloby Fair Mystery and the Rubadub Mystery and all that series. They may all seem silly now but they certainly answered a need at the time. You have to remember that kids were somewhat less sophisticated in those days. Though I used to devour anything with words printed in it. I read "Gulliver's Travels" alongside all the Enid Blyton etc, and at the age of eight, found "Lord of the Flies" on the bathroom floor where my Dad had been reading it, and read that. Can't say I enjoyed it though.... I discovered the "Anne of Green Gables" books when I was 11 and they were and are still among my favourites. Love Lynne |
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24 Dec 05 - 08:25 AM (#1634456) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: alanabit I think the appeal of the books is the simplicity (even crudity) of the writing and the story lines. They have no moral ambiguity. Good people are very good and rotters deserve punishment. It inevitably comes their way. It appeals to a kid's sense of justice and security. It is escapism, unencumbered by any real sense of likelihood or danger. I liked them a lot as a child and now my son revels in them and gets really excited when the rotters are about to get jugged. Yes, the writing is garbage. I am glad Jonah is getting so much enjoyment from them now. He won't always be six years old. |
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24 Dec 05 - 01:59 PM (#1634622) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Mo the caller Someone mentioned her atitude to what girls can do. Well, with George and Ann (who was a real homemaker) you just about covered the range. Mind you, the boys were very protective. Most childrens books of the time seemed to set children adrift without adult supervision.The famous five went off for weeks on end, camping etc. Nowadays children are hardly allowed out for the afternoon untill they are 21. I wonder what the right balance is between independance and safety? |
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24 Dec 05 - 02:12 PM (#1634632) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: alanabit Interesting question. We live on a busy main road, where "idiot" would be a flattering description of many of the drivers. There is a reason why our kids do not go out on their own. I don't know if children were really safer in Enid Blyton's day, but I think they were perceived as being safer. That was probably the background to the books. I can only add observations to your question Mo, because I don't know the answer either. |
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24 Dec 05 - 02:37 PM (#1634656) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: Mo the caller Then theres the difference between fact and fiction. The Swallows and Amazon books at least had some discussion about safety whereas the Famous Five were left to get on with it. But when I was at junior school (age 8-11) we looked down on the girl who was collected by her Mummy, my childrens headmaster didn't think I should let them walk home on their own. |
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24 Dec 05 - 03:13 PM (#1634680) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: GUEST I'm sure she did another boarding school series as well as malory towers? Not St.Clares or something similar? |
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24 Dec 05 - 03:35 PM (#1634696) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: alanabit Her output was phenomenal. There were theSea of/Island of/*** of Adventure Series, The Secret Seven, The Naughtiest Girl in the School, The Children of Cherry Tree/Willow Farm series/Noddy and Big Ears/ volumes of short stories and likely dozens more, which I have never heard of. She sure went for quantity over quality. |
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24 Dec 05 - 03:40 PM (#1634701) Subject: RE: BS: Julian,Dick, Anne, George and Timmy! From: alanabit There is more about Enid Blyton here. |