Or you can just do what the locals do and say Llanfair P.G.

And as I mentioned in my post on the last page, I've lived in South Wales my entire life and have also never heard anyone saying 'look you' or 'whateffer',* so I'm pretty sure it's not a South Walian thing at all, but a Blyton invention designed to look colloquial without actually being colloquial! ...

Thanks for the welcome, everyone. Yes, the Adventure series does seem to be pitched older even though several of the Secret adventures are also dramatic and dangerous and involve going abroad. I think it's not only the style of writing that makes a difference, but the illustrations. The Secret books...

Hello, I hope no one minds me reviving this very old thread. I've lurked on this forum for a while, just out of casual interest, but this last week while off work with a nasty flu-bug, I was hit with a fit of nostalgia and dug out and read the entire Adventure series, which I vaguely remembered as a...

I feel like the odd one out in this thread, as I know a Dinah, two Frans and a Beth.

‘Well, not exactly,’ said Julian, remembering that to many Cornish folk anyone was a foreigner who did not belong to Cornwall. ‘My mother had a great-aunt who lived in Cornwall all her life. So we’re not exactly “furriners”, are we?’ ‘You’re furriners all right,’ said the bent little shopkeeper, lo...

I tend to read Quentin's early attitude in this book as naivety - he's totally absorbed by the immense importance of this project and can't conceive of anything being more important, and that focus blinkers him even to the point he can't acknowledge that a threat to the family might trump the state ...

As a child, Dick was always my favourite of the five, and having re-read the series recently as an adult, that preference has been well and truly confirmed. I've appreciated the characters of all four children much better on this re-read than I ever did as a child - they are all far more well drawn ...

February 13, 2006 – Joanna says: Joan was a popular abbreviation for Joanna in the era the books were written. Thankfully, now it's not. That's interesting to read - I was named Joanna in honour of my Aunt Joan (who in turn was also named for her father's baby sister Joan who died as a toddler)! So...