R. F. Delderfield and Enid

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timv
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R. F. Delderfield and Enid

Post by timv »

Does anyone else remember the 1960s and 1970s 'hit' family sagas by Devon author Ronald (R F) Delderfield, d. 1972? His sprawling stories of families in Victorian to early 1960s Britain were very popular in their time, principally the three-volume 'Swann Saga' of a Victorian - 1914 haulage business family (God Is An Englishman, Theirs Was the Kingdom, Give Us This Day), the Devon public school saga 'To Serve Them All My Days' (1920s-40s, but seen from the perspective of a working class WW I veteran Welsh teacher at the school), the 1920s -40s country house romance and French Resistance story 'Diana' (see from the perspective of the heroine's working-class journalist admirer), and the three-volume Devon country estate saga 'A Horseman Riding By' (set from 1902 to 1965). Also the working class and lower middle class 1920-45 SE London suburban 'Avenue' saga, set in Croydon - which he explicitly wrote to show that the ordinary families he knew were equally deserving of the saga treatment .
These tapped into the same market as Joanna Trollope and H E Bates for his more modern books and the romances, Evelyn Waugh for the upper class ones, and Anthony Trollope etc for the Victorian ones, but used heroes from all classes and also featured wartime derring-do and ordinary suburban London life of the 1910s-30s - rather like Enid's background in Beckenham. They were 'huge' in the mid-late 1970s thanks to TV adaptations of 'Diana' starring Jenny Seagrove and 'Horseman Riding By' (the latter was actor Nigel Havers' first break), followed by 'To Serve Them All My Days' starring John Duttine and Frank Middlemass. A number of later prominent TV actors of both sexes first appeared there, and the books were then regularly reprinted but from c.1990 onwards went out of print.
Delderfield himself was a journalist from Exmouth in NE Devon, and wrote the locally set 'Diana' from his own background and the school saga using his own school, Blundells near Exeter. I was a great fan and think it a pity he seems to have been largely forgotten; he was into the 'romantic Victorian saga' and 'country house' genres well before modern authors, and without the 'souped up' versions of business seen in Barbara Taylor Bradford or the 'county set' seen in Jilly Cooper. My own interest partly comes from mid-late 1960s holidays in the Exmouth/ Sidmouth area at the time that his final books were written and set there, so I knew the locales. Enid holidayed at nearby Budleigh Salterton in the 1930s, and elements of this coastline appear to have influenced 'The Secret of Spiggy Holes'.
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Re: R. F. Delderfield and Enid

Post by Moonraker »

I have the DVDs of To serve Them All My Days, starring the wonderful Frank Middlemass and a very young Nicholas Lyndhurst in the early episodes. A fabulous TV adaptation with excellent casting.
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Re: R. F. Delderfield and Enid

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

As a teenager I read several R. F. Delderfield books - To Serve Them All My Days, A Horseman Riding By, God is an Englishman and Diana (which combined There Was a Fair Maid Dwelling with The Unjust Skies). I remember the excellent BBC adaptations of To Serve Them All My Days and Diana (the first was broadcast in 1980 and the second in 1984). They were riveting, with both serials capturing the poetry of the books. My sister and I used to have choir practice in St. Asaph on the same evening that Diana was on, and on the way back we'd be looking forward to watching the next episode. We now laugh over the fact that we once had a blazing row over A Horseman Riding By as we both wanted to read it at the same time!
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Re: R. F. Delderfield and Enid

Post by Domino »

I haven't read the books, but certainly enjoyed the television adaptations, especially "To Serve Them All My Days". Nigel omitted to mention the main star - John Duttine.

Dave
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