Blyton BBC Archive

[Tony Summerfield]

Indeed. Enid's children did not inherit the house as it belonged to the company, Darrell Waters Ltd, who apparently had to sell it to pay off Enid's death duties. Gillian and Imogen were given 'first refusal' on buying it, but understandably neither wanted to live there as they were both settled elsewhere with young children. With hindsight it was an extremely short-sighted business decision to sell it at all, as far more money could have been made from the house and garden in the long term by opening it to the public as a museum and children's park than any short-term income gained by selling it to developers.

I have had this conversation with both Gillian and Imogen on a number of occasions. Firstly it did not have to be sold to pay death duties, I have heard this many times but it is a complete myth. At this time, nobody would have considered opening a museum for a children's author. It is an easy thing to say in hindsight, but for all they knew at the time Enid might have gone the way of so many other children's authors and have been completely forgotten about within ten years.

You are correct in saying that the house and contents belonged to the company. Eric Rogers was out to make as much money as possible from it, but he never told the two daughters that what he had in mind was to sell it to developers. He actually had a solid offer for the property from a private buyer, but he turned it down as he felt he could make more by putting it up for auction if he succeeded in getting planning permission. Nobody is quite sure how he managed to do this but those of you who have read George Greenfield's book will know that Eric Rogers was involved in some fairly shady dealings. All Enid's books were stored in appalling conditions in Eric Rogers' garage, which is where Barbara Stoney saw them. She said that they had just been chucked into tea chests any old how.

[Eljay]

Sorry Tony, I was just quoting what Gillian said at a talk I heard her give at the unveiling of the model house in Bekonscot Model Village in 1997: "Sadly, the original Green Hedges was knocked down. We had to sell it to pay off death duties." However, I did wonder at the time if she'd just made that up... Either that, or she was simply misremembering. As I think you've once said, Gillian was an excellent public speaker but did sometimes make factual errors when speaking for a long time, particularly as she rarely used notes. I'm glad to learn the truth, so thanks for explaining the real story!

Imogen says in her book that "the making and conserving of money was the driving force behind Darrell Waters Ltd." and that Eric Rogers was a man who "dealt in money first and for whom other matters were secondary", who revelled in "wheeling and dealing". That certainly sheds some light on the kind of man he was and his motivation for selling Green Hedges! (I must say, he does look a rather roguish, dishonest and greedy character to me in the picture of him on page 119...) I haven't read George Greenfield's book - I must buy a copy. Presumably Enid's book collection eventually went from Eric Rogers' garage into permanent storage in the company's offices? But I wouldn't be at all surprised if he flogged some off along the way!! I know Gillian kept the statue of a little girl reading a book, but the statue of a girl listening to birds seems to have gone missing. A few days ago, a man whose company demolished the house posted on the EBS homepage, claiming to be in possession of a sundial from the garden.

[Tony Summerfield]

You are right on two accounts here, Eljay. As I am sure you are aware Gillian was always conscious of the background image that she put over in public and obviously death duties for necessity sounds a lot better than Eric Rogers wanting to make a killing! If you manage to find a copy of George Greenfield's book you will be able to read all about Eric Rogers and embezzlement!! He actually did quite well out of the company as apart from his pad in Chelsea he also had a nice place in Switzerland to chill out in when he got bored with his daily dining at the Savoy!!

You are also right that the books went into the Darrell Waters archive and later of course to Chorion, but you are also correct in saying that some things went walkabout before they got there! Over a number of visits I went very carefully through the Darrell Waters archives and I was surprised at the number of books that weren't there and also the condition of some of those that were there - this was later explained to me by Barbara Stoney.

[Moonraker]

Thanks for providing that link, Eljay; I will take a good look at the content later.

On another note, Madpants, I am mystified why your avatar keeps coming and going.

[Julie2owlsdene]

So far I've managed to watch the 'Success Story, 1974, and thought that the opening scenes of Green Hedges being demonished was so so sad Such a beautiful house and to see it being destroyed for greed in this way is criminal. I have to say, I am so glad that I thought about painting a picture of this lovely property as my own personnal keep sake for ever.

I'm getting through the rest of the archive footage, slowly but sure. Thanks for posting the links.

[Anita Bensoussane]

There is some amazing stuff in the BBC Archive and, like Julie, I'm savouring it slowly. So far, the only thing I've listened to properly is A Childlike Person - a portrait of Enid Blyton by her friends and relatives (Radio 4, 1975). It was fascinating to hear Barbara Stoney narrating and to hear the voices not only of Gillian Baverstock and Imogen Smallwood, but other people who figured in Enid Blyton's life such as her brother Hanly, Phyllis Chase (schoolfriend and illustrator), Dick Hughes (chauffeur/handyman at Old Thatch), George Greenfield (literary agent) and Eric Rogers (who helped run Darrell Waters Ltd. and allegedly made sure his own pockets were very well lined!) I wonder whether this programme was compiled partly using interviews recorded by Barbara Stoney for her Biography?

Hanly gave us a glimpse of the wilful, determined Enid as a young girl when he spoke of how Enid as a child was not at all docile, as girls were expected to be in those days, but would argue heatedly with her parents.

Also interesting was that those who knew Hugh Pollock, Enid's first husband, seemed to like him very much, with Phyllis Chase describing him as "cultured, sincere and nice" and Dick Hughes saying he was a "gentleman," to the point where he became "a bit of a fool" by treating Enid with kid gloves and acting as though she could never do or say anything wrong. I found it moving to hear Gillian talking of her love for her father and how they both hated the move to Green Hedges from the idyllic Old Thatch near the river.

Gillian had not guessed that anything was wrong between her parents, before they divorced. Dick Hughes confirmed that the Pollocks were adept at keeping up appearances (the done thing in those days and in their situation I suppose, especially in front of the staff and the children) and that on the surface they were the image of a happy family. The adult world was not allowed to impinge on the world of the nursery - an impression one gets strongly from books like The Very Big Secret, where the children are confined for much of the day to a playroom at the bottom of the garden and know nothing of their mother's pregnancy until after the baby is born.

When Kenneth first began calling at Green Hedges, Enid Blyton apparently told Gillian that he was "a sort of distant cousin"! Early in their marriage, when Enid and Kenneth were adjusting to their life together, they used to row and, understandably, Gillian feared that they too would break up.

Both Imogen and Gillian made some pertinent points about their mother's work. Imogen said that, when Enid Blyton first began writing, the things she wrote "were very worthwhile from an intellectual point of view. Later on, her work could well be called banal." I found Gillian's comment thought-provoking too - that if Enid Blyton had had a normal childhood she might have matured more fully and ended up writing novels for adults. As things were, whenever she tried writing for adults she found that she had nothing in her subconscious to draw upon and she would have to plan out the story ponderously, unlike when writing for children.

I look forward to delving into the Archive again when I get the time. It's great that the BBC have made all this material available.

Anita

[Anita Bensoussane]

Last night I listened to Sue McGregor interviewing Enid Blyton for Woman's Hour (first broadcast in 1974 according to the Archive, though the interview must obviously have been recorded considerably earlier!) I was surprised by Enid Blyton's remark that "My father was a writer and I wanted to be a writer too." I hadn't known that Thomas Blyton was a writer. Was he a published author, I wonder, or did he just write for his own amusement or to entertain family and friends, or maybe for a newsletter or something like that? Barbara Stoney mentions that he "wrote poetry" but doesn't give any further details.

Enid Blyton mistakenly referred to the Famous Five as "five children," but that's an easy enough slip-up to make. She also said that her books had been translated into 66 languages. The TV programme Success Story (made in 1974), which I also listened to yesterday, said that Enid Blyton was the third most-translated author in the world and that her books had been translated into 128 languages. I'm not sure if either of those figures is accurate but, in our own "How Many Languages?" thread, we've only managed to list about 35 languages so far:

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... =languages" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The opening of Success Story was very poignant, with the footage of Green Hedges being demolished. What a pity we didn't see any film of the house as it was before the builders started work!

It was a joy to watch art critic William Feaver talking of how he sat down with a Blyton book each evening (and a Blyton-style feast!) in an attempt to work out why the books attracted so much criticism, only to find them "beautifully written, straight off the top, breathless and artless." Later, he described collecting the books as "a buyer's market" and said he had just picked up 40 good-condition Enid Blyton books with dustwrappers, many of them first editions, for 50p at a sale. How times have changed!

Brian Alderson, children's book editor for The Times, felt that Blyton's stories didn't have much to them – "…there is practically nothing there beyond the incidents which she constructed so well" – and claimed that children would get more out of six Rudyard Kipling books than six hundred Enid Blyton books! It's strange that he considered her handling of dialogue to be poor. The natural-sounding dialogue of her characters is one of her strengths, I think. Good for the lady quoted after Brian Alderson, who asserted that Enid was actually very skilled at capturing children's conversation!

I felt Colin Welch was exaggerating somewhat in his criticism of the Little Nodding Man when he spoke of "Noddy’s imbecility" and his "timidity, which borders on the pathological." Noddy isn't my favourite character either and I'm tired of so much emphasis being put on Noddy compared to Enid Blyton's other creations, but I wouldn't be quite that cruel about the little fellow! I was delighted to hear Gillian Baverstock (who was in her early forties when she appeared in this programme) pointing out that, as far as Enid Blyton was concerned, Noddy was not the major part of her work and that "Noddy is given a place which he doesn't in fact deserve." Hurrah for Gillian!

I was interested in Gillian's statement that Enid Blyton used to take rough copies of her books and proofs of illustrations along when talking to children about how she wrote her stories. Apparently, she would also hold up a spool of rainbow-coloured thread and say that writing a story was like pulling the thread off the spool - she never knew what colour (i.e. what part of the story) was going to come next. Enid obviously realised (perhaps from her days as a teacher) how useful visual aids could be when giving a talk.

I noticed that when she was discussing how her mother's work came under scrutiny in the 1950s, Gillian referred to Kenneth Darrell Waters as "My father" (rather than "my stepfather" or "Uncle Kenneth") and, soon afterwards, referred to Hugh Pollock as "her [i.e. Enid's] first husband."

It made me laugh when one woman remarked that, after reading Enid Blyton, children living in inner-city areas in the 1970s would write stories full of sentences like, "I say, Jocelyn, look at all those jolly daffodils!" That reminded me of the stories I wrote as a child, which were invariably about children called Nora, Donald, Doreen and Lennie even though real-life friends were called Tracey, Wayne, Julie and Mark.

How wonderful to see bundles of Knight paperback copies of Five Go to Billycock Hill coming off the production line at the end of the programme. And of course, copies are still being printed and bought as we speak. The "Success Story" continues...

Anita

[Lucky Star]

Good write up Anita. I also enjoyed the Success Story programme. I had to laugh at the man at the Scottish Book club meeting who described Blyton as "Literary Mince"!! he meant that there was no real meat to get one's teeth into but he was well howled down by some of the ladies. Good for them.

I also listened to the two radio programmes. I didn't notice Blyton's blooper about the FF being five children but I did notice that in the 1963 Womens Hour broadcast Blyton said that, apart from George, most of her characters were imaginary. In the Sue McGregor 1974 broadcast she said that many of her characters were based on real people and that she was always looking for interesting children to base characters on. Bit of a discrepancy there I thought. The truth probably lies somewhere in between I suppose.

It was indeed very sad to see Green Hedges being pulled down. I wonder if any footage of it before destruction still exists.

[Eljay]

If you manage to find a copy of George Greenfield's book you will be able to read all about Eric Rogers and embezzlement!! He actually did quite well out of the company as apart from his pad in Chelsea he also had a nice place in Switzerland to chill out in when he got bored with his daily dining at the Savoy!!

Not so different from many of today's MPs then! Were he alive today, I'm sure he would have gone into politics. He would have been in his element among the corrupt Westminster elite!!

Anita, Petermax, Moonraker and Julie: you're welcome! I only came across that link by chance, while I was "Googling" for something else. I've had the two interviews on cassette for years, so they're nothing new to me. I was about to put them online for everyone to hear, but obviously there's no point now! In fact, that's how I found the BBC's online "Blyton Archive"... The first interview on my cassette is labelled 'Home for the Day', but recent newspaper stories about Enid Blyton being banned by the BBC say that her first appearance was on 'Woman's Hour'. I wanted to be sure which programmes the interviews were from before uploading them, and a quick "Google" told me that 'Home for the Day' was the Sunday edition of 'Woman's Hour' (broadcast on the Home Service, whereas 'Woman's Hour' was on the Light Programme). Confusion gone! Well, almost: my tape says the first interview was broadcast on 11th November 1962, while the online BBC Archive says 13th January 1963 - I suppose the only way to find out for certain would be to check the 'Radio Times' for those dates. The second interview is also from 'Woman's Hour' (23rd September 1974, as both the online Archive and my cassette say), but made in 1966 (which the online Archive doesn't mention!).

It's great that the BBC has "re-mastered" the interviews to improve the sound quality. My copies (transferred straight from the archive) have pops and crackles, indicating that the recordings are held by the BBC on scratchy gramophone records (in those days tapes were too big and expensive to store for long, so radio programmes were usually archived onto record and TV programmes onto film). Such imperfections can now easily be removed using computer software, magically restoring the recordings to virtually how they would have sounded when first broadcast from the original tapes!

[Anita Bensoussane]

...in the 1963 Womens Hour broadcast Blyton said that, apart from George, most of her characters were imaginary. In the Sue McGregor 1974 broadcast she said that many of her characters were based on real people and that she was always looking for interesting children to base characters on. Bit of a discrepancy there I thought. The truth probably lies somewhere in between I suppose.

I'll have to keep my ears open for that when I get round to listening to the 1963 broadcast!

I've had the two interviews on cassette for years.....The first interview on my cassette is labelled 'Home for the Day', but recent newspaper stories about Enid Blyton being banned by the BBC say that her first appearance was on 'Woman's Hour'.....a quick "Google" told me that 'Home for the Day' was the Sunday edition of 'Woman's Hour' (broadcast on the Home Service, whereas 'Woman's Hour' was on the Light Programme). Confusion gone! Well, almost: my tape says the first interview was broadcast on 11th November 1962, while the online BBC Archive says 13th January 1963 - I suppose the only way to find out for certain would be to check the 'Radio Times' for those dates. The second interview is also from 'Woman's Hour' (23rd September 1974, as both the online Archive and my cassette say), but made in 1966 (which the online Archive doesn't mention!)

Thanks for the additional details, Eljay. It's interesting to know that the second interview took place in 1966, only a couple of years before Enid Blyton died.

Anita

[Eljay]

There is some amazing stuff in the BBC Archive and, like Julie, I'm savouring it slowly. So far, the only thing I've listened to properly is A Childlike Person - a portrait of Enid Blyton by her friends and relatives (Radio 4, 1975). It was fascinating to hear Barbara Stoney narrating and to hear the voices not only of Gillian Baverstock and Imogen Smallwood, but other people who figured in Enid Blyton's life such as her brother Hanly, Phyllis Chase (schoolfriend and illustrator), Dick Hughes (chauffeur/handyman at Old Thatch), George Greenfield (literary agent) and Eric Rogers (who helped run Darrell Waters Ltd. and allegedly made sure his own pockets were very well lined!) I wonder whether this programme was compiled partly using interviews recorded by Barbara Stoney for her Biography?

I didn't realise that was Barbara narrating at first! Her voice sounds higher than in more recent recordings, which I suppose is to be expected as one's voice lowers with age. After seeing her name in the list of 'contributors' I was waiting for her to be interviewed, but she didn't come... Then I guessed that she must be the narrator! I'm surprised she didn't go into broadcasting, because she had a great radio voice. It would be lovely listening to her reading her Biography of Enid Blyton, complete and unabridged! A pity no audio book publisher or radio station thought of making such a recording. Radio 4 could have serialised it in parts - although they would have abridged it, as books usually are for radio.

I think 'A Childlike Person' is one of the best programmes ever made about Enid Blyton, because of Barbara narrating and because it contains interviews with several people who knew Enid closely (presumably all now deceased, except for Imogen?). What a shame it wasn't made for television! Barbara's narration does indeed suggest that she herself conducted the interviews for her Biography, in which case there might be plenty of unused material - which I assume is now safely in the Society's hands and may eventually see the light of day?

I heard 'A Fine Defence...' last year, and I haven't listened to the 1997 programme yet. I remember missing it when it originally aired because I was on holiday abroad! (Fortunately, setting a timer to record radio programmes is now no problem, thanks to Sky TV and Freeview carrying all national radio stations!) But I know it won't be as good as 'A Childlike Person', because its interviewees are mostly fans or critics, not people who knew Enid, so I'm in no great hurry to hear that one either. The 'Success Story' TV programme (which was reviewed in an old 'Green Hedges' magazine, some might remember) is nothing exciting at all - just something hastily put together and done on the cheap, it seems. Barbara Stoney was a consultant on that programme, but as her Biography was yet to be published she was only able to supply them with the very briefest of biographical details about Enid; to do otherwise would have been unfair to her publishers and to those who would buy the book. The only interesting part is the film of Green Hedges at the beginning, bits of which were re-used in later Blyton documentaries on ITV ('The Selling of Noddy', 1987) and Channel 4 ('Secret Lives', 1996).

Gillian had not guessed that anything was wrong between her parents, before they divorced. Dick Hughes confirmed that the Pollocks were adept at keeping up appearances (the done thing in those days and in their situation I suppose, especially in front of the staff and the children) and that on the surface they were the image of a happy family. The adult world was not allowed to impinge on the world of the nursery - an impression one gets strongly from books like The Very Big Secret, where the children are confined for much of the day to a playroom at the bottom of the garden and know nothing of their mother's pregnancy until after the baby is born.

I haven't heard of that book. I must look it up! It's always fascinating to make parallels such as this.

Both Imogen and Gillian made some pertinent points about their mother's work. Imogen said that, when Enid Blyton first began writing, the things she wrote "were very worthwhile from an intellectual point of view. Later on, her work could well be called banal." I found Gillian's comment thought-provoking too - that if Enid Blyton had had a normal childhood she might have matured more fully and ended up writing novels for adults. As things were, whenever she tried writing for adults she found that she had nothing in her subconscious to draw upon and she would have to plan out the story ponderously, unlike when writing for children.

It's interesting to hear Imogen giving some very tactful character and literary criticisms of her mother - several years before she did so explicitly in her autobiography/biography, 'A Childhood at Green Hedges', and before she had even read Barbara's book (and therefore, before she knew the full story of her mother's life).

I look forward to delving into the Archive again when I get the time. It's great that the BBC have made all this material available.

Indeed! The BBC is now certainly making up for its long neglect of Blyton! However, as the intention seems to be to include *every* BBC television and radio programme about her, I'm surprised they haven't included the 1992 TV special, 'Sunny Stories'. And what about the wonderful 'Blue Peter' Centenary special from 1997? I think I still have that on tape somewhere... It featured Gillian in a small acting role!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I agree, Eljay, that Secret Lives wasn't anywhere near as interesting as A Childlike Person, although the footage of Green Hedges being demolished was poignant and it was also good to see Gillian Baverstock and hear her comments.

The Very Big Secret is rather a bizarre story in some respects. I only came across it as an adult but I'm not sure what I'd have made of it if I'd read it as a child.

It is odd that the BBC haven't included the 1992 Sunny Stories programme in the Archive, but perhaps they're only including progammes that they're not likely to broadcast again? Sunny Stories was last shown a couple of weeks ago, after the Enid drama, though unfortunately it was severely abridged.

I've now listened to Home for the Day: Woman's Hour (1963), part of which I'd heard before. I'm surprised that Enid Blyton managed to fit in four hours of piano practice a day as a teenager. No wonder it became a chore if her heart wasn't really in it!

Marjorie Anderson remarked on Enid's modesty: "Her modesty, a kind of innocent quality, is one of the most striking things about her." Enid was certainly modest in her description of herself as a schoolgirl: "That was the only thing I was really very...any good at in my schoolwork, I think, writing...essay writing, story writing." Phyllis Chase commented in A Childlike Person that Enid excelled in almost every subject at school! Yet at the same time Enid Blyton's ambitions were anything but modest. She was very sure of herself as a writer and educator and, at times, spoke with an almost Messianic zeal of herself as a woman with a mission, declaring in the programme that her most important quality was "my ability to get right to the hearts of children and enable them to see things in the right way."

On to Queen of Adventure (1997). In that programme, Peter Hunt pointed out that children don't normally come to Enid Blyton with any preconceptions and that they take her work seriously and absorb all kinds of influences from it. And from listening to what children say about reading Enid Blyton's books years after they were first published, I think there is a tendency for them to giggle at some of the old-fashioned words and phrases used - "I say," "dear little," "jolly decent of you," etc. - but that entering a different world is all part of the enjoyment and doesn't detract from the stories or from the ideas and values they contain - i.e. that things like courage, self-responsibility, honesty, owning up to wrong-doing and facing up to troubles are admirable.

Jan Mark's comments, that Enid Blyton's work was "thin gruel to set before children" and that Blyton "had no interest at all in language...the language was simply the materials with which she told the story" were exaggerated, I thought. It's true that Enid wrote at speed and didn't always stop to think of the most precise word to convey something, and that her vocabulary could be repetitive, but she obviously enjoyed language and there is much in her books that is rhythmic and playful. In particular she often makes use of onomatopoeia and she also captures the colourful speech of working-class characters in a lively manner.

Imogen Smallwood made some revealing statements in the programme, such as the fact that she wasn't allowed to go to "my mother's part of the house" as a child. She also spoke of how Enid's father had enthused his daughter and appreciated her brilliance as no one else ever had. Later in the programme, it was suggested that Enid Blyton needed the approbation of her fans in order to feel secure, which I felt was an insightful comment.

The programme also put forward the idea that Enid Blyton was forced to increase her output towards the end of her writing career as she needed to earn more money after having paid insufficient tax for several years. I don't think I'd heard before that that had had a direct effect on her productivity?

Enid Blyton apparently left £283,000 on her death in 1968. I wonder what that would be in today's money?

Anita

[Tony Summerfield]

I agree, Eljay, that Secret Lives wasn't anywhere near as interesting as A Childlike Person, although the footage of Green Hedges being demolished was poignant and it was also good to see Gillian Baverstock and hear her comments.

Anita

A Freudian slip here, I think you meant Success Story not Secret Lives!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, I did! I would like to watch Secret Lives again though, despite the fact that it's said to be a very negative programme. I haven't seen it since it was shown on television many years ago.

Anita

[Anita Bensoussane]

Some of the earlier links to the BBC archives no longer work, so I'm posting up-to-date links here:

Letters: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/blytonandt ... ndex.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

TV and radio programmes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/blyton/index.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;