Britain's best-loved author 2008

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

From today's Daily Telegraph

Tony has given the Society a good plug!

Viv

[Julie2owlsdene]

Glad to see Enid at the top of the list where she belongs. A great achievement Her family must be really proud, as we all are. Well done Enid. You deserve it.

[Ming]

Wow, that is really good news. Well done Enid.

[Pippa-Stef]

I went out and brought the paper when I heard.

haven't had chance to read it yet, but I cheered when I found out!

Richly deserved!

On channel five- the Wright stuff, i think it is, they mentioned the article, and one of them said that they thought Julian was gay! How I laughed!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Great news - long live Enid!

Liked the reference to J. K. Rowling having written "seven and a half" books!

Anita

[Tony Summerfield]

Liked the reference to J. K. Rowling having written "seven and a half" books!

Anita

A bit naughty of me that! I shouldn't really have referred to The Tales of Beedle the Bard as half a book, when it has 128 pages - longer than most Secret Seven books.
For once I was quoted fairly accurately, apart from the bit that said, 'that's part of the appeal to adults today.' I actually said 'children' not 'adults'. It has been that sort of a day, quiet for several weeks and then loads of phone calls. The prize has to go to a BBC local radio station (who I won't name and shame) who urgently wanted contact details for Gillian Baverstock so that they could interview her at lunchtime today!

Various other Blyton related topics are in the pipeline, the next being an article in the Sunday Times next weekend.

[Pippa-Stef]

Various other Blyton related topics are in the pipeline, the next being an article in the Sunday Times next weekend.

Making a note on that!

[Nearby]

Hurrah!

I agree with Tony's statement in the article though. I loved the Harry Potter books, and granted JK Rowling has sparked a new generation of children's imaginations, and encouraged them to read, both which are to be applauded. But you really cannot compare someone who has become an 'overnight' success with someone who churned out popular books for decades, with a output numbering in the several hundreds of books, and whose work still appeals to both children and adults, many years after her death.

[Philip Mannering]

That's a great article! Well done, Blyton.

[Tony Summerfield]

There is quite a bit of press coverage at the moment as a result of this Costa Poll, there was a two page article in The Guardian this moring and various other papers have also covered it. If you put Enid Blyton into Google and then click on News rather than search you will get links to all the latest articles.

[Julie2owlsdene]

Really happy that Enid is getting all this publicity at the moment, she certainly deserves it.

[Petermax]

Just about every tabloid has mentioned Enid Blyton as a result of the poll, and I am pleased to observe no snide comments at all. Allison Pearson, a Daily Mail columnist writes very favourably indeed about the Secret Seven.

(You will need to scroll down)

[Snubby]

Thanks for the links!

"Enid Blyton remains their first true love."

Very true indeed..

[Eddie Muir]

From today's issue of The Independent.

It's great see Enid Blyton at No 1 in the Costa Book Awards survey, as I'm sure you'll all agree.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Golly - there are some rather vitriolic and extreme comments in the Independent article, especially the following paragraph:

But wasn't she a misogynistic, racist snob?

Any basic analysis of Blyton's work suggests so. Characters who step out of their traditional gender roles are hard to find and usually swiftly punished. The single mother who transgressed Blyton's interpretation of men's work (exploring coal holes, etc.) and women's work (making lemonade) by going out to work instead of baking cookies for her greedy son, is punished when her child grows into a delinquent tearaway. Before several politically-correct updates, Golliwogs caused all the trouble in Toytown, once stealing Noddy's beloved car. Blyton's views were considered unacceptable as far back as 1960, when a publisher questioned the "old-fashioned xenophobia" of a story (later rejected) in which the criminality of a group of thieves is explained by nothing more than the fact they are foreign. The strictly middle-class milieu of Blyton's worlds – boarding school, governesses and high teas – is presented as a normal post-war existence.

Exaggerated and inaccurate references to tomboy characters, The Six Bad Boys, Noddy and The Mystery that Never Was. It appears that the journalist who wrote the article (Sophie Morris) has simply Googled for snippets of criticism and cut and pasted them all into one paragraph, rather than actually looking at the books herself!

Anita