Her Golden Years

[Paul Austin]

Didn't the forum poster Green Hedges say that Enid's "companion" when writing Banshee Towers was her advancing dementia and that that is partly why the book is so poor?

[Julie2owlsdene]

I guess we'll never really know! We must also remember that there was a gap between Strange Messages and Banshee Towers of four years. Enid could easily have lost the flow of her fabulous Mystery Series not having written for that length of time. It's quite easy to forget one book from another even after not writing for 12 months! I think she did extremely well writing so many books in the first place.

[Moonraker]

More speculation.

[Sally]

I have also often pondered about her best year and it is difficult to assess. 1951-54 were apparently her most prolific years in terms of turnout and this included in 1952 The Rubadub Mystery, The Circus of Adventure and The Mystery of the Strange Bundle, all particular favourites of mine. Having said that 1948 was another favourite year, producing the Sea of Adventure and Mystery of the Hidden House and of course 1949 heralded the start of the wonderful R Mysteries, one of her best series for me. I personally loved River of Adventure, written in 1955, and think this showed that she wasn't losing her touch at this stage, despite the gap after Circus of 3 years. I still find River quite moving at times in the scenes involving Oola and his treatment and amazing courage and loyalty. Enid obviously knew this was to be the last of the series but it ended with a cracker in my opinion and probably the only series which did, the others all producing weaker offerings.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I love The River of Adventure too, Sally, though I don't rate it as highly as Valley or Sea - and possibly Castle. However, there is one series in which the final book (of six) is my favourite - I'm thinking of the St. Clare's series, in which Fifth Formers of St. Clare's, 1945, is the best by far for me. It's skilfully constructed with engaging characters, intriguing storylines and plenty of humour and drama, and the different plot strands are woven beautifully together. The final book in the Galliano's Circus series is my favourite too (Circus Days Again, 1942), as is the last of the full-length Faraway Tree books (The Folk of the Faraway Tree, 1946) but those are trilogies so there aren't as many titles to compare, and in both those series I like the first two books almost as much as the last.

[Moonraker]

Those last books were probably so good as they were written in the 40s. It makes me wonder why Enid didn't write a further Faraway Tree or Galliano book... It seems the books written in the 60s were the worst.

[Paul Austin]

She seems to have hated the city and loved the country life: