Your Top 3 Famous Five Books?

[Chrissie777]

I always liked "Secret Trail" and "Finniston Farm", neither of which generally get high ratings. Both have twins in them, which may be the reason. I was always a sucker for twins books.

One of the best novels about twins was "Deceptions" and (the even better) sequel "A Tangled Web" by Judith Michael.

[Chrissie777]

Chrissie, Mr Luffy is in Five Go Off To Camp.
He's the (absent minded) teacher from Julian and Dick's school who is into Butterfly / Beatle collecting, and he takes the children camping with him during that holiday.

Thanks, Bertie. That explains why I don't remember him. I haven't read "Camp" in many decades, I never liked it (and "Caravan" neither).

[Bertie]

I'm not a big fan of 'Caravan' either, Chrissie. It's my least favourite of the very strong first 8 FF books. The story itself is OK, but not as strong as the other early ones. And I hate reading about the cruelty to Pongo and Barker.
But I really enjoy reading 'Five Go Off To Camp'. Jock and Mr Luffy are two good characters. And it's one of the funnier FF books as well as being quite an interesting mystery.

[Lucky Star]

Caravan and Camp are both excellent to me. The villains in caravan are genuinely nasty and scary which I think imparts a sense of realism to the book. And Camp is classic what with the spook train and the deserted railway yards and the moors.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I like both those books too, especially Five Go Off in a Caravan as everything is so gorgeously dreamy and idyllic in the beginning, only to turn truly terrifying as events unfold. Nobby (I accidentally typed 'Noddy' at first!) is one of my favourite supporting characters in the Famous Five books, and Pongo is perhaps my favourite Famous Five animal.

[Courtenay]

I see a while ago I declined to give an opinion in this thread because I hadn't read all the Famous Five books... and I still haven't. But out of the ones I have read, my top 3 would be:

Five on a Treasure Island — absolute classic and a brilliant start to the series

Five Run Away Together — heaps of fun to have another Kirrin Island adventure and the Sticks are among Enid's most memorable baddies!

Five Go Down to the Sea — not as popular in general, I know, but I always absolutely loved Clopper the pantomime horse, especially the part where Julian and Dick get stuck inside him!!

An honourable mention must go to Five Go to Smuggler's Top, as it's unforgettably atmospheric — Block has got to be one of the most sinister villains (in contrast with the Sticks, who are much more played for laughs) and I remember the thought of straying off the path and sinking forever into those marshes terrified me as a child. Five Go Off to Camp has a similar level of creepiness, with the spook trains and the blocked-up tunnel, and I remember it also giving me the chills — in an exciting way, of course — but as an adult, I'm afraid I find it a bit too hard to get my suspension-of-disbelief over the sheer staggering absurdity of the plot. The amount of time it takes to start up a steam engine from cold would make it just about THE most impractical vehicle for transporting smuggled goods, especially over such a short distance. Not to mention that, unlike keeping the goods in farm trucks or sneaking them into the cargo of an ordinary daytime train, the spook train isn't exactly an unobtrusive and easily concealed means of transport!!!

[Moonraker]

The amount of time it takes to start up a steam engine from cold would make it just about THE most impractical vehicle for transporting smuggled goods, especially over such a short distance. Not to mention that, unlike keeping the goods in farm trucks or sneaking them into the cargo of an ordinary daytime train, the spook train isn't exactly an unobtrusive and easily concealed means of transport!!!

If they had to use the railway, a class 08 shunter would be ideal.



I must say though, reading the book as a child, I never considered the absurdity of the modus operandi.

[pete9012S]

Thank you Nigel - beautiful picture.
On a good day, with the wind behind him, dear friend John Pickup in many ways reminds me of a class eight shunter!

Powerful, noble, industrious and full of steam...

[Splodj]

I think the 08 shunter entered service in 1953, 5 years after the book appeared. Also if the smugglers had put in an order for a shunter it might have attracted unwanted attention.

What intrigued me was the ventilation shaft that Timmy fell down. Why was there not a mesh or something? They were just inviting people to drop in.

[Debbie]

I always thought the use of the steam engines was much more about scaring the locals and keeping them away than the ease of transporting the goods.

However it would still have been pretty impractical.

[Courtenay]

I always thought the use of the steam engines was much more about scaring the locals and keeping them away than the ease of transporting the goods.

... which has to work on the assumption that all the locals are gormless and superstitious and will be too terrified to investigate a "spook train" on the derelict railway at night, rather than being smart like the Famous Five and realising something must be "up" and going to investigate! It's just... really not the world's cleverest way to conduct a smuggling operation, even without the sheer impracticalities of running the steam engine.

I should add none of this entered my head either as a 6- or 7-year-old reader with zero knowledge of steam railways!! But there are enough "steam buffs" out there, even among youngsters — and probably even more so back when the majority of railways were steam powered — that I would now think, surely when the book was first written, at least some of Enid's audience would have realised she clearly had no idea about steam engines...

[Hannah]

What intrigued me was the ventilation shaft that Timmy fell down. Why was there not a mesh or something? They were just inviting people to drop in.

There were iron bars but it seems that they weren't checked so it wasn't noticed that these ones were broken.

George tugged at the tufts of heather, and then suddenly she saw what the curious mound was. It was a built-up vent-hole for the old tunnel - a place where the smoke came curling out in the days when trains ran there often. It had been barred across with iron, but the bars had rusted and fallen in, and heather had grown thickly over them.

[Splodj]

There were iron bars but it seems that they weren't checked

Thanks for that. Sounds like they didn't have a very good track maintenance team!

[Hannah]

They probably didn't think of the vents after the train lines were closed.

[Moonraker]

In reality, the track would have been lifted very soon after line-closure, the tunnel portals and the vents sealed.