I was talking to an extremely well-read American friend and writer a couple of weeks ago and I discovered that not only had he never read Enid Blyton, he'd never even heard of her. OK, he's younger than I am, but I'd never realised Blyton was such a British thing. Like most people of my generation, I devoured her books as a child, despite a growing climate of disapproval: her language was limited, her characterisation non-existent, her undercurrents of bondage and corporal punishment disturbing and potentially harmful. Some schools and libraries went so far as to ban her and I have a vestigial recollection of being looked at askance by a Lichfield librarian as I checked a Blyton out. I must have been six or seven.
I don't remember ever much caring for the ones she wrote for the very young, like Noddy, but I have vivid memories of her re-working of the Pilgrim's Progress, entitled The Land of Far Beyond, and of the Adventure series. You can see one of Stuart Tresilian's wonderfully evocative illustrations and read about a rather interesting link between Blyton's work and arcane Greek sacrificial practices by going to my blog here.
