Enid Blyton (25 page)

There have been several changes in the handling of Enid’s business affairs during the past decade. It was in February 1996 that the shareholders of Darrell Waters Limited, mostly members of the family, decided to sell all the Enid Blyton copyrights to the London-based leisure group Trocadero plc (later to become known as the ‘old’ Chorion) for the princely sum of £14.6 million. The name was then changed to Enid Blyton Limited and Gillian became one of the members of the new board. Until that time, Darrell Waters Limited had run the company dealing with Enid’s considerable business assets since its formation in 1950 and Imogen and Gillian had, during its latter years, both served on its board. In 1982, during this period under Darrell Waters’ management, it was decided that a charitable trust should be established in Enid’s name to help children in need, as her clubs and, indeed, Enid herself had done previously. Imogen was its first chairman and The Enid Blyton Trust for Children continues today with Sophie Smallwood, Imogen’s daughter, at its head.

Chorion plc was established in May 2002 after the previously AIM-listed company, ‘old’ Chorion, had demerged into two separate AIM-listed entities – Chorion plc and Urbium plc. Chorion plc, having acquired majority shares in Agatha Christie Limited and the plays of Robert Bolt in 1998 and of George Simenon Limited in 2001, went on to acquire worldwide author rights in the works of Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, Nicholas Freeling, Raymond Chandler and Roger Hargreaves (of the
Mr Men
and
Little Miss
series). This made it a media content company with a portfolio of crime and children’s brands of which Enid Blyton Limited remained at the core. What Enid would have made of having such a diverse collection of writers as bedfellows we shall never know. In May 2006, with the agreement of the shareholders, Chorion plc reverted to private ownership following a take-over by Planet Acquisitions. The new company, Chorion Limited, continues to own all the works and copyrights previously owned by Chorion plc and the business continues unchanged.

In 1992, Darrell Waters Limited had acquired the full copyright in all the original Noddy illustrations (Harmsen van der Beek and other artists’ work) which from then on brought both copyrights under one ownership. Later that same year a sixty-five-part stop-frame animation series entitled
Noddy,
based on the original stories, was produced by the BBC and launched on children’s television and merchandise; magazines and TV tie-in books followed. Chorion plc continued to promote Noddy further and in 2000 went on to produce a new 100-episode, computer-generated series entitled
Make Way for Noddy
with new storylines, which – at the time of writing - is showing on Channel 5 and in America. Noddy plays have also toured the UK and a special show
Noddy Live
was presented at Wembley Arena in 2005. Together with the publishing, magazines, merchandise, television, video and DVD releases and interactive computer games, the Noddy audience has broadened throughout the world.
Say It With Noddy,
a language teaching programme for young children, is also being screened at present on Channel 5 and overseas, introducing languages as diverse as Mandarin and Swahili.

Over the years, many of Enid’s other titles have been released as readings and dramatisations, in English and other languages, on records, audio cassettes and CDs and their success has earned several gold and platinum awards. Films and television series have included two black and white
Famous Five
cinema films, two
Famous Five
television series (released later on video) and two Danish
Famous Five
feature films. An
Island of Adventure
feature film was produced by Ebefilms Limited in 1982 and a television
Castle of Adventure
by TVS in 1990. Video releases of all the films have followed. Polygram brought out an animated series of
The Faraway Tree
and
Wishing Chair
(under the umbrella title
Enchanted Lands)
which was shown on BBC children’s television in 1996–7 and later released on video. In 2000 a reading of
The Enchanted Wood
by actress Kate Winslet was recorded for audio cassettes. The
Adventure
series and
Secret
series were both filmed for television in New Zealand by Cloud Nine and have been shown on Channel 5 as well as overseas, with video releases. There has also been a Famous Five Musical performed at the King’s Head Theatre at Islington in London which then toured the UK the following year.

Other documentaries or drama/documentaries about Enid’s life have also been shown. The first was
Story Teller Extraordinary
which was broadcast in 1974 as part of the
Success Story
series for BBC1. This was followed by
The Selling of Noddy
in 1986,
Sunny Stories
in the BBC2
Bookmark
programme in 1992 and
Secret Lives
on Channel 4 in 1996. Radio programmes have included
A Childlike Person
for BBC Radio 4 in 1975,
Once upon a Time with Enid Blyton
for BBC Radio 2 in 1997 and a Radio Netherlands international award-winning
Enid Blyton – the 20th Century Mother Goose
in 2003.

Since this biography was first published in 1974, other books dealing with her life have included:
The Enid Blyton Story
by Bob Mullan (1987), a tie-up to his TVS film
The Selling of Noddy;
two books for children written by Gillian, both entitled
Enid Blyton,
for series issued by separate publishers –
Tell me about Writers
(1997) and
Telling Tales
(2000); Nicholas Reed wrote an illustrated booklet about her early life
Enid Blyton in Beckenham and Bromley
(1997) and her agent, George Greenfield, gave his own interpretation of her work and relationships with those around her in
Enid Blyton
(1998).
The Dorset Days of Enid Blyton
(2002) was written by Vivienne Endecott who runs a ‘Ginger Pop’ shop at Corfe in Dorset devoted to Enid and conducts tours of the sites possibly used in her stories. In 2005 Andrew Norman also wrote
Enid Blyton and her Enchantment with Dorset.
In 1989 Imogen wrote of her own
Childhood at Green Hedges,
which showed very clearly what I had discovered already through my researches – that Enid was, as one of her publishers remarked, ‘often so busy being a mother to the world’s children, she was not always sensitive to the emotional needs of her own.’

Among the books concerning different aspects of her writing since 1974, have been:
The Blyton Phenomenon
(Sheila Ray, 1982);
The Enid Blyton Dossier
(Brian Stewart and Tony Summerfield, 1999);
Who’s Who In Enid Blyton
(Eva Rice, 1997 and 2003) and
Enid Blyton and the Mystery of Children’s Literature
(David Rudd, 2000). Special mention should be made here of another work – the
Comprehensive Bibliography of Enid Blyton
published in 1997 by Tony Summerfield (secretary of the Enid Blyton Society and editor of its
Journal).
This was followed some years later by his current 4-volume illustrated edition. It covers all Enid’s known books, magazines, periodicals, short stories, plays and poems, in addition to details of her publishers and illustrators – the compiling of which involved a highly-specialised investigation into the whereabouts of many of her previously undiscovered works. There is obviously no space here to include Tony’s complete work but I am extremely grateful to him for offering to revise my original 1974 bibliography so as to include some of the information about her books that he has acquired since that time.

When I was putting together my own listed version, I found that many of the titles I had uncovered elsewhere did not appear in the lists belonging to any of the recognised sources including the British Library or other well-known collections. In addition to this, although Enid mentioned in her early account books and diaries the commissions she had received from Birn Bros. (and had, apparently, delivered to them) no titles for that publisher were included. Birns, I was to discover, no longer existed nor did their records, so all I could do was to quote from her diaries which at least made mention of them. Tony has now been able to reveal most of these for the first time. Since the wider use of the internet and more collectors being in touch with each other – many as a result of the formation of the Enid Blyton Society – a number of hitherto unknown but genuine titles have been discovered. Tony has now been able to record these, together with eight Birns’ books found during this year alone – two of which were sold on eBay for £600.

Collectors’ interest in her books increased considerably during the 1990s and, as a result, the Enid Blyton Literary Society was inaugurated in 1995 by collectors Norman Wright, Tony Summerfield and Michael Rouse. This followed the success of an Enid Blyton ‘Day’ organised by Norman Wright in 1993. Other meetings of those interested in her life and works were already being held around the country at that time and the Enid Blyton Book and Ephemera Collectors’ Society had been formed earlier by another collector, Richard Walker. When this came to an end some years later, it was decided to drop the ‘Literary’ from the original title of the one formed in 1995 and from then on it has become widely known as the Enid Blyton Society, which now has its own
Journal
and website:
www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk
.

Michael Rouse left shortly after its formation to concentrate on editing his
Green Hedges Magazine,
a publication which ran for many years before its closure in 2002. The call for material for the first
Enid Blyton Society Journal
in 1996 met with an amazing response and from its first thirty-two-page issue it has continued to flourish and nowadays has full-colour covers and is sixty pages long. The annual Enid Blyton Society Day is also very popular, with a large attendance and an interesting range of speakers. Among these have been Sir Tim Rice, his daughter Eva, Gyles Brandreth, Ken Howard, Mary Cadogan, Sheila Ray, David Rudd, Helen Cresswell and Anne Digby. Gillian, Imogen and I attend regularly and in 2003 all three of us were asked to become official Patrons to the Society.

11 August 1997 marked the centenary of Enid’s birth and the celebrations were launched, in October of the previous year, with a reception at the Victoria and Albert Museum, during which a plan was announced to give an annual award, bearing Enid’s name, to the person judged to have contributed outstanding service to children during the preceding year. This is in the form of a silver statuette of a child reading – a miniature replica of a stone figure that once stood in the garden of Green Hedges. London’s Regent Street celebrated the event that Christmas by including her well-known signature in its decorations and ‘Noddy’ led the parade for the switching-on ceremony.

A replica of Green Hedges was installed in April at Bekonscot, the model village at Beaconsfield, to commemorate the house that was Enid’s home during some of the major years of her writing career. In August, to mark another of her former homes, there was a party in the garden and a blue plaque was placed on the former Elfin Cottage – 83 Shortlands Road, Beckenham. Also in Beckenham, St Christopher’s school marked the occasion with a party during the month of their old pupil’s birth and Gillian unveiled a plaque at Southernhay, the Thompson’s home at Hook in Surrey, where Enid had run her small nursery classes in the early 1920s.

The media gave considerable coverage to the centenary and her publishers at home and overseas launched promotional editions of her best-known series, with full-colour replica dustwrappers and line drawings of the original illustrations. The Royal Mail issued a special set of five postage stamps, each denomination depicting a different one of her various series and other limited editions of First Day Covers, some printed with van der Beek-style illustrations of Noddy and Big Ears.

In 2003 Beaconsfield commemorated Enid’s connection with the town by incorporating a coloured replica of Noddy and Big Ears on one of the illustrated ironwork screens surrounding a small corner of a newly landscaped garden at the front of the Town Hall. On an accompanying plaque describing various aspects of the town’s history, Enid is mentioned as having written some of her best known stories during her residence in Beaconsfield.

Such reminders of Enid and her writings certainly give an indication of how much she has become part of so many people’s lives over the years. It now seems unusual for a day to pass without a reference, somewhere in the world, being made to either her name or the characters in her books. This is generally in derisory or affectionate terms but more often these days with friendly amusement and nostalgia because, for many, her name and the stories she created still conjure up happy memories of their childhood reading.

I have not changed my original assessment of Enid. I still believe she was a talented, hard-working writer for children who, behind the public image she guarded so carefully, was an insecure, complex and often difficult childlike woman whose life was at times far removed from the sunny world she created for herself in her highly successful writings. Emotionally she never matured beyond the unhappy little girl from Beckenham who was not to tell anyone that her beloved father had deserted her for someone who appeared to mean more to him than herself. But this probably led to one of the most important factors in her success – her ability to relate so closely to her child readers.

Barbara Stoney,
May 2006