Even the offensive bits.

Well, sure. And I love Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers without buying into the really cringe-making reflexive class consciousness (and deeply offensive “swarthy Johnny foreigner up to no good” balls) that hasn’t aged at all well. Hell, even at the time nobody would have mistaken The Famous Five and Secret Seven books for social realism — who would have read them if they were? Could you imagine how divinely decadent all that gorging would have been as a child in a world of post-war austerity.

I agree – also why could we not write whole new books along the same lines, rather than rewriting Blyton? Surely her books stand as a historical artefact now, as much as stories and what would be so wrong with giving kids a chance to experience the language, the attitudes, the life of the time period of Blyton’s writing?

Blyton was already totally anachronistic when I was a kid but plenty of other kids I knew loved the books.

Grrr… I’m doing my Public Address Radio piece this week on the subject. I don’t much like children, but I have a healthy respect for their intelligence. Bloody shame Hodders doesn’t feel the same.

And we’re not exactly talking James Joyce or Chaucer in the original here. It’s not that hard to figure out unfamiliar 50′s idioms from the context, which children have to do a lot as part of acquiring language skills anyway.

Yes these days I tend to mostly only read the winner if it’s something I think I’ll enjoy – like Wolf Hall last year which turned out to be a wonderful read.