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BSA: Boarding benefit from Blyton boom

Thursday, 21, Aug 2008 12:00

It’s not surprising Enid Blyton is emerging as the favourite children’s author of all time. My own copies of ‘Mallory Towers’ became heirlooms which I passed on to my own daughter. I will never forget the desperate saving of pocket money to buy the hard backs a lifetime ago – they cost seven shillings and six pence each, and it felt like a fortune when you were lucky to get five shillings as a birthday present from a favourite aunt.

But the books transported children who did not attend boarding schools to the 1950s equivalent of Hogwarts – i.e. a boarding school where your heroine excelled herself in everything that mattered and had a complete life separate from her family. Very little homesickness in the books, as I recall, but lots of friendships and adventures after dark, and treks down the cliff path to the pool which was filled twice a day by the tide.

Hogwarts, for a different age, is actually much darker, for obvious magical reasons, and Harry certainly has more demons to confront than Darrell Rivers ever faced!

But Rowling and Blyton may both be responsible for more children and parents happily taking to the boarding life, with numbers up for the first time in three years.

And modern boarding is highly unlikely to have a freezing sea-water pool!

Hilary Moriarty

National Director

Boarding Schools’ Association

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