Really I am so sorry to miss the initial polls.
On this poll I would have voted for Five go Adventuring Again, Five go to Kirrin Island and either Hike or Mystery Moor. Mystery Moor is the first I read and I thought it was extremely creepy.

I agree that Quentin Blake is not the right person to illustrate some of these books.....
Liked The Secret Seven for a winter one, but the star that comes to mind is Five Go Adventuring Again, one of the best in my opinion.

Mr Curton, the guardian of Martin, was pretty horrible too. Not allowing Martin to go to Art School, belittling him and bullying him, forcing him to support his criminal activities, not forgetting trying to soften the children by showing them his television. Lou and Tiger Dan are the most brutal. Fi...

I can't see Julian as an artist. He is too conventional and given the time he grew up he will have been channelled by school to follow a conventional path. University maybe, certainly the armed forces, or perhaps law. Dick wanted to be a doctor in one of the books, if he was clever enough I would im...

I know it is now thought that the Kirrin name mix was Enid's mistake. A school friend of mine (at the same time I was first reading the Famous five books), was the daughter of two cousins and the Mum had the same surname prior to marriage. I remember overhearing my parents talking about the fact, an...

My Father used to tell me of scarlet fever epidemics in the 1930s that resulted in the deaths of several children from his grammar school. One of my uncles caught it as a child in the late 1930s and was in hospital, his parents could only see him through a window and my Grandfather had to have a wee...

In the early 1970s I had a mix of books, but only three of my collection were illustrated by Betty Maxey. It is interesting that I actually preferred the Maxey illustrations, because they looked like children of a similar age to me, not young adults. The first Five book I read was Mystery Moor (Sope...

I've never read any of this series. They sound interesting, think I will see if I can get hold of some.

I agree he would have slipped through the net, especially (haven't read the books) if he travelled around.

In Five Go Adventuring Again, George is initially very disappointed because Christmas for the four of them (& Timmy) had meant to be at Julian, Dick and Anne's in London. They had been plans to go to a pantomime and other such treats, George had never experienced. Someone was taken ill in the fa...

Just a bit about monkeys..... I had an elderly lady student when I was teaching art, she had a monkey. She had found it is a pet shop in a cage suffering, and immediately rescued it. It had the run of her living room and used to lie on her tummy and poo on her, much to the horror of visitors. She wa...

I have always got the impression that he is working on nuclear energy. He say's (or George might) that he is developing a scheme to make light and heat for all mankind. At some point he mentions a "gift to mankind" but people want to take his plans and use them for some nefarious purpose.....

Offal was a mainstay in my house growing up. My mother, who was the same generation as the Famous Five, used to cook a whole tongue if we were having family around. She used to peel all the skin off and then coil it around in a basin with a saucer and weights from the scales on top. I think most of ...

There was a racehorse trainer in the 1950s called Geoffrey Barling.
We had a butcher in the town I grew up in called Crappers!

I have enjoyed reading these comments and some bring back memories of my school years in the 1960s and 70s. Experiences that stick in my mind: I was smacked across my face at primary school and made to stand in the corner for the rest of the morning lesson. I can't really remember what I did to rece...

As a child reading the books I remember (I read the series out of order) noticing differences in the ages as depicted by Eileen Soper. I recall an image of the "children" tied up in Five Go To Mystery Moor and thinking they looked like adults, not my age at all. I was reassured by the imag...