Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

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I have all of them!!!
I have always liked Enid!If I could choose one author to come back to life it would be her!
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

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Great achievement, Secretbear! :)
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Elizabeth Farrell »

Goodness, I love these books. Got them all except the last one, which I have in .pdf form as a download from Amazon. Much cheaper than buying the actual book, though it's still on my to-do list.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

My local market quite often has a secondhand bookstall, and on Saturday I was lucky enough to pick up the first twelve Trebizon books (there are fourteen in total) for 50p each. My sister and I had the first half a dozen or so titles as children and quite enjoyed them, though I preferred the boarding school series by Enid Blyton and Antonia Forest. We also liked A Horse Called September. I only ever read the Trebizon books once as a child so I remember very little except for random incidents regarding a poem, the school magazine, tennis and Rebecca's friend Tish. It'll be interesting to become reacquainted with Trebizon when time allows.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by timv »

Interesting to hear about your Trebizon 'find', Anita; I'm glad to hear that there are still a few copies about! I had great difficulty in finding any when I was writing my final chapter for my current book on British girls' schools fiction , which concluded with the late 1970s and 1980s and featured Anne Digby with the final Antonia Forest 'Marlows' books. Anne Digby tends to get overlooked as a schools author, and her books are a bit short and low on description and sub-plots compared to the 'classics' of the 1920s to 1960s - perhaps the publishers were nervous of lengthy books putting off a less patient readership who wanted a quicker and easier read?

I remember reading one or two when the first of the Trebizon series came out in the late 1970s, in paperback; they were mainstream and promoted enough to get into W H Smiths as well as the more specialist bookshops. From my trawl through those which I could find for my chapter, I see that they veered off the original concentration on Rebecca Mason's potential as a budding author to centre on her teenage tennis prowess and her friend Tish Anderson's hockey teams, with RM even having trouble over a potentially exploitative sponsor who did not mind her having emotional breakdowns on court as it made her 'more saleable' to the media (shrewd flagging up of 'abuse' problems ahead of its time?). Sport tended to take over - presumably in the hope by AD of encouraging girls to take up tennis seriously and reverse Britain's already noticeable falling behind in women's international tennis. (No UK winners of international Grand Slam events from , I think, Virginia Wade at Wimbledon in 1977 to Emma Raducanu's recent success in the US, over 40 years.) Boys as semi-boyfriends also appeared for girls aged 13 to 15, plus boys joyriding in cars, teenagers sneaking out of boarding-school to parties etc, which was realistic for the 1980s but would have horrified old-style authors like Elinor Brent Dyer (and Enid?); and it was a far 'lighter' approach than Antonia Forest's, if equally realistic (eg with incompetent teachers and crooked prefects).

Anne Digby first appeared as a school and ballet story author in magazines and annuals in the early 1960s; I've come across a few of her stories there, eg in 'Girl' annual 1964 and 1965, including what seem to be early versions of her characters in the later book series 'Jill Robinson' about a family at a modern New Town built in the countryside. Quite a few major authors pop up in these in surprising places, eg Monica Edwards and Noel Streatfeild; Enid was not the only one to have a sideline in short stories, which I hope are not going to get forgotten as some are quite good.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

timv wrote: 13 Oct 2021, 08:28I see that they veered off the original concentration on Rebecca Mason's potential as a budding author to centre on her teenage tennis prowess and her friend Tish Anderson's hockey teams...
That's a pity as I find descriptions of sports matches dull - although sport can be used to create some interesting drama, of course, e.g. characters cheating, or doing well and becoming conceited, or damaging someone's sports equipment out of spite, or getting injured, or devoting too much time to sport and neglecting their schoolwork, etc.

timv wrote: 13 Oct 2021, 08:28Anne Digby first appeared as a school and ballet story author in magazines and annuals in the early 1960s; I've come across a few of her stories there, eg in 'Girl' annual 1964 and 1965, including what seem to be early versions of her characters in the later book series 'Jill Robinson' about a family at a modern New Town built in the countryside.
I haven't come across any of Anne Digby's short stories, Tim, but I remember A Horse Called September being serialised as a picture strip in a girls' comic (Tammy, I think) in the early 1980s.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by timv »

There was a serialization of 'First Term at Trebizon' in 'Tammy' magazine in 1984, which I came across while I was checking up on school story serials in comics during the 1960s-80s for my book; and this included some background detail on Rebecca's friends and their families that did not make it into the published book so maybe some of the background was left out then (or added for the comic version).

Anne Digby also did a serial about an exploited would-be Olympic teenage horsewoman , her horse , and the latter's crooked tycoon owner (who in the best tradition of fiction was an unscrupulous money-maker out to bully and blackmail his way to getting what he wanted),' Olympia Jones' in 1976-7 in 'Tammy' - this is partly available online at the comics material resource website 'A Resource On Jinty' , dated 17/01/2010, as 'olympia-jones-1976-1977'. The tycoon is probably an early inspiration for dodgy millionaire Freddy Exton, father of the poem-plagiarising prefect Elizabeth, in the first Trebizon book; AD had 'pushy' and 'bad example' parents with a lot of money but not much sense, in the tradition of Enid's Mr Jones.

The sport storylines in the later Trebizon series focussed as much on the intrigue behind choosing the team captains and members as on the actual matches, apart from one or two of the latter for drama eg at the end of books. Anne Digby has always been good at depicting relationships and feuds between groups, though sometimes the intricate details of these tended to take up rather a lot of the books and later in the series AD rather pushed Rebecca's other friends apart from sporty tomboy Tish and the 'sports girls' into the background. Mara the Greek heiress got a good part of the action (and the inevitable kidnap attempt story) but Sally/ 'Elf' and the West Indian girl Margot had very little part in most stories, which was a bit of a let-down; Enid and EBD were always careful to 'spread out' their use of characters more and put in a few side-plots. AD did focus on the problems of some other, younger new girls who were from state schools and 'out of their depth' and had the girls doing charity fund-raising (and battling a land-grabbing property-developer) , so there was a degree of social realism. The series was thus more than a footnote to the long-running school story tradition and deserves to be better known; some of it but not all was republished a few years ago.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

It's interesting to hear about the 1984 Tammy serialisation of First Term at Trebizon, Tim. I was fourteen by then and no longer read Tammy (or Jinty, another favourite girls' paper). Olympia Jones (1976-77) came too early as my sister and I didn't start subscribing to Tammy until a little later.

It'll be fun to read the later Trebizon books for the first time as I think my sister and I only got as far as Tennis Term (Book 6) when we were children. We had the Granada paperbacks with illustrations by Gavin Rowe. Unfortunately, the editions I picked up on Saturday are Puffin paperbacks dating from 1988 - 1990 and they don't have any internal illustrations. The Garry Walton covers for the Puffin versions are rather bland and uninspiring too on the whole, though I do like the cover of Fifth Year Friendships.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I've just read the first three Trebizon titles after a gap of forty-odd years, and I'm struck by how thinly-plotted the stories are compared to Enid Blyton's Naughtiest Girl, St. Clare's and Malory Towers books. Enid Blyton has many strands going on at once, involving a whole host of girls, and weaves them skilfully together. Anne Digby tends to focus on one main plotline - school magazine skulduggery in First Term at Trebizon, Tish behaving oddly towards Sue because of a secret in Second Term at Trebizon, and a dodgy teacher in Summer Term at Trebizon. Summer Term at Trebizon also features surfing (Trebizon is near the beach) and I remember disliking that book as a child because there was too much of a "summer camp" feel to it. I preferred the quieter beach scene in First Term at Trebizon, when Rebecca Mason sits by the sea to enjoy some peace and freedom and write a poem. Rebecca is the main character and she joins the school in the first book, at the start of the second year. Although the stories are lacking when it comes to a diversity of interwoven threads, the main plotlines are strong and intriguing and I very much enjoyed First Term and Second Term, though Summer Term still leaves me cold.

I'm pleased that every term is covered by Anne Digby, as Enid Blyton often writes about just one term per year - and skips some years altogether in the St. Clare's series. As for the Naughtiest Girl books, we only see Elizabeth in the first form! Anne Digby carried on the Naughtiest Girl series, of course, but Elizabeth still doesn't get beyond the second form and I find the stories shallow compared to Enid Blyton's originals.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by timv »

I was surprised too at how short the Trebizon books are and how few sub-plots there are when I went through them for my book on the history of girls' school stories, though they do give a good cultural 'view' of 1970s as opposed to 'classic era' (1920s to 1960s?) school life and the expected storylines that the publishers thought would appeal to readers. The early introduction in book 4 (Boy Trouble at T) of Tish's moody, car-obsessed older brother Robbie - a rather 'entitled' youngster who is around 15-16 at this stage and is a student at a nearby boys' public school - as Rebecca's potential 'romance interest' is a bit surprising as R is only 13 at the time and would have been inconceivable earlier as 'Setting a Bad Example' - presumably it taps into the sort of teen romance magazines rad by girls of around 12-14 who would be the target audience. (I remember my own girl contemporaries at this time were always reading pop magazines and going on about Donny Osmond and the Bay City Rollers, then top stars.)

Robbie rather spoils the series as he is such a 'brat' and keeps on either getting into trouble, in Book 4 over supposedly joy-riding in his housemaster's car in revenge for the man's daughter 'two-timing' him when they are supposed to be close friends, though this fits in with current 1970s teen romance magazine stories about moody 'difficult but attractive' rebels - and later on he keeps on getting jealous of any other boy who R sees. He also loses his temper on the tennis court during a match with R when her partner tries to 'wind him up' in Book 6 (The Tennis Term at T) and is told off for throwing his racket around - presumably coming from the late 1970s Wimbledon antics of then superstar John McEnroe.

The storylines about senior girls sneaking out from their boarding-houses to go to illicit parties and having their own cars also seem to reflect real life at privileged 1970s schools for the super-rich, which Trebizon is supposed to be with its multi-ethnic and multinational students (which would make T ideal for modern adaptations for TV - it would pose less difficulties of cultural changes and 'snobbery and racism' than people fling at Enid's books). Seen from a distance as an observer, though, the staff and the liberal Head do seem to be rather slack at discipline and what they tolerate would be unthinkable at Malory Towers or the Chalet School - though tricks, feuding, cliques, unfair accusations, gossip and mild bullying are much as at MT. The intrigue and complex inter-personal relations are well done; but the cast is far too small though some of the teachers are intriguingly flawed, led in Book 3 by 'Max' the dodgy Maths master.

Later on the series does go downhill a bit in my opinion, though a few of the books (eg the Fourth Year ones) are somewhat longer and have more sub-plots . There is far too much emphasis on sports, with much of some books devoted to Tish as a sports-fanatic scheming to be elected Games Captain and/or devising schemes for their teams to win a competition, and Rebecca implausibly suddenly develops a talent for tennis and within a year is playing in the school team with 17-year-olds when she is much younger. (Has the school no pool of older talent?) There is no balance between rival interests and topics. Notably Anne Digby was and is a great tennis fan herself and was presumably trying to encourage girls to take it up; hockey also dominates at times. Despite the well-reflected stories of 'outsiders' and poorer 'scholarship' girls facing difficulties , R's musical friend Sue Murdoch gets sidelined as does all drama, dance etc (cf the major part that plays/ shows form in Enid's and Antonia Forest's books), R's black West Indian close friend Margot gets pushed aside in plot terms though Greek business heiress Mara is a major and likeable character, and much younger and naive but sincere 'class child genius' Lucy gets bullied by the exasperated Tish (who is not targeted by the author as a Blyton bully would be) with no repercussions. This is rather disturbing in my opinion, if realistic. The later books then become far too short - were the publishers panicking about putting readers off? The books are certainly under-rated and AD had been writing about characters like Rebecca and Robbie since her early 1960s school stories in 'Girl' magazine; but as Anita has said, they had major flaws and a lot were too 'sketchy'.

Trebizon itself, as far as I could work out (the name comes from the Black Sea ex-Greek, now Turkish port of Trebizond, a former medieval Byzantine capital, cf the famous 1940s? novel by Rose Macauley 'The Towers of Trebizond'), is a mix of Enid-style Cornish holiday resorts - St Ives , Penzance and Newquay? - and the area around Exeter, eg Exmouth. The sand-dunes nearby seem to hint at the area E of St. Ives, which has mansions like Trebizon House/ School nearby. The nearby county town of 'Exonford', where R goes for tennis coaching, presumably comes from Exeter.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

An interesting overview of the books, Tim. They were written between 1978 and 1994 but I've no idea whether they stick strictly to Rebecca's timeline (late 1970s to early 1980s) or whether later titles bring in 1990s concerns. I only read the first few as a child and I much preferred the plots about friendship, conflict, mysteries, personal goals, scholarships and school magazine articles to the plots about romance and sport.

Regarding rules and discipline (and general safety), I was surprised at Rebecca being allowed to go to the beach alone so shortly after arriving at the school.
timv wrote: 10 Jul 2023, 08:25Later on the series does go downhill a bit in my opinion, though a few of the books (eg the Fourth Year ones) are somewhat longer and have more sub-plots . There is far too much emphasis on sports... Despite the well-reflected stories of 'outsiders' and poorer 'scholarship' girls facing difficulties , R's musical friend Sue Murdoch gets sidelined as does all drama, dance etc (cf the major part that plays/ shows form in Enid's and Antonia Forest's books)...
Spitty, as Ern might say!

timv wrote: 10 Jul 2023, 08:25...much younger and naive but sincere 'class child genius' Lucy gets bullied by the exasperated Tish (who is not targeted by the author as a Blyton bully would be) with no repercussions. This is rather disturbing in my opinion, if realistic.
I haven't yet read the Lucy storyline but your comment does make me think of Alicia in Enid Blyton's Malory Towers books, who is sharp-tongued and something of a bully but gets away with it - seemingly because she's bright, charismatic and full of ideas, and entertains the others with her tricks and jokes.

timv wrote: 10 Jul 2023, 08:25Trebizon itself, as far as I could work out (the name comes from the Black Sea ex-Greek, now Turkish port of Trebizond, a former medieval Byzantine capital, cf the famous 1940s? novel by Rose Macauley 'The Towers of Trebizond'), is a mix of Enid-style Cornish holiday resorts - St Ives , Penzance and Newquay? - and the area around Exeter, eg Exmouth. The sand-dunes nearby seem to hint at the area E of St. Ives, which has mansions like Trebizon House/ School nearby. The nearby county town of 'Exonford', where R goes for tennis coaching, presumably comes from Exeter.
The name "Exonford" immediately made me think of Exeter too.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by dsr »

timv wrote: 10 Jul 2023, 08:25 I was surprised too at how short the Trebizon books are and how few sub-plots there are when I went through them for my book on the history of girls' school stories, though they do give a good cultural 'view' of 1970s as opposed to 'classic era' (1920s to 1960s?) school life and the expected storylines that the publishers thought would appeal to readers.
Not that I'm ignoring the rest of your post, which is interesting and puts into words a lot of what I think as well. But specifically the point quoted above, for another seventies (early eighties, actually) girls' boarding school story, Harriet Martyn (real name Lady Sarah Collins) wrote a trilogy about Jenny (Jenney and the Syndicate, Jenny and the New Headmistress, Jenney and the New Girls) which were longer and had a more nuanced set of characters - both girls and staff.

I think the Trebizon series did fall off in quality right from the start. First term was certainly (IMO, of course) the best. I enjoyed "Tennis Term" just because I'm a sports fan.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by timv »

The story with Lucy the 'child genius' is in Book 5, 'More Trouble at Trebizon', which also has a modern 'spin' on an old Girls School Fiction favourite plotline of 'Mysterious Baddies' trying to kidnap 'Our Heroine's rich classmate. In this case, Greek heiress Mara's tycoon father (a personality perhaps created to reflect the 1970s fame of multi-millionaire Aristotle Onassis, who was often in the news as the second husband of Jackie Kennedy) fears she will be kidnapped and sends a bodyguard to the school to keep an eye on her, but Mara is embarrassed and tries to avoid him - and is threatened with being sent home to Greece to do lessons with a tutor instead. the over-imaginative Lucy believes the kidnap threat is real and keeps an eye on Mara herself, telling the bodyguard where to find her - hence Tish's setting on her in a confrontation and calling her a baby who needs a nanny, encouraging her friends to shout at Lucy too which only Sue Murdoch is disturbed by. But in fact (spoiler alert!) Tish is right and the threat of kidnap is exaggerated, and Lucy redeems herself by rescuing Mara when the latter gets stuck down the inevitable 'Secret Tunnel about to collapse' in the climax. AD did have girls proving shrewder than the Head from time to time, which someone like Elinor Brent Dyer would never have dared to do, though I could not work out if the fact that the Head appoints an unqualified prefect as Editor of the School Magazine in Book One after her father gives the school a large donation was meant to be a criticism of her or just a look at hard reality for cash-strapped schools!

The 'modern twist on an old plot', one of the better aspects of the series, also occurs with a 'TV Documentary' episode, when (another spoiler!) an expelled ex-pupil turns up in the TV production crew and tries to find out details of past school scandals to put them in the programme and ruin its reputation to boost ratings. I suspect that the 'fly on the wall documentary' idea came from the 1979? TV documentary about boys' public school Radley College near Oxford, the first one of its kind, which I recall seeing. As far as I recall there are very few modern gadgets in the stories that reflect the early 1990s, eg no mobile telephones (the first of these were a bit large and expensive for schoolgirls to carry about) apart from one girl having a 'Walkman' mobile music player in one later book. But AD did mention the Bosnian civil war of 1991 ff. in the final book, where Mr Leonodis is unable to buy up a piece of scenic clifftop and an island near the school to stop developers as he is funding a charity for refugee children in war-torn SE Europe, so she did put in a few contemporary references.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Debbie »

I'd agree with a lot that's said about Trebizon. I've got most of the books, and they are short. I've just looked on Amazon and it says they're 128 pages, as opposed to Malory Towers which is 196, which means it's around 50% longer.

I'd also say, considering they're aimed at 7-12yos (again according to Amazon, but considering their length I think about right) there's an awful lot about boyfriends which when I was reading them I found rather boring and a bit scary in some ways. The particular ones I remember are when a visiting pupil (if I'm right she's an amazing ice skater) tries to steal Rebecca's boyfriend off her and another when her boyfriend is showing off having just learnt to drive and has an accident that breaks her wrist. I don't really think either is that good a storyline for that age!

I preferred the mystery books by AD. I think they were called "Me, Jill Robinson and ...." but again I remember finding them fairly light in comparison to EB.
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Re: Anne Digby - Trebizon etc

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

Interesting posts. I've never come across Harriet Martyn's books, Dsr.

I've now read Boy Trouble at Trebizon and More Trouble at Trebizon. The romantic relationship/jealousy plot in Boy Trouble is heavy stuff, intense and threatening - a lot for thirteen-year-old Rebecca to deal with. I was about ten or eleven when I first read this book and I remember finding it horribly sombre and even "a bit scary" as you say, Debbie.

A whole load of girls make snide remarks to/about Lucy in More Trouble, resenting a junior "intruding" on middle school territory, and I didn't notice Tish being any worse than the others. She's nowhere near as bad as Alicia of Malory Towers. The storyline of More Trouble is weak and it doesn't help that my 1988 Puffin paperback has a most unattractive cover featuring Mara looking sour, with her hefty bodyguard looming over her (the Granada copy I had as a child had a different cover picture). The supposed kidnap and the finding of the grotto make it feel like a school story from a comic, and it's perfectly obvious from the beginning who Lucy is phoning. Tennis has taken over Rebecca's life, which is a shame as I felt more affinity for her in book one when she was keen on writing for the school magazine.

So far, there's nothing special about Trebizon. The ethos is quite mean-spirited and there's a great deal of emphasis on sport and boy trouble, neither of which appealed to me when I read the books as a youngster. There's little sense of community either. In Enid Blyton's boarding schools we generally have a feeling of togetherness, with the school acting as an extended family, and the same applies to Antonia Forest's Kingscote. Trebizon hasn't made much of an impression on me - it lacks identity. There's a lot of contact with other schools (especially the nearby boys' school, with the girls meeting the boys at coffee shops, discos, charity events, etc.), surfing at a public beach, and going off by oneself to things (e.g. Rebecca regularly catches the train alone to attend tennis practice at Exonford). The staff are distant and don't seem particularly supportive. At the moment, I can't see any reason why parents or guardians would pay to send their children there (Rebecca's place is paid for by her father's firm, of course).

I'm starting to see why, although I read Enid Blyton and Antonia Forest's school stories over and over, I only ever read Anne Digby's Trebizon books once - until now!
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