Childhood Comics and Annuals

[Boodi 2]

Boodi, Enid Blyton commented in Enid Blyton's Magazine that 13 was her lucky number!

Thanks Anita, I did not know that! It was my mother's lucky number too and she always picked raffle tickets with a 13 in them or entered competitions on the 13th. day of the month. However, by sad coincidence she passed away on 13th., which was a shock. Having said that, my husband was born on a Friday 13th and I also have two friends whose birthdays are on 13th (one also born on a Friday 13th.) so I really should stop worrying about it, especially as my experience at that show jumping event was a stern lesson for me!!!

[Splodj]

TV Comic featured Bom strips as well as Noddy strips, Splodj.

Oh thanks, I didn't see that page.

So it appears that they were original to TV Comic, but used elsewhere subsequently.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Some were used elsewhere but others were never put into a book.

[pete9012S]

The Christmas DIANA (1965)

I found a bit more about the mag and its contents here:


https://news-uk21.blogspot.com/2018/12/ ... -1965.html

[Kate Mary]

I was a Diana reader at the time that comic was published, I well remember The Pink Peril (alien butterflies with the power to put people in a coma and they transformed a bleak winter countryside into a tropical jungle). And I first read Ivanhoe in that comic strip. Happy memories, thanks Pete.

[Julie2owlsdene]

I too used to have Diana Annuals and Bunty Annuals. I still have one of each from the early 60s.

[Jomo]

We used to get Playhour and Jack and Jill passed on from some family friends. These were my earliest reading, when I was about 5 years old. I loved ‘Gulliver Guinea Pig’ in Playhour best of all. A few years ago I was lucky to get a bound set of several years of Playhour from a couple who’d kept all of the magazines from the 50’s.
Later on I became a big fan of Phantom comics - like my mum! I got her a Phantom Skull Ring for her birthday one year, because she’d always wanted one

[Barnard]

I also read Jack and Jill and Playhour in the late 1950s and the early 1960s.
My favourite stories in Jack and Jill were The Topsy Turvy Adventures of Harold Hare and Walter Hottle Bottle.
My favourite stories in Playhour were Sonny and Sally of Happy Valley and Tommy Trouble.

[Boodi 2]

Jack and Jill was the very first comic I had every week, but as I was very young at the time my parents may have read it to me while I looked at the pictures! I had almost forgotten it, but Barnard's mention of Harold Hare reminded me of those days as Harold Hare was my favourite!

[Anita Bensoussane]

A week ago I was in London with my dad and his wife, Pat. We went to a concert in Oxford Street, where we listened to a pianist and violinist play a selection of pieces by Beethoven and Stravinsky, and then we went to Hampton Court. Stopping at a charity shop, I bought three Diana Annuals with dustwrappers at £5 for the three. I'd had the 1971 annual as a child but it was one of very few childhood books of mine that had disappeared at some point, so I was delighted to find a copy. Flicking through, it fell open at an article about Lady Mabella de Tichborne which began, "Every year, on Lady Day - March 25th - Tichborne Manor, in Hampshire, is the scene of a ceremony called 'The Tichborne Dole'." As it happened to be March 25th when I bought it, the article was most apt!

Looking through it, I remembered that it was from that annual that I'd first heard of Boadicea (now usually called Boudicca or Boudica) and Annie Oakley, first read about the lives of Leo Tolstoy and his wife Sonya, and learnt about the uses of wood from various trees (hazel, juniper, ash and yew). I recalled several of the stories too, especially 'The Secret of the White Rose', about some lost jewels. One story whose details I don't remember is a school story called 'The Affair of the Artful Dodgers' but the introduction makes the school sound like a very harsh version of Whyteleafe - "Pupils at Benstead High School hold their own court proceedings to punish offenders. With head girl Alison Wylie acting as judge, they have junior lawyers for prosecution and defence and a jury to hear evidence. Sally Day, of the Fourth Form, is permanent Clerk of the Court." Crumbs - I'll have to give it a read!

Must say I love the artwork in these Diana Annuals and the fact that there is so much informative content, attractively presented, along with the fiction.

[Judith Crabb]

Anita, are they the same Tichbornes made famous by the notorious19th century case of the missing heir and the claimant from Australia? So dubious did the legal profession show itself to be over the conduct of the case that finally some checks were put on the more corrupt practices. I'm not sure if Dickens lived long enough to feel that his take on the legal profession was vindicated.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Yes, the story of the claimant is mentioned in the annual.

I've now read 'The Affair of the Artful Dodgers' and the school court only features briefly. I assume Benstead High School stories appear in other annuals too, though I haven't time to look at the moment. 'The Affair of the Artful Dodgers' is rather a ridiculous and tedious story to be honest, full of slang phrases like "come up with a lulu" and "Chin-Chin", and Latin sayings like "Pax Vobiscum". One of the schoolgirls is called Dodie Smith, like the author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians.

[Katharine]

Anita, your purchase of three Diana annuals for only £5 sounds like an absolute bargain, especially with D/W.

I'm not sure if I have any Diana annuals, they sound like something I'd enjoy though, so will have to keep my eyes open for them.

[timv]

The Tichborne family lived for hundreds of years on a small estate at the village of Tichborne, a few miles East of Winchester in Hampshire and quite close to Jane Austen's home at Chawton near Alton; it's next to the Alresford by-pass. I have walked across the family's estate grounds from Alresford and the family mansion (eighteenth century Georgian?) is still there. I think that the legend behind the 'Tichborne Dole' , an annual gift of free bread to the locals won from a miserly Tichborne family landowner by his wife persuading him to supply the produce from as much of his land that she could crawl round in a day, is supposed to be based on an event in the twelfth century.

Names like Mollie Chappell keep on cropping up in stories that I've read in 1950s and 1960s annuals which I've bought over the years ; there seem to have been quite a lot of these regular contributors who supplied stories to a group of children's annuals year after year, some producing books too - possibly owing something to the way that Enid had balanced short stories with books to make a commercial career out of this. Among the regular contributors who were primarily book authors I've spotted Monica Edwards as well as Noel Streatfeild , Viola Bayley (who lived near Rye for some years and wrote stories featuring the town and local storms), and the Pullein-Thompson sisters who are best known for their dozens of pony books. A young Anne Digby, author of the 1970s-90s 'Trebizon' boarding-school series, also appeared in this genre in the early 1960s. Some of the story authors provide a good glimpse into post-War social history, but do not appear to have had the time or confidence to try out books too - possibly these were busy mothers or wives supplementing their income. The illustrators are more difficult to track down , especially as some stories were unsigned; someone should produce a guide to these annuals and their contributors, while the books remain available on the market and in second-hand shops, but it would be quite a time-consuming task! (I had a go a few years ago at seeing whether commercial publishers might be interested but did not get much response.)

[Judith Crabb]

I have three Diana Annuals, Anita, 1966, 1967 and 1968 and I kept them because of the black dust-jackets (an advertisement for one of them is on a link Pete provided 20 Dec 2021, so you can see for yourself). I've never read them. I'd left school in 1965 so considered them for children - looking inside them now they are reminiscent of annuals like Princess which I'd read only a few years before - pony stories, ballet, sports and rock stars, knitting, cats, although one has intimations of a not-so-distant future. An article on careers suggests that readers might consider unusual occupations like being the only girl on a construction site.