Malcolm Saville - Lone Pine Club, etc.

[Daisy]

Some here may be interested in this..
NEW MALCOLM SAVILLE PLAQUE IN RYE
A date for your diary: on February 11th at 11.30 a.m. there will be a Grand Unveiling of a plaque on the wall of the Hope Anchor, to celebrate Saville's books set in Rye, and especially his use of the site of the Hope Anchor (in Watchbell Street) for the Gay Dolphin.
This will be followed by a talk about Malcolm Saville's Rye at the Heritage Centre at 1.30 p.m.
ALL Saville fans are welcome to both events - no doubt we'll meet up for a meal and drinks at some point(s).

This was on facebook in the Monica Edwards group.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, Daisy. I won't be able to go but it's interesting to hear about the plaque.

[John Pickup]

Yes, thanks Daisy. I won't be able to go either but I shall look out for the plaque if I ever get to Rye again.

[Kate Mary]

I've been reading The Sign of the Alpine Rose, the fourth Jillies book, not the best of the series in my opinion. It's the first of Saville's books that has a foreign setting, and Guy and Mark Standing don't appear in this one, they don't even get a mention in passing which seems odd but it's still a pretty good read as all Malcolm Saville's book are.

[Moonraker]

Leaving characters out is certainly a feature in Saville's book - especially in the LP series. Imagine reading a Find-Outers book with no Bets - and no mention of her! It is a long time since I have read this book, but I seem to remember enjoying it.

[timv]

As far as I can work out, only the three Mortons - the 'central' characters for the Lone Pine series, and the first to be introduced in Mystery at Witchend - actually appear in all of the twenty LP books, and even Peter and Tom (also introduced in Book One) do not appear in them all. Jon and Penny and Jenny appeared much less, and sometimes when I read the series I wished there would be a book without the Morton twins! MS also experimented with having only the Mortons plus two non-LP Club teenage characters (Paul and Rose) in one book, Sea Witch Comes Home, a sailing / art smuggling story set on the Suffolk coast at Walberswick and Southwold - but, like Enid with Sooty in Smugglers Top, despite the new characters' appeal they were not re-used.

A pity, especially as MS was more 'inclusive' (so appealing to modern enthusiasts for this??) than many 1950s authors, presenting Paul as not your standard rugby-playing public schoolboy but a moody and emotional 'outsider' who was not very popular at school. In the Nettleford series, MS also has sensible tomboy Sally not a boy as the 'lead' (as he does with Mandy in the Jillies books) and her brother Paul as a nervous and non-sporty character who can't swim well - in one book it's Sally not Paul who fights off some bird-egg-poaching vandals who try to smash up the children's caravan by setting on them with a tree-branch, a rare sight for a 1950s/ 1960s series. (Cf Julian telling George not to have a brawl with Jo in Fall Into Adventure.)

Enid, notably, does have one or two cross-overs between series, though not as a general rule - doesn't Jimmy from Mr Galliano's Circus appear in the first St. Clare's book? MS doesn't do this at all even when the characters from one of his series appear in the locale where those from another series live; the main author of this era to have a regular crossover was Monica Edwards, whose Punchbowl Farm characters and Romney Marsh characters meet and interact - and the RM tomboy Rissa ends up the series as PF's young farmer Dion's girlfriend and Meryon's RM cousin Roger as Dion's sister Lindsey's friend. One Edwards book, The Cownappers, even features both the locations in one (cow-smuggling) storyline.

[Debbie]

I think one of the issues with the Lone Pine series having all the members in (only the last, "Home to Witchend" does) is that with 9 characters there isn't really enough space for them all! A bit like the Secret Seven sometimes mash into "boy character" "girl character".

Having the Mortons, who are definitely the beginning of it all, as there always makes the most sense. Although Peter (Petronella) has the initial idea for the LP Club, and in a lot of ways is a stronger character than David, it would have been much less likely that her family would have holidayed in Rye, and had a time in London etc, and she wouldn't have wanted to leave her father enough to spend every holiday with the Mortons. By having the Mortons as central characters it left it open to more places and different adventures

Because they have their own space in the books, the characters are fairly distinct. Even Penny and Jenny who have the most in common are quite different.

When I was writing a script for "Mystery at Witchend" I found that it was pretty much always obvious which character said what.
The only exception there was the twins-and in one performance they did get their lines mixed up and I have to be honest, I didn't notice until they came giggling off stage. However I think they became more distinct in later books.

Personally I liked Paul and Rose, two of my favourite one off characters, partially because they were different and Sea Witch is one of my favourite LPs.

I was never quite sure what I thought about the crossovers in MEs books. One of the difficulties is that both Tamsin and Lindsey are both based clearly on the same person (her daughter). Although I think she gets away with it fairly well. I like "The Outsider" when they're the whole group on their own, but not totally sure about both Fire and The Wild One where I'm not sure having the crossover worked as well as having just the farm set. Storm Ahead and Punchbowl Midnight both work well, but that's only the one character, and reading as an adult, I do slightly wonder about the parents who let their daughter stay for weeks on end-one who's recovering from being shot, and in the other one letting Lindsey stay (must be for most of the winter term as it starts with the high tide and finishes at Christmas) when Tamsin is very ill with pneumonia. As a parent I would have wanted to nurse myself one, and removed the other as being an extra complication for Tamsin's parents!
Maybe that's because their mothers were one and the same too

[John Pickup]

Girls Gone By have just published The Luck Of Sallowby, the fifth book in the Jillies series.
They have also announced they are going to publish Malcolm Saville's Short Stories which will include The Thin Grey Man and The Flower Show Hat.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks for letting us know about the short story book, John. I have The Thin Grey Man (which is a novella) and The Flower-Show Hat (which I bought years ago when I was a member of the Malcolm Saville Society) so I'll have to see what else is included.

[Splodj]

They claim it is a collection of all known short stories:

The Soldier’s Garden
The Arts of War in a Garden
Stonewall Jackson
The Flowers Must Stay
My Gardener I – Smithson
My Gardener II – Charlie
My Gardener III – Meadows
John and Jennifer at the Farm
Harvest Holiday
The Flower-show Hat
Secret in the Mist
But This Family Learnt Its lesson
Where the Bus Stopped
The Thin Grey Man

[Anita Bensoussane]

Cheers, Splodj!

[Debbie]

Is "The Thin Grey Man" a short? I thought I had it as a book on its own. Maybe I'm mixing it up with another author.

[Anita Bensoussane]

The Thin Grey Man is a book on its own, though it only has eight chapters. I'm not sure why it's being included in a volume of short stories. Maybe it's hard to find these days? I bought my copy (a Grasshopper Books edition) about twenty years ago.

[Kate Mary]

I’m reading The Luck of Sallowby in a nice new GGB edition, only a few chapters in so far but it’s jolly exciting with its flooded fenland setting. I once had a holiday in the fens, I stayed in Ely it’s a fascinating area with a strange, bleak beauty. Highly recommended, both the book and the area to explore.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's a while since I read The Luck of Sallowby, but dramatic settings always appeal. I enjoyed reading about Tom and Hatty skating to Ely Cathedral in Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce, but I've never been there.