What non-Blyton book have you recently bought?

[Debbie]

I went to a book fair at Bakewell last Saturday in search of titles I can never seem to find.
However, I bought a lovely copy of Adventure On Rainbow Island by Dorothy Clewes, which I had originally as an Armada paperback. It's in very good condition for £8.
I also bought a lovely copy of E. Nesbit's The Railway Children with a very good wrapper. Not a first but the 1948 edition and only £15.
There were about 30 dealers present and I noticed quite a few books by Enid, all of which I already have.

Is Adventure On Rainbow Island by Dorothy Clewes the one set on Sark? If so I have the Armada version. I insisted we visited Sark when we were in Jersey (on Honeymoon), which was the first time I picked a place out to visit from a book. I might tell my husband one day. he won't be surprised.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm glad you picked up a couple of things at the book fair, John. I've only read one Dorothy Clewes title (The Adventure of the Blue Admiral) and I found it a bit tame, but I'd be interested to try some more of her books at some stage.

[John Pickup]

Is Adventure On Rainbow Island by Dorothy Clewes the one set on Sark?

Yes, it is, Debbie.

I've only read one Dorothy Clewes title (The Adventure of the Blue Admiral) and I found it a bit tame, but I'd be interested to try some more of her books at some stage.

Blue Admiral was also an Armada book, Anita. I had both but I haven't read either for sixty years. In 1963 or 64 my mother bought me four Armada books. I already had titles by Enid and Malcolm Saville so to be sure of buying me books I didn't already have she bought the two Dorothy Clewes books, Cornish Cream by John Denton and Saracens Tower by Ralph Hammond, a pseudonym for the adventure writer Hammond Innes.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I keep meaning to read Saracen's Tower. It's a few years now since I bought it from a charity shop, attracted by the orange-gold cover featuring a boy in a boat on the sea.

[Katharine]

As well as the two Rupert books I've mentioned in another post, yesterday I bought the Rupert Dossier which is written by Brian Stewart who was also involved in producing the Enid Blyton Dossier. Hopefully it will be just as interesting as the Enid Blyton one.

[Boatbuilder]

I bought the following three books (all new) within the last couple of weeks to add to my growing list of 'books to read'.

'Wild Britain, Wild Ireland' I spotted in WH Smith for £8 (£20 list) and couldn't resist buying it. The other two I was inspired to buy after watching the two programs that were on Channel 5 recently, 'The Child Snatcher - Manhunt', as mentioned by Jack in the TV Programs topic, about the serial killer Robert Black. 'There Came a Day' was only written in 2021 by the mother of one of Black's victims - nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy - 40 years after her murder in Northern Ireland in 1981. I happened to notice it briefly in the program and when I looked on Amazon, I was surprised I was still able to get the book, not knowing at the time that it was a fairly recent publication and was sold by the publisher. 'The Face of Evil' was published in 2017.

[Katharine]

I bought a selection of books in a charity bookshop on Saturday.

Mostly 1930s - 50s schoolgirl annuals, but I also bought a Romany at the BBC book.

I think there was an article in one of the earlier Journals about him, and so I thought it might be interesting to see what one of his books was like.

[Katharine]

By co-incidence, as I've been reading Ballet Shoes, I bought another Noel Streatfeild book - A Vicarage Family. Just 50p for a paperback. I also bought an Encyclopaedia about the Chalet School books, it was £1.50. It says it's Volume 1, so I don't know how many other volumes there are.

I've also gained a free book this week entitle The Slum Problem, published in 1928. I've only read the first few pages, and found it quite interesting. It would seem that poor housing/overcrowding has been a political issue for almost 100 years now! I had a quick thumb through and notice a snippet about my hometown - it seems that the decision to carve up the middle of town was being held up as a good example of 'progress'. Unfortunately it didn't mention the loss of some historic buildings (including the church where my great uncle was a layman, and my grandparents married), just the removal of the 'slums'.

Even more depressing, is that the much heralded shops to replace the poor housing are slowly becoming empty and the road that was ploughed through the site to ease the problem of traffic is no longer fit for purpose - it only takes a road closure in another part of the town for the place to become gridlocked, and there has been a massive argument for decades about building a relief road through small villages/fields to cope with the ever increasing traffic.

Interesting and also slightly scary how much life has changed in that time, but in many ways the problems are still the same.

[Anita Bensoussane]

A Vicarage Family is an interesting book, telling the story of Noel Streatfeild's childhood (though she calls herself Victoria). There are two sequels dealing with her adult life - Away From the Vicarage and Beyond the Vicarage.

Your mention of The Slum Problem reminds me of when I went to London with my children and my dad and his partner (now wife) and we visited the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. I've mentioned this before, but there was an exhibition about health and hygiene through the ages, including a letter which described poor people (in the 1800s, I think) living several families to a room, each family having their own section. The letter poured scorn on the "low morals" of the poor, describing how women would give birth with no apparent sense of shame while members of other families were present. It's shocking that people were blamed for having "low morals" when privacy would have been an impossible luxury amid such chronic overcrowding (presumably owing to a lack of affordable accommodation)! Thankfully, other commentators saw things differently and worked to bring about change.

[Katharine]

In a charity shop today I spotted a copy of The Chartfield School Mystery for £3.99 and as it has just been mentioned in another thread, I thought I'd give it a try.