Hope you don't mind but I thought this deserved a thread of its own, John (Boatbuilder)!Boatbuilder (in another thread) wrote:I'm watching the Antiques Roadshow on BBC1 and there is a lady on there with Enid Blyton memorabilia.
About 38 minutes into the program if you missed and watch on iPlayer.
There's a link to the programme here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... athedral-2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The lady has two soft toys (Mrs. Rabbit and Simple Simon) which she says she made as a child for an Enid Blyton's Magazine competition in 1959. She states that the rabbit won first prize (£10) and Simple Simon won second prize (£5). We also see a photo showing her as leader of an Enid Blyton's Magazine Club, and two letters written to her by Enid Blyton.
I was intrigued as I remembered reading about an Enid Blyton's Magazine competition which invited children to send in any kind of work they were good at - sewing, painting, writing, model-making, etc. It seems likely that the competition for which the lady made the soft toys was the one whose results were given in the following issue (Enid Blyton's Magazine Volume 7, Number 10, May 20th 1959):
https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/mag ... ?magid=963" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Enid Blyton says in her editorial that the first prize in the 7-9 age group was awarded for a "beautifully stuffed and dressed rabbit", which sounds like the rabbit seen in the programme. It would be strange if the first and second prize were given to the same person, and Enid tells us that the second prize was awarded for "a very original poem". I can only imagine that the Simple Simon toy perhaps won a prize in a separate competition.
The page of prize-winners names the maker of the stuffed rabbit as "Catherine Porter, age 8, of Oval Primary School, East Croydon".
Of course, it's possible that the lady on The Antiques Roadshow entered a different competition as Enid Blyton held another one in the summer of the same year (the results of that one were never published as the magazine folded). I'm not sure how likely it is that a stuffed rabbit would have won a first prize yet again though!
