The Enid Blyton Society

Merged with an older thread.

I know Baronia isn't a real country but I'm ìmaging it to be a small country on the Italian borders somewhere with the descriptions of the landscape and also the hot summer weather....does anyone know if Baronia was inspired by a real life place?

Was hoping there was a previous thread but cannot search the forums when browsing on my phone (i rarely use the pc now!)

Interesting that nearly everybody think it's around the same area

As I have mentioned before, I personally think the main inspiration for Baronia is probably real-life 1930s Romania, although there are also general elements of 'fairy tale' Central/ Eastern European mainly rural/forested/ mountainous countries (as read about by Enid's generation in the Brothers Grimm stories) plus a bit of Anthony Hope 'Prisoner of Zenda' style romanticism.
The geographic picture of Baronia in 'Secret of Killimooin' is similar to Romania, that is a modern capital city on a plain that is hot in summer (qv Bucharest on the lower Danube plain) and a fairly close mountain range (qv the Carpathians) with forests, wild animals, isolated villages, shepherds/ goatherds and legends. The 'lost tribe' is clearly invented but the wild and dangerous mountains may come from accounts of the Carpathians. The 'Royal country home in a castle in the mountains' may come from a mixture of the Romanian royal family's Bran Castle (medieval not modern as in the book, and reputed home of Dracula!) and the 'C19th reproduction Bavarian fairy tale castle' built in the 1880s at Sinaia, both in the Carpathians. Ex-King Michael (boy heir to the throne in the 1930s so an equivalent of 'Gussy') , who was exiled in 1947, got the latter back after the 1989 revolution and eventually moved back there. Sinaia is however on the railway; 'Killimooin' is isolated.

Enid used real Romanian name-endings for some of her Baronian characters, eg Pilescu ('escu' is a common R name ending) which may have been a clue. Similarly, Romania's then Queen Mother Marie (grand-daughter of our Victoria) was an author who occasionally wrote articles for, or had ones written about her in, UK magazines) and did an autobiography in the 1930s so Enid may have picked up ideas from these. The 'Secret' series as a whole has fascinating hints of the 1930s, eg the missing Arnold parents qv aviator Amelia Earhard and 'Secret Mountain' qv Tarzan films.

Added note to above: ''Prince Paul' in the Secret series may be called after the Prince-Regent of Yugoslavia in 1934-41 whose nephew and King, Peter II, was approx the fictional Paul's age, but Yugoslavia is not much like Baronia. The Circus of Adventure, whose protagonist 'Gussy' I mention in the earlier post, also has elements of Romania in it - and the costumes seem to be 'Balkan' rather than Germanic as in the illustration of Jack meeting a policeman.

I'm always very vague with my ideas about where places are meant to be...so I've always thought 'Germany, Austria, Switzerland - somewhere similar' - that's about as far as I go when I'm reading a book.

I've never really been really bothered about settings...I'm still not convinced that The River of Adventure is Syria...to me it was always Africa when I was a kid - probably along the Nile.

Rob Houghton wrote:I'm always very vague with my ideas about where places are meant to be...

Me too. I have never understood this necessity of placing Enid's many imaginary locations on the real map. Just enjoy the story!

When I first read a lot of Enid's books as a young girl, I would have been hard pressed even to find England on a map, let alone her more imaginary locations!

For some reason I also thought Baronia was somewhere like Romania.

Tauri-Hessia, mainly because of the 'Taur' prefix, I used to think might have been inspired by Bulgaria.

Not that Blyton visited either of these places, of course.

As a child, I always wanted to visit Baronia and Tauri-Hessia. It never bothered me remotely where these two countries were on a map.

As a child I was obsessed with finding out pictures of Mallory towers (mid 80s so no internet to Google!) The real place slight obsession has never left me:'l

I think occasionally as a child I would get the great big atlas we had and look up certain names in the index - names like Baronia etc. I guess if I didn't find them I just assumed they'd been missed off the map. I thought most were probably real places, but didn't really research into where they were.

For me both Baronia and Tauri-Hessia are located in the Balkans. I picture them as small states in the territory of the old Yugoslavia. I formed this idea after reading the superb and comprehensive 1920s book Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West. The descriptions and historical information she supplies in that travelogue jibe very well with Blyton's descriptions in her books.

That said, as a child I was not remotely bothered as to where the countries were located. I just loved the stories which were set in them, both of which are very thrilling.

When I first read 'Circus of Adventure' aged eight I was disappointed to look up Tauri-Hessia on the map and see that it didn't exist! But it certainly gave me a flavour of the Balkans, especially Stuart Tresilian's illustrations, and I was particularly fascinated by the medieval Borken Castle with its secret passages and the fact that the Count still lived in it in what was presumably meant to be an 'alternate reality' 1940s. The Castle is for me one of Enid's most vivid buildings, along with Faynights Castle and Sooty Lenoir's home.

A few years later when I read 'The Prisoner of Zenda' I assumed Enid had created her evocative land of TH with memories of this book. TH seemed more realistic than Baronia, perhaps because she gave us all social classes, seen by a wandering stranger on his own (Jack) not just the Court and mountain folk. The tone of the book seems more 'grown up' than 'Killimooin' - Enid's style at her best, along with Valley of Adventure'. As an adult, I could delve a bit deeper and reckon that the 'Hessia' of TH came from the central German region/state of Hesse , where the Mountbattens (aka Battenbergs) originated, and a legendary 'Brothers Grimm Tales' style country was mixed up with the Balkans. Perhaps the Germanic-named castle of Borken is a hint at the medieval German-style castles of western Romania / Transylvania? And the mysterious 'Madame Tatiosa' was inspired by Romanian King Carol II (ruled 1930-40)'s enigmatically powerful mistress Madame Lupescu?

Intriguing thoughts about Tauri-Hessia — I also assumed (reading The Circus of Adventure as an adult) that it must be somewhere in the Balkans.

I haven't read the Secret series, so am not familiar with Baronia, but my immediate thought is that if only it were Boronia, it would be named after a beautiful Australian native plant! I doubt that's what Enid had in mind when she came up with the name, though...

timv wrote:When I first read 'Circus of Adventure' aged eight I was disappointed to look up Tauri-Hessia on the map and see that it didn't exist!

Oh, it exists all right - make no mistake. It is just that it isn't listed on a map.

Going slightly off-track, I was aghast on watching Eggheads recently, that a contestant with a geography degree thought Exmoor was in Sussex. Do we have an education system in this country?