Did it feel like it was set in the past on first reading?

[Debbie]

Apparently more authors are having to set their books in the past so as to be able to have someone stalked down a dark alley without being able to phone for help, or to be able to have someone left wondering why their friend or lover wasn't on the train he/she was supposed to be on... Modern technology is very convenient for many things, but not for suspenseful storylines!!

I read quite a lot of modern children's books and I've certainly noticed that most titles I've read recently have been set either in the past or in a fantasy world, thereby freeing the author from having to worry about modern technology as you say.

Or the game of trying to provide a plausible reason for the mobile being out of action. Falling into water or forgetting it is most popular, probably followed by no signal.

[Bertie]

Yeah, I can imagine how that must be a huge dilemma for modern writers. Though I've never really been one for reading contemporary books - even before I currently pretty much just stuck with Enid and PG Wodehouse, my tastes were very much aimed at books of a similar age or even earlier, such as Victorian era.

I tend to find characters 'receiving a text message' has had similar issues for TV / films. Whenever I watch anyone receive them, and we the viewers are meant to see what it is, they always seem to either show a rather chunky, invasive pop up box saying what it was - or the other extreme: a fleeting glance at the phone that's on and off before you've had a chance to read much of it! Though I don't watch a huge amount of up to date TV either, so maybe that's got better of late.

[Fiona1986]

Other methods include sending children to boarding schools with strict tech access rules. Zoe Billings does really well at mixing smartphone usage into her mysteries, using them when they're helpful and managing to get them out of the way when they're not.

[Judith Crabb]

What a gem of a topic! There seems to be no end to discussions about Enid Blyton. My generation was reading Enid Blyton while she still alive and so the 'past' was at most near distant. When I read 'The Valley of Adventure' I knew that it was the World War my father was involved in and associated the old couple with newspaper reports of the Japanese soldiers who were still turning up in the 1950s, venturing out from their jungle hideaways believing that the war was still going on. And all those sexist attitudes which of course were never recognised as such. In primary school once a week the girls did 'Sewing' while the boys went off to woodwork and sheet metal work. Though I loathed sewing lessons not once do I recall thinking that I'd prefer to do woodwork, though I practically grew up in my grandpa's workshop (he was a self-employed journeyman carpenter) and I'm positive I would have done much better. Only in adult life did I find out that I was quite good at small practical things. Still, the sewing lessons came in handy, especially when re-stitching damaged volumes.

[Yak]

Judith - one thing I did love though is that Bill in Malory Towers chose to take woodwork with the younger children - and was given the option to do so . Personally I loathed both woodwork and needlework, sigh.

[IceMaiden]

I've heard it pointed out that modern technology is ruining practically every traditional story plot that involves suspense, isolation, inability to contact someone, etc. Like, what if Juliet had been able to text Romeo with "Faking death, c u l8r"?? Apparently more authors are having to set their books in the past so as to be able to have someone stalked down a dark alley without being able to phone for help, or to be able to have someone left wondering why their friend or lover wasn't on the train he/she was supposed to be on... Modern technology is very convenient for many things, but not for suspenseful storylines!!

Yes that would certainly ruin the suspense and plot instantly! Imagine Valley of Adventure with a smartphone - photos of the treasure and villains, a phone call to reassure everyone and found almost instantly with the tracking system! How boring!! It would have no feeling to it whatsoever and the same with all the others. Not just books either, I watch a lot of black and white films on Talking Pictures and none of the stories in those would work with modern technology. You can't have anonymous texts or untraceable mysterious calls .

[Yak]

I think that even in these days a smartphone might well not get a reception in the Valley of Adventure. I live in Cumbria and I know that there are places where you just can't pick up a signal... I would guess a lot of rural areas are still like that.

[Katharine]

I think generally I didn't give it much thought when I first read the books. I can't remember the first book I had, or how old I was, as Enid Blyton books seemed to just be part of my surroundings for always. I must have known that the books were set in the past, as some of the books in the house had belonged to my parents. Occasionally there was the odd word such as galoshes which I didn't understand, but mostly I didn't notice any other 'old fashioned' bits. Although I don't remember pre-decimal currency, some coins were still in general use when I was a child, so reading about shillings didn't seem odd, and my family love steam trains, so as a child I probably went on more of those than I did diesels, so reading about trains chuffing into stations would have seemed normal.

I must have read about Aunt Fanny collecting the children in a pony and trap, but at the time it didn't strike me as odd - I probably would have thought it more strange if she'd turned up in a car, as none of the women in our family group could drive, and I can only think of possibly 1 or 2 friends who had mothers who drove.

Interesting that many people seem to have thought that servants set the books in the past - I just thought they were rich/posh and that would be normal for them. In the same way that boarding school wouldn't have been affordable for my family, so any tales set in those I would have accepted on face value as I didn't have any experience of modern ones to compare them with. To be honest, I was never sure how much of those stories was based on reality and how much was fiction anyway - for many years I thought lacrosse was an game invented by Enid.

I suppose to me, the time period of the books wasn't really that important as I knew they weren't real, and so I the likelihood of me sharing adventures with children who had live in help was just as remote as me finding the Enchanted Wood.

I think I knew of one or two people who had someone go in and clean/help out around the house maybe one or two mornings a week, but they would mostly have been elderly people, and possibly funded by social services. I don't think I personally knew of anyone who lived in houses the size of say the FFO - who I presume were modelled on Enid's Green Hedges and surrounding area? So again, the time period didn't really come into it, as it was describing a social class that I had no personal knowledge of, so wouldn't have known if anything written was set in the past or up to date.

Someone mentioned the novelty of watching television, but even that wouldn't have seemed strange, as I remember my grandparents didn't have one for many years, and never had a telephone. I think I mentioned once, a long time ago, that although I grew up with a phone in the house, that it was an expensive item and rarely used, so for me I thought it more unusual that many of the books seemed to include phone use as fairly normal.

I suppose the gap between many of Enid's books being written and my own childhood was only 20 - 30 years, and the world didn't really change that much in that time, or at least not as much as it has in the last 30 years, so perhaps the differences are far more noticeable now.

The one exception where perhaps the time difference was noticeable was The Valley of Adventure. I would have accepted that the Second World War was 'recent', but on the other hand, reading it back in the 1970s, I think I assumed that the elderly couple had been living in the cave for a couple of decades, as I do remember wondering how they'd managed to make food last that long! I read the book again last week, and made a note of the publication, and realised that they would only have been there for a couple of years.

[Moonraker]

I immediately thought of Elsa and her husband, with their pig and Martha the hen (it's funny that Enid Blyton tells us the name of the hen but not the name of the man!)

I've always thought it odd that Enid never told us the names of Julian's parents. They are never called Uncle/Aunt and their name.

[Moonraker]

I think generally I didn't give it much thought when I first read the books. I can't remember the first book I had, or how old I was, as Enid Blyton books seemed to just be part of my surroundings for always.

As I am from the past - eagerly awaiting a new Blyton to appear - the books seemed current. However, I realised that Jane Eyre, for example, was from the past! I grew up with £sd, lbs & ozs, gallons and quarts etc, so it was still modern for me.

I suppose to me, the time period of the books wasn't really that important as I knew they weren't real, and so I the likelihood of me sharing adventures with children who had live in help was just as remote as me finding the Enchanted Wood.

Exactly. This is probably why I have never been interested in wondering about 'real' locations and inspirations for settings. I just devoured and enjoyed the books.

I never found the Enchanted Wood, but I did find the Hollow Tree House.

[Katharine]

Oh dear, I can see a typo or 2 in those quotes - I blame it on the Covid.

Nigel, it must have been lovely to live at a time when you could wait for a genuinely new Enid Blyton book to appear.

I have a mild curiosity about whether locations were real or not, but I don't think I'd have been that bothered as a child. We tended to stay in East Anglia for most of our family holidays when I was a child, so even if Enid had specified exactly where many of her adventures were set - the chances of me visiting Cornwall, Wales or Scotland would have seemed as remote as a trip to a moon.

That brings me to another point - I vaguely remember thinking so at the time, but not dwelling on it - the idea of families going away for the whole of August to the seaside was almost beyond my comprehension, and they stayed in boarding houses too. We considered ourselves lucky if my parents could afford to hire a basic caravan for a week somewhere, with my poor mother trying to conjure up family meals on a tiny gas stove and in the early days, with no running water! Still I was luckier than they were, as they had to be content with day trips to local resorts, a trip away was beyond their means.

I don't know whether month long holidays were more or less common 'in the past', or whether they even really happened and were more an ideal in Enid's imagination. Similarly, how likely would it have been for children to be sent off to a boarding house without parents? I know Five on a Treasure Island starts with that theme, and I have a feeling a few other books mention that idea?

[Anita Bensoussane]

I don't know how common month-long holidays would have been (would fathers typically have been able to get that much time off work, or would they have come just for part of that time?) Characters enjoy long summers away from home in classic novels by authors like E. M. Forster and Virginia Woolf, but they tend to be extremely well-to-do.

I remember reading Holiday House and wondering whether there really were boarding houses that took children without their parents. I'm not sure whether I've come across another institution like that in a book, let alone in real life.

[Bertie]

I remember reading Holiday House and wondering whether there really were boarding houses that took children without their parents. I'm not sure whether I've come across another institution like that in a book, let alone in real life.

True.
Although I remember reading in the last week or two that Frankie Dettori was saying (while on the latest series of I'm A Celebrity) how he was sent across here alone aged 14 - six months here, six months France - to pursue his dream of being a jockey, and he lived in a B & B without being able to speak any English at first! He said he cried most nights for the first few months due to homesickness.
So maybe they took them at a certain age? I can't remember how old the children were in Holiday House? I only read it for the first ever time in the last year or two so it's not one of the books I know well.

[Katharine]

Oh yes, of course, Holiday House. I think possibly I'd have found that concept more believable as it sounds like some kind of summer camp. Whereas I think the idea in Five on a Treasure Island was that the children would go to their usual boarding house but without their parents this year? I may have got that wrong though. I know there are one or two other settings where children are sent away to recuperate, although sometimes they have a guardian with them.

Again, that's another potentially class rather than era difference. The idea of parents jetting off on holidays by themselves would have been totally alien to me and anyone I knew at the time.

I think the time difference is much more noticeable now - currently reading Five Go Adventuring Again where the children are met by pony and trap - although perhaps the obvious difference is that Kirrin station hasn't been axed in the Beeching Report, which was thankfully still another 20 years away.

[dsr]

Perhaps my parents were a little old fashioned, but I do know they went to Oberammergau (though in a camper van, not by plane) in 1980 leaving me at home to do my O levels without parental support (aka nagging)! I was stopping at my Grandma's though, not on my own.

My brothers aged 13 and 11 (this would be 1972) travelled by overnight ferry to Denmark to join up with a family we had met on the previous year's holiday./ They were going somewhere that we had never been and had two berths in a four-berth cabin with two random strangers occupying the other two berths. This was normal then, but wouldn't be now of course.

The thing that is least normal is that Julian, Dick and Anne almost never saw their parents. I wonder if they would recognise them?