Enid Blyton - friend or fiend

I watched the BBC play about Enid Blyton last night and found myself saying 'what a vile woman' part way through it.

But you know when I was a child, reading an Enid Blyton books was a major event for me. And often they arrived as the Christmas book so became twice as exciting. Not for me Wind in the Willows. In fact I didn't read many of the children's classics till I was an adult.

I haven't re-read Enid Blyton since childhood so have no idea how they'd strike me now. But whatever her personal life, which may have been as self centred as they showed it in the play, she created worlds outside my own experience when I was a child.

For that at least, I have to thank her.