Re: Dorset & Enid Blyton (was Why not?)


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Posted by RichardG on July 07, 2006 at 13:35:37 from 217.207.172.242 user RichardG.

In Reply to: Re: Dorset (was Why not?) posted by Adam Quinan on July 06, 2006 at 18:05:51:

"I never 'did' the Famous Five but my wife did (and does - on a long train journey last Tuesday!!) She says Kirrin is a Cottage and that is v. unlikely to have been Brownsea because of how it was owned and run pre and post war. More about that is you ask. She will listen again but cannot recall a Dorset reference. Sorry about that!"

Kirrin is the family surname, the name of their cottage, and the name of the island. From memory the only time in the first book "Five on a Treasure Island" that a real place is mentioned is on the first page, somewhere they went on holiday the previous year but were not going to this year. The idea that Kirrin is in a fictionalised version of Dorset is, I believe, fairly well known - hence the Comic Strip spoof "Five go Mad in Dorset" some years back.

Enid Blyton's locations are far less reality-based than AR's, but if you go to Dorset with a good knowledge of the Famous Five you can find places that strike a familiar note. Certainly if Brownsea was a starting point for Kirrin Island EB adjusted its geography much more than AR did in creating Wild Cat, but I believe there WAS some connection - even if it was only the "Darien" thing of children looking longingly across the water to a mysterious island !

And as well as not being able to find a mention of Dorset in EB, how often do you find Lancashire or Westmorland mentioned in AR's lake books ? Not at all, as far as I recall, although I am sure if Ed has got the magic search engine running again he could confirm.


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