Posted by PeterH on September 06, 2006 at 10:13:14 from 86.130.133.156 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Bob & his history posted by Laurence Monkhouse on September 06, 2006 at 07:58:07:
TV series set in the same era some years ago
Oo-er - please remember that a 'TV series' is not evidence of anything except the beliefs or prejudices of its makers, which may or may not be accurate. We need facts. But I'm not quibbling with the other posts. There certainly were plenty of NCO pilots in the 'Battle of Britain', but that could well have been due to sheer demand.
I find Laurence's other point - about the absence of people in their 30s in AR's stories - interesting because it has also struck me that AR did not like to have too many 'parents' around. The Amazons' father had died; Mrs Blackett's parents had presumably also died; at Swainson's Farm Mary lives with her grand-parents, and there is no mention of her parents; Missee Lee's father had died, and he never knew who his father was; George Owdon lived with his uncle. The Swallows' father is alive but conveniently away at sea, while their mother appears often and is a paragon of virtue and some readers consider her unreal. The D's parents do not appear at all.
AR was devoted to his own mother, but had problems with his father. Perhaps he consciously or subconsciously avoided parent>child inter-relationships in the stories?
BTW, reverting for a minute to Mrs Blackett's class status, her mother was a local girl - she visited Swainson's as a child. I would assume that her father - the Great-Aunt's brother - was local also. It's starting to look as if both the Blacketts and the Turners were local families, and not wealthy industrialists.