Book to Screen: First Term at Malory Towers

When I was about eleven, I started adapting Enid Blyton's First Term at Malory Towers into script form, in a small Lion King notebook. It may have been around the same time that CITV broadcast an excellent adaptation (at least to my pre-adolescent eyes) of the Famous Five books. It was certainly an exercise in wish-fulfilment that I knew would never see the light of day, partly because I was a kid, but also because even at that age I knew there would be no home on kids' TV for a series with an all-female cast.

The Malory Towers books - especially the first one - opened up an entire world to me. I was not new to Enid Blyton's books - I was an enormous fan of her mysteries, especially the Famous Five - and I remember rummaging through the classroom book box for something by the author, and turning up triumphantly with Malory Towers. At first I was a little nonplussed, with a little confusion over the lead character's gender - I had only known Darrell as a boy's name at that point - and some bewilderment about how the brown tunic with orange trim could possibly constitute a "jolly nice" school uniform, but by the time I'd made it onto the train, I had put aside these nitpicks and become thoroughly engrossed in the story and the new-to-me setting of the Girl's Boarding School. Malory Towers came alive; I could picture the school, in its grey stately setting, built around a courtyard, with its salt-water swimming pool on the cliffs, and the dormitory towers.

That was at least 25 years ago, yet that series, especially the first book, became one of the stories that became inextricably entangled with my own childhood. It seems strange to lay a personal claim to a popular book by one of Britain's biggest-selling children's authors, but when I learned that the BBC had adapted it as a 13-part series, I felt weirdly proud and possessive. I approached it excitably - even getting up early on the day it arrived online, to watch an episode before work (my last day of work before we closed due to The Current Situation.)

Readers, it was simply marvellous!

I wasn't sure how much of Blyton's story was going to be used, and how much would be using her setting to tell original stories.  The story takes an episodic form - ideal for the genre, which takes place over the course of a school term - which blends scenes from the book with new material very well. Every scene I'd hoped for was there, in full and with very little meddling: the slap in the pool, the tricks, the mystery of Sally, and Mary-Lou's fountain pen. These scenes were adapted just as faithfully as my inner purist could ever have hoped, and so I don't mind in the least that additional material has been tidily slotted in alongside it. As well as the Blytonesque hijinks - midnight feasts, secret passages, a ghost story - the characters face things that maybe Blyton wouldn't have written about herself, but that ring true to the boarding school setting of the late 1940s, such as class and its expectations, and academic struggles. I think that it was a bold step to depict one of the bright heroines as having what would now be recognised as dyslexia: an important piece of representation for Malory Towers' young audience

The girls and mistresses were brought to life by a diverse cast who worked well together as a team. They embodied the classmates I've known for a quarter of a century - even the minor characters who even Blyton forgot about or replaced over the course of the series. (The only girl missing from the First Form North Tower dormitory is Violet, mentioned twice, whose defining trait is that she has exactly zero personality. Poor soul, I often wondered what became of her.) The only character I felt disappointed with was Matron (Ashley McGuire), reduced to a walking stereotype, a bullying, incompetent martinet. I've a suspicion that she was used to fill the gap left by Ma'm'zelle Dupont, Blyton's comedy French mistress whose main purpose was to be the butt of Alicia's pranks.

Ella Bright plays a spirited, well-rounded Darrell Rivers, a Darrell with a Past - an elaboration from the source material, but which is consistent with her character: she is the quintessential schoolgirl heroine, kind, fair, sporty and smart. (I just wish she had curly hair like the illustrations on my 1990s paperbacks.)

Meanwhile, Danya Grivers is every bit the spoilt, catty drama queen Gwendoline Mary Lacey - the perfect antagonist. Yet even she is shown a little more compassion, by the script and the characters, than Blyton ever afforded her. I never thought it fair that she was sneered at from her very first appearance. She's awful, but she was never given the chance to be otherwise. Here, at least, she is shown a little mercy and her character's vulnerability peeps through her spiteful exterior.

Then there's timid, sweet little Mary-Lou, jolly and scatterbrained musician Irene - as soon as they appeared, the friends who had been words on a page had faces of their own. Moody Sally, sensible Jean (albeit not Scottish) and stern Katherine, the head of form. Quiet, traditionally feminine Emily, who only really spends a couple of pages in the limelight on the page, has a subplot of her own, not from the book but that fits in seamlessly. A few lines and a North American (I think Canadian?) accent go a long way towards explaining hard-edged prankster Alicia, who rarely gets to see her family, even in the holidays, and who has huge hampers and gifts sent to her, perhaps as compensation, and remember that this is post-war Britain where rationing is stricter than it was even during the second world war.

Aside from the Matron quibble, I only have a few minor criticisms; occasionally some 21st-century-isms popped into the dialogue, such as Alicia saying "guys" or a couple of characters using the pinky-promise to swear everlasting friendship, which is a ubiquitous trope and yet I'm pretty sure has not been around as long as writers think it has. And I'd like to draw the distinction between anger, which can be used for good, and "temper" which is anger without self-control. Finally, there appear to be only about a dozen pupils and four members of staff in the whole school, and poor Pamela the head girl is also games coach and remedial tutor, and it leaves you wondering when on earth she has time to study her own lessons! But all in all, the first series of Malory Towers was simply smashing, and I'm really keen to see the rest of the books also adapted for the screen. I want to meet Bill, and Clarissa, and Mavis; I want to see the clifftop rescue, the midnight horse-ride, the Fifth Form pantomime.

I've waited 25 years for this, and now I want more.

Bout of Books: Days 3-5

Wednesday:

After a long weekend, I was back at work trying to smother a rotten headache with painkillers. The headache had been bad enough to keep waking me up in the night - and of course, sleepless night made it worse in a downward spiral effect. The school holidays are now over, meaning that the shop has gone very quiet indeed all of a sudden. This doesn't mean I've been sitting on my backside all day, though. Most of the day was spent in removing the seasonal promotions, setting up the new displays, and rearranging the shop in a way that makes some sort of sense.

I finished NOS4R2 on Tuesday evening, which left me with a book-hangover. I needed some time to put that story world to rest, and so I continued with a safe reread: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. In the book's early chapters, I picked up on one of the series' unanswered questions.

Dementors caused a person to relive the worst moments of their life. What would spoiled, pampered, bullying Dudley have been forced to hear?

I wonder if J.K. Rowling has ever answered that question, or if anyone has thought to write fanfiction on the subject. It reminded me that even supporting characters have their own secret lives, that even though we only see the Dursley family in the summer holidays, when Harry lives with them, they exist throughout the year, and don't define themselves as supporting roles in the Potter boy's story. The very idea!

I decided Wednesday should be a computer-free day, as I came home very tired, wanted an early night, but still planned to get some reading and writing done without the distractions of the internet. I found it quite liberating to write by hand for a change; there are no word-count widgets, and again, fewer procrastination opportunities this way. I'd like to get back into the habit of writing at least bits of first drafts on paper.

Books read today: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Pages read today: 70

Running total: 342

Books finished: 1: NOS4R2

My life outside books: 4 and a bit notebook pages filled. Fountain pen loves me.

Thursday

Despite setting myself a rule of not adding more books to my to-read pile than I read, I have already acquired two books this year, while only finishing one. Judith lent me Commander Chris Hadfield's book: An Astronaut's Guide to Life (which, in fact, was my Christmas present to her in the first place.) My second book might not count, as it's one I've already read, but I will be strict with myself and include it in the total: it is a second copy of Enid Blyton's Second Form at Malory Towers, found in the Oxfam bookshop. I collected these books when I was growing up, but they changed the cover design partway through, and this one and the last book featured more modern and less faithful illustrations. This was the first time in maybe 16 years, maybe more, that I have tracked down one of the remaining books with the "right" cover, so I couldn't help myself. (Now, if I can find the last book in the same style...)

At lunch time, I made a start on reading Paul Magrs' Something Borrowed, the second book in his series about a couple of old ladies with unusual pasts who solve mysteries of the gothic and supernatural kind. I read the first book about Brenda and her friend Effie when I was on holiday. Like the first, Something Borrowed is an easy read, darkly funny and a literary nerd's dream. I expect to have finished that by the end of tomorrow.

Books read today: Something Borrowed

Pages read today: 63

Running total: 405

Books finished: 1: NOS4R2

My life outside books: Yes, I bought a kids' book I already own, because I liked the cover better. So sue me.

Friday:

I'd made a long list of things I wanted to get done today, but the headache that began Tuesday evening has stuck around and keeps threatening to turn into an all-out migraine. Instead I spent the morning and early afternoon finishing off Something Borrowed. While not as brilliant as its prequel, it was a fun, entertaining read. One character, who did not feature in the book itself, but was there in flashbacks, I rather suspected was loosely based on J. R. R. Tolkien. Named Professor Reginald Tyler, a don at Cambridge university (rather than Oxford), he was a key member of a literary society called the Smudgelings (see Inklings) and spent his entire life working on an elaborate mythology (although this was more Lovecraftian in style.) It made me smile, although I rather doubt that Tolkien had the same sort of dark and horrifying secret life that Tyler led.

Over Christmas I sorted out a load of books, DVDs and clothes that I no longer wanted, and this afternoon I took some of these down to the charity shops: Oxfam bookshop, the Red Cross and the Earl Mountbatten Hospice shop. I've still got another bag to go, but I can only carry so much at a time.

Books read today: Something Borrowed

Pages read today: 261

Running total: 666 pages (haha!)

Books finished: 2: NOS4R2, Something Borrowed.

My life outside books: Quiet day off. Back at work tomorrow.

When children's books were two-and-sixpence

Over breakfast I am indulging myself by allowing to read a chapter or two of our old Paddington omnibus each day. When we were little, we had a story-tape of the book, and my most vivid memory from that is the voice of the taxi-driver in the very first chapter, when they are taking Paddington home for the first time. "Bears is sixpence extra. Sticky bears is ninepence." So imagine my disgust when, at work, I discover that they have modernised the currency or taken out all references altogether! The quote is now along the lines of, "Bears is extra. Sticky bears is twice as much again." Firstly, it sounds all wrong. It doesn't scan. Secondly it is inaccurate. Now, I know that when the currency was changed back when my parents were little, it was very confusing and people would talk about sixpence actually being two and a half new pence. But ninepence is not 200% of sixpence. It is 150%. Maths isn't my best subject, never was, but I know that much.

And I got to thinking of the tendency to update classic books, a practice that I find abhorent, unless it is necessary. For example, some old books contain careless, throwaway phrases that are nowadays unacceptable and offensive, and I think it is quite right to remove them. But unless that is the case I think books should be left as they were.

Enid Blyton is another author whose novels are updated. Sometimes, such as in modern editions of The Magic Faraway Tree and The Adventurous Four, even the characters' names are modernised, and in almost all her books the currency is changed from shillings and sixpences to pounds and fifty pences. I had a copy of The Naughtiest Girl Again where the childrens' weekly pocket money was 20p, instead of the original two shillings. Two shillings in old money was a sensible amount of pocket money for children of that age; in new money, 20p won't buy a packet of polos. There was a scene where four children were asked to pay for a broken window out of their combined 80p pocket money. Good luck to them!

But even when there is a decent exchange rate, it is rather insulting to the reader - and it gives the whole book a feeling of inconsistency. Enid Blyton's books are very much of their time, so to give them modern names, modern pocket money, modern clothing, etc, doesn't fit in with that (although I've a nasty suspicion even the slang has changed in some versions: "I say!" to "Wow!" One wonders where it will stop. Will future editions of the Famous Five replace their lashings of ginger beer and new-made bread with Coca-Cola and happy meals? Will things stop being "jolly good" and "horrid" and start being [unrepeatable]?)

Children aren't stupid - at least, they wouldn't be if adults didn't dumb their books down for them. They are quite capable of understanding that a shilling was the currency of the time the book was written, and what "smashing" means. I'm just glad that my copies of these books were, for the most part, untainted by modernisations - but I do wonder if I should buy second-hand copies now, for the benefit of my unborn children, in case they are no longer available in their original text if and when they come into the world.