Some links

[altariel]

A link from new_atalanta to a wonderful site about the life and works of Noel Streatfeild. It covers her children's and adult books. I'm going to have to pull Apple Bough off the shelf now and reread.

And I found this article about girls' comics at the BBC cult website last week. Make sure you read the bits about the Bunty strip 'The Boyfriend from Blupo', which is just hilarious.

Comments

[avon7.livejournal.com]

The only adult fic I've read of hers is Aunt Clara and it's um odd. The Vicarage Family is fascinating - it's hard to know whether she is fictionalising the real characters and that's why they are so much like her book characters, or whether as I believe she creates much of her books out of her childhood. Greatnanny - her father's nanny is clearly the prototype for her various nannies while the two servants pop up in various guises again and again. I think Nicolette in Tennis Shoes might be closest to her portrayal of herself but all her misunderstood and overshadowed characters are Noel.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

From what I could glean about The Vicarage Family on that site, her family seemed to strenuously deny that it was a true portrait. I haven't read Tennis Shoes (although it appears to be in print in the UK). I don't think I'd realized until I looked at the bibliography just how prolific she was.

[avon7.livejournal.com]

Yes, from everything I've heard the family do disagree pretty strongly with her portrayal of how it was. My feeling is that the cousin-boyfriend may have been deliberate invention, but much of it is how Noel *felt* it was. I don't know if you've got many siblings, but in my experience without anyone lying there's still no one truth about anyhting that happened. We all experience it differently so it is different.

Small world, large project moment - when I was in England last a friend took to lunch at his stepmother's just outside Eastbourne, and it turned out that she had known Noel and was able to show me some of the places mentioned in A Vicarage Family.

I got a shock when I saw the bibliography too, though I did discover after some poking around that quite a few of the ones I didn't know were early readers. I think I've got about 15 of her kids' books - and I've just ordered the only Gemma book I was missing. They're not an outstanding series, but I'm fond of them.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you've got many siblings, but in my experience without anyone lying there's still no one truth about anyhting that happened. We all experience it differently so it is different.

Hoo boy yes - I'm the youngest of six, and a late addition to the family: my siblings were all born within seven years (poor mum), and I arrived seven years later. (Thinking about your other message about Myra and families splitting up, I wonder if this is why I'm more accepting of this: siblings were moving on all throughout my childhood, to university, marrying, etc., so I suspect I may have accepted this as the natural order of things.)


when I was in England last a friend took to lunch at his stepmother's just outside Eastbourne, and it turned out that she had known Noel and was able to show me some of the places mentioned in A Vicarage Family.

Wonderful!

I'm missing a Gemma book too - can't remember which now - I like them as a series too; they're very readable.

[avon7.livejournal.com]

Hoo boy yes - I'm the youngest of six, and a late addition to the family: my siblings were all born within seven years (poor mum), and I arrived seven years later. (Thinking about your other message about Myra and families splitting up, I wonder if this is why I'm more accepting of this: siblings were moving on all throughout my childhood, to university, marrying, etc., so I suspect I may have accepted this as the natural order of things.)

Actually now you say that I remember it. Oddly enough I'm also the youngest of a mostly older family - when I was born my siblings were 10, 9, 7 and 4 - and it's precisely that being left behind bit that made me so clingy with my fictional families, I suspect. As a kid the two guaranteed tear-jerkers for me were characters growing up (still can't get through the last Christopher Robin chapter without howling) and animals dying. Ah well - it'd be a boring old world if we were all the same. ;-)