"Elementary, my dear Watkins..." John McShane 1. What’s it all about, Dudley? ‘Mutato nomine de te Fabula narratur.’ HORACE, SATIRES -X [EW RIEV XLI IRH SJ TVMQEV] WGLSSP [LIR - ½VWX VIEH +ISVKI 3V[IPP 1] JVMIRH ERH RIMKLFSYV Peter O’Hara, had discovered his writings and wanted to know what I thought. I latched on to the fact that this renowned writer in an essay entitled Boys’Weeklies had made a serious mistake: ‘The stories in the Magnet are signed “Frank Richards” and those in the Gem “Martin Clifford” but a series lasting 30 years could hardly be the work of the same person every week’ (quoted on p10 of Owen Dudley Edwards’ latest tome). I knew it had been a mistake because there was a note to that effect at the bottom of the page in the Penguin edition. Frank Richards (not in quotes) had decided to reply to Mr Orwell: ³1V 3V[IPP ½RHW MX HMJ½GYPX XS FIPMIZI XLEX E WIVMIW VYRRMRK JSV ]IEVW GER TSWWMFP] LEZI been written by one and the same person. In the presence of such authority I speak with HMJ½HIRGI ERH GER SRP] WE] XLEX XS XLI FIWX SJ Q] ORS[PIHKI ERH FIPMIJ - EQ SRP] SRI person, and have never been two or three.’ (p11) Game, set, and match, Mr Richards. From that day I was never Mr Orwell’s biggest fan. The lives and views of Orwell and Richards act as a motif in ODE’s marvellous study of what children actually read during the terrifying years in the middle of the last century. You can learn a lot about a society by studying the kind of stories it tells itself. W. E. Johns (the creator of Biggles) and Mr Orwell’s critic Frank Richards both denounced the atomic bomb: ‘The man in the street doesn’t want atomic bombs. He wants bread and butter.’ (Johns quoted on p7) ‘”Holy Loch” certainly is a misnomer, in the circumstances: for a more unholy beast of a thing it would be hard to imagine.’ (Richards quoted on p7) -X [EW QSVI XLER E PMXXPI HITVIWWMRK XLEX EW - VIEH XLEX ½VWX GLETXIV SJ 3()´W FSSO XLIVI [IVI QSVI anti-Trident protests still sited at Holy Loch. A few pages later we learn of JRR Tolkien’s anger at any form of racism; recently one of the men who unravelled the secrets of DNA was sacked from a lecture because of his bizarre remarks about black people being racially inferior. It seems that we are not learning from history and are bound to repeat it.
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ODE’s excellent and unprecedented review of the literature which children read and listened to during the War Which Did Not End All Wars covers a vast array of subjects and ‘over a hundred writers’, according to the blurb on the jacket. After an overview of what was going on in reality and ½GXMSR HYVMRK XLI ;EV ¯ JSV RIEVP] TEKIW ¯ XLIVI EVI YWIJYP GLETXIVW SR VIPMKMSR KIRHIV GPEWW race and other subjects – for another 300 pages! This is no mere summary, nor a book which one can approach lightly. ODE does indeed concentrate on the writers and brings his favourites vividly to life: as well as Orwell, Richards, Johns, and Tolkien, we learn a lot about Richmal Crompton (the William series), Elinor Mary Brent-Dyer (School at the Chalet), and especially Enid Blyton (surely even readers of The Drouth have heard of the creator of Noddy?). Why were these writers writing at all and especially for children? In Richards’ reply to Orwell, ODE proclaims: ‘A theme in which almost all British literature for children met the Second World War: it was to be brave, and it was to be funny.’ (p19) In this context, special reverence is reserved for the Dundee publishers DC Thomson: ‘The quality of most of their stories was surprisingly high, and often better than many books in hard covers priced for much wealthier children.’ (p696) Dudley D. Watkins is referred to as the ‘master artist of the Dandy and Beano and creator of Desperate Dan, Lord Snooty, Oor Wullie and the Broons’ (p295), in spite of the fact that ODE seems sometimes to lament the fact that children’s comics gradually stopped publishing prose stories and replaced them with picture stories. 2. War in Words ‘Who so beset him round With dismal stories Do but themselves confound.’ BUNYAN In the short space allotted to me I cannot comment on even a fraction of the subjects which ODE covers in his book. Trust me, it deserves to be read. So, please do not be put off by the fact that in this section I have decided to be highly critical. The book is, unfortunately, not without its errors. I was confused by ‘Pope Benedict XV had denounced the First World War I and a few Catholics went to jail in obedience to his opposition to armed service …’ (p312) I had no idea ODE was old enough to go to jail in WWI! But I do know for a certainty that there is something missing in ‘Three cases may noted’. (p451) However, despite throwing one off the scent for a moment, most of these errors are minor. ODE seems in two minds about ‘proper’ comics – those which do not contain prose narratives. He laments that by the 1950s we had reached ‘the last days of word-narrative in children’s weeklies’ (p622), but he seems to have the greatest respect for the picture-narrative work of Dudley D. Watkins. This is presumably because they share a name. (My theory here is no more contrived than ODE’s on the origin of Desperate Dan’s name: ‘Desperate Dan was probably also stepping-stoned via Canada: the name presumably derives from Dangerous Dan McGrew, who, like his namesake [?], was the work of an Englishman who matured in Scotland – in McGrew’s case Robert Service.’ (p339) I have a problem here with ‘presumably’; there is no note to explain where ODE got this theory – an interview with Dudley D. Watkins? It seems that all the Dandy character really has in common with the Canadian is ‘Dan’ and an adjective which alliterates with it. Later on (p664) ODE begins a paragraph: ‘It is possible – indeed probable …’ with again no note to back up this hypothesis.) There are, unfortunately, four items of note which may put off potential readers. The cover is really poor and looks as though it was designed in the era which it depicts. We have a monochrome picture of children reading which is fair enough and this is framed by four pictures (three in colour) of the Magnet (with no clear depiction of Bunter), a William novel, and two W.E. Johns books (why two?). Why no Enid Blyton? Why not depict Orwell vs. Richards? Why not something which will make the casual browser look twice? Books of great erudition like this one are under no obligation to hide their light under a bushel.
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Of course, there may be no casual browser. The price tag is £150.00 (no, that is not a misprint!). So, if someone gets past the boring cover, they are unlikely to thrust their hand straight to their wallet. This book seems destined to be propping up shelves in the copyright libraries. Do many people still do research in these libraries? Phil Cunningham has made great use of Edinburgh’s libraries in his research for Scotland’s Music on BBC2, but will his enthusiasm inspire others? ODE’s information should be available free on the Internet because that way it has a chance of reaching a wider audience ERH EPPS[ JSV HMWGYWWMSR SJ LMW QENSV TSMRXW %RH XLI TVS½X SR XLI FSSO [MPP TVSFEFP] FI XLI WEQI – not a cent! It will be sad if, as I suspect, more people read this review than read the book! ODE has a tendency to indulge in the same type of paragraphing in which Henry James indulged in PEXIV PMJI TEKIW [MXLSYX E FVIEO 8LMW QEOIW VIPSGEXMRK TSMRXW VEXLIV HMJ½GYPX YRPIWW SRI MW MR XLI LEFMX of annotating one’s books (and remember the price tag – would you want to make this tome less than mint conditioned?). I have not annotated even a paperback since my uncle Frank (by name and by nature) said the family only did that to show that they were smarter than other people. Since then I have hidden my erudition in notebooks. What is wrong with sub-headings? My fourth and last criticism concerns the index which is infuriating and inconsistent. For example, 3() FVMI¾] QIRXMSRW XLI Daily Mail comic strip Flook, by the artist Trog (co-created by Douglas Mount and written at various times by none other than TV’s Barry Norman, and jazz greats Humphrey Lyttleton and George Melly who ‘infused Trog’s art with the satirical spirit emerging in the 1960s in comedy clubs and Private Eye’, according to Paul Gravett in Great British Comics, which I would recommend to all those interested in ODE’s book.). For those who do not know, Flook is ‘an ERMQEP [MXL E XVYRO [LSWI IRH SGGEWMSREPP] [IRX VIH LSX [LS GSYPH ¾] ERH [LSWI ERGLSV QER [EW a boy named Rufus’ (p662). This is not in the index under ‘Flook’ or even under ‘Daily Mail’, but only under ‘Trog’, so you are obliged to remember the artist’s name – and not even his real name. ODE seems unaware that Trog is the pen-name of Wally Fawkes. Ian Fleming’s books (ODE describes him as ‘more childish than Blyton’) are not listed by name at all; the only indexed reference is to Fleming himself. Books which ODE does like (such as Gimlet Mops Up and The Mountain of Adventure) are in fact given their entry in the index. Has the index been compiled by hand? In Microsoft Word (to give just one popular example of a writing tool), once you have set up the rules for indexing, an automatic and comprehensive index is only a click away. I am told ODE uses only a manual typewriter, but surely Edinburgh University Press has Word or the equivalent? If someone does pay £150.00 for this, it seems only fair to give them a comprehensive index. But how will the story end? 3. Conclusion and Aftermath ‘Dust in the air suspended Marks the place where a story ended.’ T. S. ELIOT, LITTLE GIDDING ‘But, with children, the chief impression at Christmas 1945 was that they had become readers … and they would stay readers.’ (p652) ODE ends his book on a happy note. How sad, then, as I complete this essay, that England has fallen to 14th in the World Literacy league table. Children in England EVI NYWX RSX VIEHMRK 'SQTYXIV KEQIW EVI FIMRK KMZIR XLI FPEQI XLMW XMQI MR XLI TEWX GSQMGW ½PQW and TV have been the whipping boys. The English do not seem to have noticed that the very same computer games are available in the most literate countries. I have just visited my local mall, the ironically named Silverburn (presumably named after the White Cart which to my eye is rather rust coloured). There is not a single bookshop or even WH Smith in what I am told is the biggest mall in Scotland.
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Let us remind ourselves what children once got out of their reading: ‘The children’s surroundings, even the bombed sites on which so many played, presented them with phenomena likely to traumatise; yet the world of the imagination, consumed by the readers, retailed to their associates, gave them the means of survival.’ (p673) What can we give our present children that will allow them to survive in a cynical, corrupt world? A useful study for an aspiring PhD student who has read ODE’s book would be to contrast Lord of the Rings with His Dark Materials. ODE’s book is full of praise for the positive messages in Tolkien’s FSSOW 4YPPQER´W FSSOW ¯ XLI ½VWX ½PQ MW VIPIEWIH RI\X [IIO EW - [VMXI ¯ LEZI FIIR HIWGVMFIH EW ‘Tolkien for a secular age’, but what does this imply for the message which our current generation will get from these books? I assume that it is a coincidence that the following sentence appears on page number 666: ‘When devolution did arrive, in 1999, Scottish broadcasting was excepted from it, and subsequently declined after an excellent half-century.’ Our children are not reading much and we can no longer rely on the Beeb for programming which children will want to watch. We should all be reading British Children’s Fiction in the Second World War and learning how to tell ourselves stories which will teach us how to live. British Children’s Fiction in the Second World War by Owen Dudley Edwards, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, £150.00.
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