George Formby

The show business career of George Formby spanned exactly FORTY YEARS, beginning in 1921 until his death in 1961. During that period he appeared in 21 hit films, cut over 230 records, made hundreds of stage performances, appeared in two Royal Command Performances and entertained an estimated THREE MILLION Allied Servicemen and women during World War II throughout Europe and the Middle East. Although he never performed in the U.S.A. he did make personal appearances and was quite popular in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. By 1939, George Formby was the most popular and highest paid entertainer in the British Isles and was estimated to be earning over £100,000 a year. The secret of his success was a unique combination of personality, natural ability and talent coupled with the driving force of his wife, Beryl as his Manager. With his natural human warmth and friendliness, George could hold a live audience in the palm of his hand as he sang and played the ukulele in his own inimitable style. He seemed to have the ability to make people enjoy what he did, and his audiences always called for more. George Formby helped write and perform over 300 original songs, largely flavoured with his own brand of English North Country humour. He was well known for playing the Banjo Ukulele, a hybrid instrument combining the Hawaiian ukulele and the big American Banjo, which had been invented by Alvin D. Keech and christened by him as the 'Banjulele' The story behind George's rise to popularity in show business is an interesting and fascinating one. He was born George Hoy Booth on 26 May 1904 in Wigan, Lancashire. He was the eldest of seven children having four sisters and two brothers. His father, George Formby Senior (real name James Booth), was already a famous stage actor and comedian when young George was born. He never wanted any of his family to enter show business and so young George was sent to become an apprentice jockey at the age of seven years. He rode his first professional race at the age of ten and weighing only three stones thirteen pounds. When his father died suddenly in 1921, encouraged by his mother and being too heavy to continue horse racing, he decided to follow in his father's footsteps. Calling himself George Hoy (his mother's maiden name) he took to the stage using his father's material. The results were disastrous. After a couple of years learning the business and getting married to Beryl, he met a fellow actor who strummed a Banjo Ukulele for fun between shows. He sold the instrument to George for £2/10 (£2.50) and George quickly learned a couple of songs. Accepting a bet that he dare not use the Banjo Ukulele in his act, George played it at the Alhambra Theatre in Barnsley - and brought the house down! George and his 'Uke' were inseparable from that point on. In 1932, George made a record with the famous Jack Hylton Band. The 'A' side was called 'Do De O Do' and the 'B' side was a song called 'Chinese Blues'. When the record was released it was the 'B' side that became all the rage across the North and the Midlands and Formby adopted it as his signature tune renamed as 'Chinese Laundry Blues', complete with the now famous 'Mr. Wu'. In 1934, George made his first film, 'Boots! Boots!', which launched his

film career. A contract to make 11 films for ATP at the Ellstree Studios soon followed resulting in George Formby becoming the most popular entertainer in the British Isles earning an estimated £100,000 a year. A further contract worth Columbia to make seven films earned him a further £500,000. Each of his films contained three or four songs which were invariably released as 78 rpm records and on sheet music. These included such titles as:- 'The Window Cleaner', 'Fanlight Fanny', 'Riding In The T.T. Races' and probably his most famous song, written by Noel Gay, 'Leaning On A Lamp Post'. He continued to entertain throughout the war as part of ENSA throughout Europe and the Middle East and was one of the first entertainers into Normandy after the invasion, where he was personally invited by General Montgomery to entertain the front line troops. After the war, George toured and entertained throughout the World. In 1951, he was offered the part of Percy Piggott in the musical show, 'Zip Goes A Million' by impresario Emile Littler. It was based on the play, 'Brewsters Millions'. When it opened in the West End it was acclaimed by the critics and George was a shining star again. However, six months into the run and George suffered a heart attack, which caused him to leave the show and rest. After 18 months of recuperation, he began to do one-night stands, seaside summer shows and pantomime gradually easing himself back into work. In 1960, George made his last record, 'Happy Go Lucky Me' and in December of the same year made what was to be his last television programme. A forty minute, one man show called 'The Friday Show'. It was to be a confessional with George admitting that Beryl had been the driving force behind his success, that he couldn't read and write properly, that he didn't understand music and that he regretted not having any children. His wife, Beryl, watched the programme from her sickbed. She was dying from leukemia, but was still able to offer her usual critique of George's performance. Beryl died on Christmas Eve, 1960. George was appearing in pantomime in Bristol and returned to the show immediately after the funeral.

There was still a few surprises to come. A few weeks after Beryl's death, George suddenly announced his engagement to Pat Howson, a young 36-year-old schoolteacher. George knew her through having purchased some motor cars from her father's garage. The wedding was planned for the early spring. Unfortunately George had another heart attack and although he appeared to be recovering, he died in Preston's St. Joseph's Roam Catholic hospital on the 6 March 1961 at the age of 56 years. He was buried in Warrington Cemetery in the family grave, and an estimated 100,000 mourners lined the streets on the day of the funeral to show their respect for one of the greatest entertainers this country has ever known. http://www.georgeformby.co.uk/gf_story/report.html

Lego

In 1932 Ole Kirk Christiansen, master carpenter and joiner in the village of Billund, Denmark, sets up business. His firm manufactures stepladders, ironing boards - and wooden toys. In 1934 the company and its products now take on the name LEGO, which is formed from the Danish words "LEgGOdt" ("play well"). In 1947 the LEGO company is Denmark's first to buy a plastic injection-molding machine for making toys. In 1949 the company produces about 200 different plastic and wooden toys, including Automatic Binding Bricks, a forerunner of the LEGO bricks we know today. They are sold only in Denmark. In 1955 after further developing the LEGO Bricks, the company launches the revolutionary "LEGO System of Play": 28 sets and 8 vehicles. It also sells supplementary elements. In 1958 the current LEGO stud-and-tube coupling system is invented and patented. The new coupling principle makes models much more stable. The possible combinations of bricks run into astronomical figures. Introduced in the United States in 1962, the first LEGOs came in loose sets of bricks. By 1966, however, LEGO kits were guiding young hard hats in snapping together all kinds of buildings, trucks, planes, and ships. The LEGO Group expanded its audience with the 1969 addition of the DUPLO line of big bricks for preschoolers and, in 1977, the TECHNIC line of sophisticated projects for older kids and teens. Within the last decade, an active online community of LEGO fans has developed new designs and drawing programs in which new constructions can be recorded. In 1998, LEGO introduced LEGO SCALA Planet, a kit specially designed for girls that combines the company's traditional construction elements with a family of dolls and fashion accessories, a magazine, and an interactive Web site. LEGO came to the United States during some of the coldest years of the Cold War, a period that also saw a heightened interest in education and toys that could teach. U.S. leaders exhorted schools to start turning out scientists and mathematicians, who were seen as key combatants in the arms and space races with the Soviet Union. In the spirit of the times, LEGO promised that its bricks would "develop the child's critical judgment, manual dexterity, and ability to think for himself." It’s no accident that the words "LEGO" and "imagination" often pop up together. The bright, colorful plastic bricks can be joined in countless combinations and have been a favorite with kids, parents, and teachers since their introduction in 1958. Unlike Erector Sets and Tinkertoys, which appeal more to older children, LEGO bricks are loved by builders of all ages, even infants more interested in knocking down than in building.

Billy Hill

When crime grabbed the limelightWhile current gang leaders steer well clear of publicity, villains of the past loved notoriety. A new Billy Hill biography remembers one of Britain's best known gangsters Share Duncan Campbell The Guardian, Wednesday 30 July 2008 Article history Billy Hill liked to be known as the Bandit King. Photograph: Wensley Clarkson's private archive Fifty years ago, there was a very British comedy film called Carlton-Browne of the F.O., which starred Peter Sellers and Terry-Thomas. In one scene, a character is ejected from a nightclub, despite a staff member pointing out that he is a member of the royal family. "I don't care if he's Billy Hill!" says the manager of the club. Hill was one of Britain's best-known gangsters. His ghosted autobiography, Boss of Britain's Underworld, had already appeared, and he also liked to be known as the Bandit King. He was thrilled to be mentioned in the film and never tired of talking about it. This month, a new biography, Billy Hill: Godfather of London, by journalist Wensley Clarkson, is published. It describes just how much he relished his notoriety. "I guess I looked like a gangster," he said. "They say Humphrey Bogart could go for my twin brother, and he looks like what a gangster's supposed to look like." Hill died in 1984 and the book is an epitaph, in a way, for an era when criminals actually courted the limelight.

"Organised crime has changed beyond recognition since the days of the Krays," said Gordon Brown in last month's speech on liberty and security. And how. Where once professional criminals were tickled to be recognised and known as a "face", now they tick the box marked "No publicity". A modern-day professional criminal would reach for his lawyer or his passport if he found his name featured so casually in a comedy film. Hill, born in London almost 100 years ago, was already cutting a swath almost literally, through the capital in his 30s. Here is how he recalled an altercation in a pub, when someone foolishly shoved a glass into his face: "It stuck there like a dart in a dartboard. I pulled the glass out of my face with one hand and my chiv out of my pocket with the other. Then I got to work doing a bit of hacking and carving. I don't know how many blokes I cut that night. I didn't care ... " Hill liked to carve a "V for victory" sign on his victims' faces, but insisted that the chivving was only used as a last resort. "I was always careful to draw my knife down on the face, never across or upwards. Always down. So that if the knife slips you don't cut an artery. After all, chivving is chivving, but cutting an artery is usually murder. Only mugs do murder." The Krays also sought publicity, amazingly allowing journalist John Pearson into their lives so that he could write the excellent biography The Profession of Violence. They loved to be photographed rubbing shoulders with singers and actors. During his trial for murder, Ronnie Kray offhandedly informed the judge that if he hadn't been in court he would have been "having tea with Judy Garland". Loonyology, the autobiography of Charles Bronson, reputedly "the most violent prisoner in Britain", was published last month. Coming shortly is Blaggers Inc, by Terry Smith, a well-known former bank robber, and a film about "Mad" Frankie Fraser is in the pipeline. All of this publicity would be anathema to the new breed of professional,

criminal. But in the days of Hill and others, notoriety was a useful part of the portfolio: it meant that you were feared and your demands were more easily met. But it eventually made you a target for the authorities. The higher the profile, as the Krays eventually discovered, the heavier the fall. Professional criminals now choose to keep a low profile. In his recent book, McMafia, Misha Glenny describes the new protagonists: "They were criminals, organised and disorganised, but they were also good capitalists and entrepreneurs, intent on obeying the laws of supply and demand." And, like good capitalists, they saw no reason to court publicity. That is why we continue to know more about Hill - who died almost a quarter of a century ago - than about the current gang leaders. Maxim Jakubowski, the owner of crime bookshop Murder One, in central London, says: "The modern criminal would rather stay in the shadows. A lot of them are still active, so what you mainly get [in published books] are the Krays' old associates. Soon it will be the Krays' hairdresser, I expect." Paul Boon, who handles the True Crime imprint for Pennant books, publisher of Billy Hill: Godfather of London, agrees that the current book market is for criminals of the past rather than the present. "To be a criminal now, you have to be the unseen man," he says. What must seem astonishing to modern multinational criminals, whether they make their money through drug trafficking or cyberfraud, is the desire of their predecessors to court publicity and to offer access to people who wanted to write about them. As the new Hill biography shows, there will never be a shortage of panic in the headlines, fuelling an interest in the more comprehensible forms of crime. In 1945, at the end of the war, as Wensley Clarkson describes, the

Daily Express was reporting, "Crime is on the march in Britain today, boldly and violently. It is double what it was in 1939 and the evil grows by 10,000 cases each month." One of the Express reporters noted that "within shouting distance of a spot where Eros may soon stand again, I have seen men pull out fistfuls of pound notes. Guns, revolvers and tommy guns sold well over the weekend. There are more guns at the moment than there is ammunition to fit them ... furtive clubs are springing up." The tommy guns have gone, and these days the clubs are anything but furtive, but no one these days is aspiring to the title of Boss of Britain's Underworld.

Stan Ogden

Stan Ogden first appeared in the Street in 1964, looking for his eighteen-year-old daughter Freda, who had run away from the family. Freda had changed her name to Irma and was working as Florrie Lindley's assistant in the corner shop. Stan, a long-distance lorry-driver, was away from home much of the time, leaving his wife Hilda to look after their four children. When he was home, he was given to drinking bouts and terrible rages, which had caused their two younger children to be taken into council care. Stan managed to convince Irma, as she was now known, that he had changed his ways, giving up lorry driving and trying to control his temper. He promised Irma anything if she would return to the family. At the time, No13 Coronation Street was for sale, Jerry and Myra Booth having been forced out by financial troubles, and Irma made the condition of her return that Stan buy the house to provide the family with a permanent home. Stan surprised her by finding a deposit and buying the house for £565. In June 1964 Stan moved his family; wife Hilda, son Dudley (who followed his sister's lead and changed his name to Trevor) and Irma, into

No13 Coronation Street. Hilda quickly found work as a cleaner in the Rovers, and Irma also worked there for awhile as a barmaid. Trevor proved more troublesome, however. He ran away with money stolen from the neighbours when he was fourteen and wrote to his parents telling them to disown him. Stan complied with the letter and Trevor was unmentioned for years. Irma quickly fell for football star David Barlow, and they were married in late 1965. After that, Stan and Hilda were left on their own. Stan had mended his ways, although he was still quite fond of his beer and quickly became Newton and Ridley's best customer. His reward: a free pint every day for life. While Stan remained faithful to his local, for a few years he drifted from job to job. At various times, he was a milkman (early mornings compensated by afternoons in the pub), a coalman, an ice-cream salesman, a chauffeur, a street photographer, a professional wrestler (in his only match he was thrown from the ring into Hilda's lap) and an artist (creating sculptures from scrap metal; this backfired when his masterpiece was taken to the tip by mistake). However, in 1969 Stan bought a window-cleaning round, and this would remain his primary means of support for the rest of his life. Stan and Hilda had married six days after Hilda tripped over him in a wartime blackout. Through many harsh years of drinking and rages, Hilda stuck by him, believing that he was her man, no matter what. They were uncommunicative to each other, and Stan left Hilda to take all responsibilities for their home, including trying to pay the bills with their limited resources. This proved too much for Hilda, and in 1967 she suffered a nervous breakdown and disappeared. She was found wandering in Liverpool a few days later, and recovered, but the lack of promise in their lives hung over them like a shadow. For Stan and Hilda, life was marginal at best. They were never more than a short step from absolute poverty. To prove himself a dab hand at whatever he turned his hand to, Stan installed a serving hatch between the kitchen/living room and the front

room, but goofed and made it big enough for a canteen. Hilda liked the hatch, but pointed out that she had little use for it, as they never used the front room anyway. He also ruined Hilda's precious Alpine "muriel" that covered one entire living room wall when he fell asleep in the bath and overflowed water seeped through the floor. The seventies brought Hilda a long streak of bad luck. Their son-in-law David Barlow and grandson Darren were killed in a car accident in Australia in 1970, their house had to be fumigated, Stan was suspected of being a Peeping Tom, and a chimney accident caused coal soot to ruin their furniture. Hilda blamed their bad luck on No13 and ordered Stan to change the house number to No12A. Hilda prepared a roast lamb dinner to celebrate, but when she went outside to see the new numbers inadvertently locked them both out. By the time Stan broke in, their dinner was burned. It seemed that No13 wasn't unlucky, Hilda and Stan were. On top of this, the council ordered them to change the number back. In the seventies, as Stan aged, he grew weaker and more tired. He often didn't work, claiming his back wasn't up to the job. Hilda had to assume responsibility not only for all the household chores and looking after Stan, but also scraped to make ends meet on her wages as a charwoman. One day she had had enough, and ordered Stan out. He went, and disappeared for three weeks, much to everyone's shock. Hilda enlisted the aid of Stan's drinking buddy Eddie Yeats to find Stan. Eddie finally tracked him to Hilda's brother's chip shop, where he was helping himself to the chips and his brother-in-law's girlfriend Edie Blundell. Hilda dragged Stan home, and things went right back to the way they were. Thirteen years after his disappearance, Stan and Hilda tracked Trevor down. He was married and living in a semi-detached house in Chesterfield. Stan and Hilda made a special visit, only to have his wife Polly tell them that Trevor had led her to believe that his parents were dead. One high point of the Ogdens' marriage was in the late seventies, when they won a second honeymoon at the Savoy hotel. A limousine whisked them from Coronation Street to the hotel, where they received free champagne. Hilda decked out in a silk nightdress, only to find that, typically, Stan

had fallen fast asleep. Although the night was a quiet one, it was a fond memory for Stan and Hilda as they entered old age. In the early eighties, Eddie Yeats secured a job as a binman, and became Stan and Hilda's lodger. He saw Stan and Hilda as surrogate parents, and they saw him as a son. Stan was in his sixties and slowing down. Eddie helped him on his window-cleaning round, later buying it and making Stan his employee. However, Stan's deterioration was rapid and Hilda took extra cleaning jobs to make some money, including cleaning Mike Baldwin's factory and Dr Lowther's house. Eddie Yeats left in 1983 to marry his girlfriend Marion Willis, who lodged next door with Elsie Tanner. He moved in temporarily with Elsie and Marion, but they left to live in Bury afterwards. But not before helping Stan and Hilda celebrate their greatest milestone..... In December 1983, Stan and Hilda celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary with great fanfare. They had originally planned to go abroad, and when they went to get their passports, had an unusual surprise. Stan was not sixty-one, as he believed, but sixty-four. They didn't go abroad in the end, and hired the Select Bar of the Rovers for a Coronation Street gala. The party was spoiled when Rita Fairclough, who was singing for them, received news that her husband Len had been killed in a road accident. Again Stan and Hilda were left alone. Hilda had all the cleaning jobs she could handle, and Stan had become an invalid, requiring constant nursing. The strain was too much for Hilda, and in late 1984 Dr. Lowther told her to put Stan in hospital, at least temporarily. Hilda feared that this would rob her husband of his will to live. She was right, Stan Ogden passed away peacefully in his sleep on 21 November 1984 at the age of 65.

Fredrick John Perry

Frederick John Perry (18 May 1909 – 2 February 1995) born in Stockport, Cheshire, was an English tennis and table tennis player and three-time Wimbledon champion. He was the World No. 1 player for five years, four of them consecutive, 1934 to 1938, the first three years as an amateur. As an eight-time Slam winner, Perry is the last British male player to win any of tennis's Grand Slam events, and first of only seven men (and also as the first player, male or female) in history to have won all 4 Grand Slam events Born in 1872, his father, Samuel Perry, was elected to the British House of Commons as a Co-operative member for Kettering. Perry was a Table Tennis World Champion in 1929 and took up tennis at the relatively late age of 18. He had exceptional speed from his table tennis days and played with the Continental grip, attacking the ball low and on the rise. He was the first player to win all four Grand Slam singles titles, though not all in the same year. He was the first to have achieved the "Career Grand Slam," doing so at the age of 26. Perry is the last British player to win the Wimbledon men's singles title, winning it three times in a row and becoming a British icon. In 1933 Perry helped lead his team to victory over France in the Davis Cup, which earned Great Britain the Davis Cup for the first time in 21 years. After three years as the World No. 1 amateur player, Perry turned professional in 1937. For the next two years he played lengthy tours against the powerful American player Elly Vines. In 1937 they played 61 matches in the United States, with Vines winning 32 and Perry 29. They then sailed to England, where they played a brief tour. Perry won six matches out of nine, so they finished the year tied at 35 victories each. Most observers at the time considered Perry to be the World No. 1 for the fourth year in a row, sharing the title, however, with both Vines and the amateur Don Budge. The following year, 1938, the tour was even longer, and this time Vines beat Perry 49 matches to 35. Budge, winner of the amateur Grand Slam, was clearly the World No. 1 player. In 1939 Budge turned professional and played a series of matches against both Vines and Perry, beating Vines 21 times to 18 and Perry by 18 victories to 11. Sporting legacy Fred Perry's Blue Plaque at the house where he was born Perry is considered by some to have been one of the greatest male players to have ever played the game. In his 1979 autobiography Jack Kramer, the long-time tennis promoter and great player himself, called Perry one of the six greatest players of all time.[2]

Kings of the Court, a video-tape documentary made in 1997 in conjunction with the International Tennis Hall of Fame, named Perry one of the ten greatest players of all time. But this documentary only considered those players who played before the Open era of tennis that began in 1968, with the exception of Rod Laver, who spanned both eras, so that all of the more recent great players are missing. Kramer, however, has several caveats about Perry. He says that Bill Tilden once called Perry "the world's worst good player". Kramer says that Perry was "extremely fast; he had a hard body with sharp reflexes, and he could hit a forehand with a snap, slamming it on the rise—and even on the fastest grass. That shot was nearly as good as Segura's two-handed forehand." His only real weakness, says Kramer, "was his backhand. Perry hit underslice off that wing about 90 percent of the time, and eventually at the very top levels—against Vines and Budge—that was what did him in. Whenever an opponent would make an especially good shot, Perry would cry out 'Very clevah.' I never played Fred competitively, but I heard enough from other guys that 'Very clevah' drove a lot of opponents crazy." Kramer also says that in spite of his many victories, both as an amateur and as a professional, Perry was an "opportunist, a selfish and egotistical person, and he never gave a damn about professional tennis. He was through as a player the instant he turned pro. He was a great champion, and he could have helped tennis, but it wasn't in his interest so he didn't bother." Kramer then recounts several instances in which it was clear to him that Perry was losing matches in which he had given up because he "wanted to make sure that the crowd understood that this was all beneath him." A statue of Fred Perry at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon. Perry, however, recalled his days on the professional tour differently. He maintained that "there was never any easing up in his tour matches with Ellsworth Vines and Bill Tilden since there was the title of World Pro Champion at stake." He said "I must have played Vines in something like 350 matches, yet there was never any fixing as most people thought. There were always people willing to believe that our pro matches weren't strictly on the level, that they were just exhibitions. But as far as we were concerned, we always gave everything we had."[3] A final comment from Kramer is that Perry unwittingly "screwed up men's tennis in England, although this wasn't his fault. The way he could hit a forehand—snap it off like a ping-pong shot—Perry was a physical freak. Nobody else could be taught to hit a shot that way. But the kids over there copied Perry's style, and it ruined them. Even after Perry faded out of the picture, the coaches there must have kept using him as a model." Inside the Church Road gate at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, London, a statue of Fred Perry was erected in 1984 to mark the 50th anniversary of his first singles championship. In his birthplace, a special 14 mile (23 km) walking route, Fred Perry Way, was built by the borough of Stockport and officially opened in September 2002. Perry was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island in 1975. Perry also has a street named after him in El Paso, Texas. He died in Melbourne, Australia. Education Perry was educated during his early teenage years at Ealing Green Grammar School for Boys, in Ealing, West London. Until its eventual closure in the mid-nineties (having long succumbed to the comprehensive school system), he was still remembered and justifiably considered their most famous 'old boy' Personal life Perry was one of the leading bachelors of the 1930s and his off-court romances were sensationalised in the world press. Perry had a romantic relationship with actress Marlene Dietrich and in 1934 he announced his engagement to British actress Mary Lawson, but the relationship fell apart after Perry relocated to America. In 1935 he married American film star Helen Vinson, but their marriage ended in divorce in 1940. The following year Perry was briefly married to model Sandra Breaux and in 1945 he married Lorraine Walsh, but the marriage ended quickly. Perry's final marriage to Barbara Riese in 1952 lasted forty years, until his death Fred Perry clothing brand In the late 1940s, Perry was approached by Tibby Wegner, an Austrian footballer who had invented an anti-perspirant device worn around the wrist. Perry made a few changes and invented the sweatband. Wegner's next idea was to produce a sports shirt, which was to be made from white knitted cotton pique with short sleeves and buttons down the front. Launched at Wimbledon in 1952, the Fred Perry polo shirt (more accurately: it is a tennis shirt and not to be confused with shirts of similar style too often associated with Ralph Lauren's 'Polo' brand) was an immediate success. The brand, now owned by a Japanese corporation,[6] is best known for its laurel logo, which appears on the left breast of the tennis shirts. The laurel logo (based on the old Wimbledon symbol) was stitched into the fabric of the shirt instead of merely ironed on (as was the case with the crocodile logo of the competing Lacoste brand). The white polo shirt was only supplemented in the late 50s when the mods picked up on it and demanded a more varied colour palette. It was the shirt of choice for diverse groups of teenagers throughout the 1960s and 70s, ranging from the skinheads to the Northern Soul scene. It regained popularity when Scottish tennis star Andy Murray had it as his clothing sponsor; Murray signed with Adidas for 2010. Fred Perry Way Fred Perry Way sign The Fred Perry Way is a recently designated 14 mile walking route which spans the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, from Woodford in the south to Reddish in the north. The route combines rural footpaths, quiet lanes and river valleys with urban landscapes and parklands. Interesting features of the route include Houldsworth Mill and Square, the start of the River Mersey at the confluence of the River Tame and River Goyt, Stockport Town Centre, Vernon and Woodbank Parks and the Happy Valley. The route passes through Woodbank Park where Fred Perry actually played some showcase games of tennis in the park's tennis courts Fred Perry House The Fred Perry House was opened in November 2010 by the Earl of Wessex (Price Edward) and Fred Perry's Grandson, John Perry. The new building will house a new Stockport Direct Centre, a central hub of information for Stockport residents regarding Council matters and advice seekers. The Citizen's Advice Bureau, Shelter and sections from the Greater Manchester Police and Probation Trust will also operate from the new building, increasing convenience for Stockport residents.

Mods

Mod (from modernist) is a subculture that originated in London, England in the late 1950s and peaked in the early-to-mid 1960s.[1][2][3] Significant elements of the mod subculture include: fashion (often tailor-made suits); pop music, including African American soul, Jamaican ska, and British beat music and R&B; and Italian motor scooters. The original mod scene was also associated with amphetamine-fuelled all-night dancing at clubs.[4] From the mid-to-late 1960s onwards, the mass media often used the term mod in a wider sense to describe anything that was believed to be popular, fashionable or modern. There was a mod revival in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, which was followed by a mod revival in North America in the early 1980s, particularly in Southern California

Etymology The term mod derives from modernist, which was a term used in the 1950s to describe modern jazz musicians and fans.[7] This usage contrasted with the term trad, which described traditional jazz players and fans. The 1959 novel Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes describes as a modernist, a young modern jazz fan who dresses in sharp modern Italian clothes. Absolute Beginners may be one of the earliest written examples of the term modernist being used to describe young British style-conscious modern jazz fans. The word modernist in this sense should not be confused with the wider use of the term modernism in the context of literature, art, design and architecture

History Dick Hebdige claims that the progenitors of the mod subculture "appear to have been a group of working-class dandies, possibly descended from the devotees of the Italianite [fashion] style."[8] Mary Anne Long disagrees, stating that "first hand accounts and contemporary theorists point to the Jewish upper-working or middle-class of London’s East End and suburbs."[9] Sociologist Simon Frith asserts that the mod subculture had its roots in the 1950s beatnik coffee bar culture, which catered to art school students in the radical bohemian scene in London.[10] Steve Sparks, who claims to be one of the original mods, agrees that before mod became commercialised, it was essentially an extension of the beatnik culture: "It comes from ‘modernist’, it was to do with modern jazz and to do with Sartre" and existentialism.[9] Sparks argues that "Mod has been much misunderstood... as this working-class, scooter-riding precursor of skinheads." Coffee bars were attractive to youths, because in contrast to typical British pubs, which closed at about 11 pm, they were open until the early hours of the morning. Coffee bars had jukeboxes, which in some cases reserved some of the space in the machines for the students' own records. In the late 1950s, coffee bars were associated with jazz and blues, but in the early 1960s, they began playing more R&B music. Frith notes that although coffee bars were originally aimed at middle-class art school students, they began to facilitate an intermixing of youths from different backgrounds and classes.[11] At these venues, which Frith calls the "first sign of the youth movement", youths would meet collectors of R&B and blues records, who introduced them to new types of African-American music, which the teens were attracted to for its rawness and authenticity. They also watched French and Italian art films and read Italian magazines to look for style ideas.[12] According to Hebdige, the mod subculture gradually accumulated the identifying symbols that later came to be associated with the scene, such as scooters, amphetamine pills, and music

Decline and offshoots By the summer of 1966, the mod scene was in sharp decline. Dick Hebdige argues that the mod subculture lost its vitality when it became commercialised, artificial and stylised to the point that new mod clothing styles were being created "from above" by clothing companies and by TV shows like Ready Steady Go!, rather than being developed by young people customising their clothes and mixing different fashions together.[13] As psychedelic rock and the hippie subculture grew more popular in the United Kingdom, many people drifted away from the mod scene. Bands such as The Who and Small Faces had changed their musical styles and no longer considered themselves mods. Another factor was that the original mods of the early 1960s were getting into the age of marriage and child-rearing, which meant that they no longer had the time or money for their youthful pastimes of club-going, record-shopping and scooter rallies. The peacock or fashion wing of mod culture evolved into the swinging London scene and the hippie style, which favored the gentle, marijuana-infused contemplation of esoteric ideas and aesthetics, which contrasted sharply with the frenetic energy of the mod ethos. The hard mods of the mid-to-late 1960s eventually transformed into the skinheads.[14][15][16] Many of the hard mods lived in the same economically depressed areas of South London as West Indian immigrants, and those mods emulated the rude boy look of pork pie hats and too-short Levis jeans.[17] These "aspiring 'white negros'" listened to Jamaican ska and mingled with black rude boys at West Indian nightclubs like Ram Jam, A-Train and Sloopy's

Dick Hebdige claims that the hard mods were drawn to black culture and ska music in part because the educated, middle-class hippie movement's drug-oriented and intellectual music did not have any relevance for them.[21] He argues that the hard mods were also attracted to ska because it was a secret, underground, non-commercialised music that was disseminated through informal channels such as house parties and clubs.[22] The early skinheads also liked soul, rocksteady and early reggae. The early skinheads retained basic elements of mod fashion — such as Fred Perry and Ben Sherman shirts, Sta-Prest trousers and Levi's jeans — but mixed them with working class-oriented accessories such as braces and Dr. Martens work boots. Hebdige claims that as early as the Margate and Brighton brawls between mods and rockers, some mods were seen wearing boots and braces and sporting close cropped haircuts, which "artificially reproduces the texture and appearance of the short negro hair styles" (though this was as much for practical reasons, as long hair was a liability in industrial jobs and streetfights).[17] It was also a reaction to middle class hippie aesthetics. Mods and ex-mods were also part of the early northern soul scene, a subculture based on obscure 1960s and 1970s American soul records. Some mods evolved into, or merged with, subcultures such as individualists, stylists, and scooterboys, creating a mixture of "taste and testosterone" that was both self-confident and streetwise.[12]

A mod revival started in the late 1970s in the United Kingdom, with thousands of mods attending scooter rallies in places like Scarborough and the Isle of Wight. This revival was partly inspired by the 1979 film Quadrophenia and by mod-influenced bands such as The Jam, Secret Affair, Purple Hearts and The Chords. Many of the mod revival bands were influenced by the energy of British punk rock and New Wave music. The British revival was followed by a mod revival in North America in the early 1980s, particularly in Southern California, led by bands such as The Untouchables.[5][6] The mod scene in Los Angeles and Orange County was partly influenced by the 2 Tone ska revival in England, and was unique in its racial diversity, with black, white, Hispanic and Asian participants. The 1990s Britpop scene featured noticeable mod influences on bands such as Oasis, Blur, Ocean Colour Scene and The Verve

Characteristics Paul Jobling and David Crowley argue that the concept of mod can be difficult to pin down, because throughout the subculture's original era, it was "prone to continuous reinvention."[23] They claim that since the mod scene was so pluralist, the word mod was an umbrella term that covered several distinct sub-scenes. Terry Rawlings' history of the mod subculture argues that mods are difficult to define because the subculture started out as a "mysterious semi-secret world", which The Who's manager Peter Meaden summarised as "clean living under difficult circumstances."[12] Dick Hebdige points out that when trying to understand 1960s mod culture, one has to try and "penetrate and decipher the mythology of the mods".[24] Terry Rawlings argues that the mod scene developed when British teenagers began to reject the "dull, timid, old-fashioned, and uninspired" British culture around them, with its repressed and class-obsessed mentality and its "naffness".[12] Mods rejected the "faulty pap" of 1950s pop music and sappy love songs. They aimed at being "cool, neat, sharp, hip, and smart" by embracing "all things sexy and streamlined", especially when they were new, exciting, controversial or modern.[12] Hebdige claims that the mod subculture came about as part of the participants' desire to understand the "mysterious complexity of the metropolis" and to get close to black culture of the Jamaican rude boy, because mods felt that black culture "ruled the night hours" and that it had more streetwise "savoir faire".[25] Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss argue that at the "core of the British Mod rebellion was a blatant fetishising of the American consumer culture" that had "eroded the moral fiber of England."[26] In doing so, the mods "mocked the class system that had gotten their fathers nowhere", and created a "rebellion based on consuming pleasures" ranging from Italian suits and scooters to US soul records.

] Fashion Jobling and Crowley called the mod subculture a "fashion-obsessed and hedonistic cult of the hyper-cool" young adults who lived in metropolitan London or the new towns of the south. Due to the increasing affluence of post-war Britain, the youths of the early 1960s were one of the first generations that did not have to contribute their money from after-school jobs to the family finances. As mod teens and young adults began using their disposable income to buy stylish clothes, the first youth-targeted boutique clothing stores opened in London in the Carnaby Street and Kings Road districts.[27] Maverick fashion designers emerged, such as Mary Quant, who was known for her increasingly short miniskirt designs, and John Stephen, who sold a line named "His Clothes", and whose clients included bands such as The Small Faces.[28] Two youth subcultures helped pave the way for mod fashion by breaking new ground; the beatniks, with their bohemian image of berets and black turtlenecks, and the Teddy Boys, from which mod fashion inherited its "narcissitic and fastidious [fashion] tendencies" and the immaculate dandy look.[29] The Teddy Boys paved the way for making male interest in fashion socially acceptable, because prior to the Teddy Boys, male interest in fashion in Britain was mostly associated with the underground homosexual subculture's flamboyant dressing style.

Newspaper accounts from the mid-1960s focused on the mod obsession with clothes, often detailing the prices of the expensive suits worn by young mods, and seeking out extreme cases such as a young mod who claimed that he would "go without food to buy clothes".[30] Jobling and Crowley argue that for working class mods, the subculture's focus on fashion and music was a release from the "humdrum of daily existence" at their jobs.[30] Jobling and Crowley note that while the subculture had strong elements of consumerism and shopping, mods were not passive consumers; instead they were very self-conscious and critical, customising "existing styles, symbols and artefacts" such as the Union flag and the Royal Air Force roundel symbol, and putting them on their jackets in a pop art-style, and putting their personal signatures on their style.[23] The song "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" by The Kinks from 1966 jokes about the fashion obsession of the mod community. Mod fashion adopted new Italian and French styles in part as a reaction to the rural and small-town rockers, who were seen as trapped in the 1950s, with their leather motorcycle clothes and American greaser look. Male mods adopted a smooth, sophisticated look that emphasised tailor-made Italian suits (sometimes white) with narrow lapels, mohair clothes, thin ties, button-down collar shirts, wool or cashmere jumpers (crewneck or V-neck), pointed-toe leather shoes that were nicknamed winklepickers, as well as Chelsea or "Beatle" boots, Tassel Loafers, Clarks Desert Boots and Bowling shoes, and hairstyles that imitated the look of the French Nouvelle Vague cinema actors of the era, such as Jean-Paul Belmondo.[31] A few male mods went against gender norms of the era by enhancing their appearance with eye shadow, eyepencil or even lipstick.[28] Scooters were chosen over motorbikes because scooters' use of bodypanelling and concealed moving parts made them cleaner and less likely to stain an expensive suit with grease. Scootering led to the wearing of military parkas to protect costly suits and trousers from mud and rain. Female mods dressed androgynously, with short haircuts, men's trousers or shirts (sometimes their boyfriend's), flat shoes, and little makeup — often just pale foundation, brown eye shadow, white or pale lipstick and false eyelashes.[32] Female mods pushed the boundaries of parental tolerance with their miniskirts, which got progressively shorter between the early and mid-1960s. As female mod fashion went from an underground style to a more commercialised fashion, slender models like Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy began to exemplify the high-fashion mod look. The television programme Ready Steady Go!, presented by Cathy McGowan, helped to spread awareness of mod fashions and music to a larger audience. Clubs, music, and dancing The original mods gathered at all-night clubs such as The Roaring Twenties, The Scene, La Discothèque, The Flamingo and The Marquee in London to hear the latest records and to show off their clothes and dance moves. As mod spread across the United Kingdom, other clubs became popular such as Twisted Wheel Club in Manchester.[33] They began listening to the "sophisticated smoother modern jazz" of Dave Brubeck and the Modern Jazz Quartet." They became "...clothes obsessed, cool, [and] dedicated to R&B and their own dances."[12] Black American servicemen, stationed in the Britain during the Cold War, also brought over rhythm and blues and soul records that were unavailable in Britain, and they often sold these to young people in London.[34] Although the Beatles dressed "mod" in their early years, their beat music was not popular among mods, who tended to prefer R&B based bands like Small Faces, The Kinks, The Yardbirds and particularly The Who.[35] The influence of British newspapers on creating the public perception of mods as having a leisure-filled clubgoing lifestyle can be seen in a 1964 article in the Sunday Times. The paper interviewed a 17-year-old mod who went out clubbing seven nights a week and spent Saturday afternoons shopping for clothes and records. However, few British teens and young adults would have the time and money to spend this much time going to nightclubs. Jobling and Crowley argue that most young mods worked 9 to 5 at semi-skilled jobs, which meant that they had much less leisure time and only a modest income to spend during their time off. Amphetamines A notable part of the mod subculture was recreational amphetamine use, which was used to fuel all-night dances at clubs like Manchester's Twisted Wheel. Newspaper reports described dancers emerging from clubs at 5 am with dilated pupils.[4] Mods bought a combined amphetamine/barbiturate called Drinamyl, which was nicknamed "purple hearts" from dealers at clubs such as The Scene or The Discothèque.[36] Due to this association with amphetamines, Pete Meaden's "clean living" aphorism may be hard to understand in the first decade of the 21st century.[4] However, when mods used amphetamines in the pre-1964 period, the drug was still legal in Britain, and the mods used the drug for stimulation and alertness, which they viewed as a very different goal from the intoxication caused by other drugs and alcohol.[4] Mods viewed cannabis as a substance that would slow a person down[citation needed], and they viewed heavy drinking with condescension, associating it with the bleary-eyed, staggering lower-class workers in pubs. Dick Hebdige claims that mods used amphetamines to extend their leisure time into the early hours of the morning and as a way of bridging the wide gap between their hostile and daunting everyday work lives and the "inner world" of dancing and dressing up in their off-hours.[37] Dr. Andrew Wilson claims that for a significant minority, "amphetamines symbolised the smart, on-the-ball, cool image" and that they sought "stimulation not intoxication... greater awareness, not escape" and "confidence and articulacy" rather than the "drunken rowdiness of previous generations."[4] Wilson argues that the significance of amphetamines to the mod culture was similar to the paramouncy of LSD and cannabis within the subsequent hippie counterculture. The media was quick to associate mods' use of amphetamines with violence in seaside towns, and by the mid-1960s, the British government criminalised amphetamine use. The emerging hippie counterculture strongly criticised amphetamine use; the poet Allen Ginsberg warned that amphetamine use can lead to a person becoming a "Frankenstein speed freak." Scooters Many mods used motorscooters for transportation, usually Vespas or Lambrettas. Scooters had provided inexpensive transportation for decades before the development of the mod subculture, but the mods stood out in the way that they treated the vehicle as a fashion accessory. Italian scooters were preferred due to their cleanlined, curving shapes and gleaming chrome. For young mods, Italian scooters were the "embodiment of continental style and a way to escape the working-class row houses of their upbringing". [38] They customised their scooters by painting them in "two-tone and candyflake and overaccessorized [them] with luggage racks, crash bars, and scores of mirrors and fog lights",[38] and they often put their names on the small windscreen. Engine side panels and front bumpers were taken to local electroplating workshops and recovered in highly reflective chrome. Scooters were also a practical and accessible form of transportation for 1960s teens. In the early 1960s, public transport stopped relatively early in the night, and so having scooters allowed mods to stay out all night at dance clubs. To keep their expensive suits clean and keep warm while riding, mods often wore long army parkas. For teens with low-end jobs, scooters were cheaper than cars, and they could be bought on a payment plan through newly-available Hire purchase plans. After a law was passed requiring at least one mirror be attached to every motorcycle, mods were known to add four, ten, or as many as 30 mirrors to their scooters. The cover of The Who's album Quadrophenia, (which includes themes related to mods and rockers), depicts a young man on a Vespa GS with four mirrors attached. After the seaside resort brawls, the media began to associate Italian scooters with the image of violent mods. When groups of mods rode their scooters together, the media began to view it as a "menacing symbol of group solidarity" that was "converted into a weapon".[39][40] With events like the November 6, 1966, "scooter charge" on Buckingham Palace, the scooter, along with the mods' short hair and suits, began to be seen as a symbol of subversion.[41] After the 1964 beach riots, hard mods (who later evolved into the skinheads) began riding scooters more for practical reasons. Their scooters were either unmodified or cut down, which was nicknamed a "skelly".[42] Lambrettas were cutdown to the bare frame, and the unibody (monocoque)-design Vespas had their body panels slimmed down or reshaped. Gender roles In Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson's study on youth subcultures in post-war Britain, they argue that compared with other youth subcultures, mod culture gave young women high visibility and relative autonomy.[43] They claim that this status may have been related both to the attitudes of the mod young men, who accepted the idea that a young woman did not have to be attached to a man, and to the development of new occupations for young women, which gave them an income and made them more independent. In particular, Hall and Jefferson note the increasing number of jobs in boutiques and women's clothing stores, which, while poorly paid and lacking opportunities for advancement, nevertheless gave young women disposable income, status and a glamorous sense of dressing up and going downtown to work.[44] The presentable image of female mod fashion meant it was easier for young mod women to integrate with the non-subculture aspects of their lives (home, school and work) than for members of other subcultures.[44] The emphasis on clothing and a stylised look for women demonstrated the "same fussiness for detail in clothes" as their male mod counterparts.[44] Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferriss claim that the emphasis in the mod subculture on consumerism and shopping was the "ultimate affront to male working-class traditions" in the United Kingdom, because in the working-class tradition, shopping was usually done by women.[45] They argue that British mods were "worshipping leisure and money... scorning the masculine world of hard work and honest labour" by spending their time listening to music, collecting records, socialising, and dancing at all-night clubs.[26] Conflicts with rockers As the Teddy Boy subculture faded in the early 1960s, it was replaced by two new youth subcultures: mods and rockers. While mods were seen as "effeminate, stuck-up, emulating the middle classes, aspiring to a competitive sophistication, snobbish, [and] phony", rockers were seen as "hopelessly naive, loutish, [and] scruffy", emulating Marlon Brando's motorcycle gang leader character in the film The Wild One by wearing leather jackets and riding motorcycles.[46][47] Dick Hebdige claims that the "mods rejected the rocker's crude conception of masculinity, the transparency of his motivations, his clumsiness"; the rockers viewed the vanity and obsession with clothes of the mods as not particularly masculine.[8] Scholars debate how much contact the two groups had during the 1960s; while Dick Hebdige argues that mods and rockers had very little contact, because they tended to come from different regions of England (mods from London and rockers from more rural areas), and because they had "totally disparate goals and lifestyles".[24] However, British ethnographer Mark Gilman claims that both mods and rockers could be seen at football matches.[48]

John Covach's Introduction to Rock and its History claims that in the United Kingdom, rockers were often engaged in brawls with mods.[47] BBC News stories from May 1964 stated that mods and rockers were jailed after riots in seaside resort towns on the south coast of England, such as Margate, Brighton, Bournemouth and Clacton.[49] The mods and rockers conflict led sociologist Stanley Cohen to coin the term moral panic in his study Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which examined media coverage of the mod and rocker riots in the 1960s.[50] Although Cohen admits that mods and rockers had some fights in the mid-1960s, he argues that they were no different from the evening brawls that occurred between youths throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, both at seaside resorts and after football games. He claims that the British media turned the mod subculture into a negative symbol of delinquent and deviant status.[51] Newspapers described the mod and rocker clashes as being of "disastrous proportions", and labelled mods and rockers as "sawdust Caesars", "vermin" and "louts".[52] Newspaper editorials fanned the flames of hysteria, such as a Birmingham Post editorial in May 1964, which warned that mods and rockers were "internal enemies" in the United Kingdom who would "bring about disintegration of a nation's character". The magazine Police Review argued that the mods and rockers' purported lack of respect for law and order could cause violence to "surge and flame like a forest fire".[53] Cohen argues that as media hysteria about knife-wielding, violent mods increased, the image of a fur-collared anorak and scooter would "stimulate hostile and punitive reactions" amongst readers.[54] As a result of this media coverage, two British Members of Parliament travelled to the seaside areas to survey the damage, and MP Harold Gurden called for a resolution for intensified measures to control hooliganism. One of the prosecutors in the trial of some of the Clacton brawlers argued that mods and rockers were youths with no serious views, who lacked respect for law and order. Cohen says the media used possibly faked interviews with supposed rockers such as "Mick the Wild One".[55] As well, the media would try to get mileage from accidents that were unrelated to mod-rocker violence, such as an accidental drowning of a youth, which got the headline "Mod Dead in Sea"[56] Eventually, when the media ran out of real fights to report, they would publish deceptive headlines, such as using a subheading "Violence", even when the article reported that there was no violence at all. Newspaper writers also began to use "free association" to link mods and rockers with various social issues, such as teen pregnancy, contraceptives, drug use, and violence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod_(subculture)

Enid Blyton

1. EARLY FAMILY LIFE Enid Mary Blyton was born on 11th August 1897 at 354 Lordship Lane, a two-bedroom flat above a shop in East Dulwich, South London. Shortly after her birth her parents moved to Beckenham in Kent and it was there, in a number of different houses over the years, that Enid Blyton spent her childhood. She had two younger brothers—Hanly, born in 1899, and Carey, born in 1902. 2. ENID AND HER FATHER, THOMAS CAREY BLYTON Enid's father, Thomas, was a cutlery salesman as a young man. He then joined his uncle's firm selling Yorkshire cloth and, later still, set up his own business as a clothing wholesaler. He and his daughter had a close, loving relationship—both had dark hair and alert brown eyes, and shared an appetite for knowledge and a zest for life. Together they enjoyed nature rambles, gardening, the theatre, art, music and literature. When Enid had whooping cough as a baby, and was not expected to live till morning, her father refused to accept the doctor's opinion and sat up all night with her, cradling her and willing her to survive. Enid learnt a lot from her father, especially about nature. In her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1952), she wrote: "...my father loved the countryside, loved flowers and birds and wild animals, and knew more about them than anyone I had ever met. And what was more he was willing to take me with him on his expeditions, and share his love and his knowledge with me! That was marvellous to me. It's the very best way of learning about nature if you can go for walks with someone who really knows." Thomas also taught his young daughter lessons that would stand her in good stead in daily life. When she wanted to plant seeds in her own patch of garden he made a bargain with her, saying: "If you want anything badly, you have to work for it. I will give you enough money to buy your own seeds, if you earn it. I want my bicycle cleaned—cleaned well, too. And I want the weeds cleared from that bed over there. If the work is done properly, it is worth sixpence to me, and that will buy you six penny packets of seeds." Enid appreciated the seeds, and the flowers which sprang up from them, all the more for having been made to work for them. Part of the pleasure and value lay in the fact that she had earned them for herself. 3. ENID AND HER MOTHER, THERESA MARY BLYTON (NEE HARRISON) Although she adored her father, Enid's relationship with her mother, Theresa, was more turbulent. Theresa was a tall, raven-haired woman whose life revolved around housework. She was not creative and artistic like Thomas, and did not share his interests. She expected her daughter to help with household chores but gave her sons a lot more freedom, which Enid, who was not very domesticated, resented. Stern and house-proud, Theresa did not approve of Enid devoting so much time to nature-walks, reading and other hobbies when there was work to be done in the house. Neither did she understand why her husband encouraged their daughter in such activities. 4. FIRST SCHOOL Enid began her schooldays at a small school run by two sisters in a house called Tresco, almost opposite the Blyton home. As an adult, Enid Blyton said about the school: "I remember everything about it—the room, the garden, the pictures on the wall, the little chairs, the dog there, and the lovely smells that used to creep out from the kitchen into our classroom when we sat doing dictation. I remember how we used to take biscuits for our mid-morning lunch and 'swap' them with one another—and how we used to dislike one small boy who was clever at swapping a small biscuit for a big one." Enid's days at Tresco were happy. She was a bright girl, blessed with a good memory, and she shone at art and nature study, though she struggled with mathematics. 5. CHILDHOOD GAMES Games that Enid played as a child included Red Indians, Burglars and Policemen, building dens and playing with tops, hoops and marbles. Indoors she played card games, Snakes and Ladders, Draughts and Chess. Her father thought that all young children should learn to play Chess because "... if they have any brains it will train them to think clearly, quickly and to plan things a long way ahead. And if they haven't any brains it will make the best of those they have!" 6. BOOKS THAT ENID READ AS A GIRL Enid loved reading. Among the books she read were Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies and Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women. She said of the characters in Little Women: "Those were real children... 'When I grow up I will write books about real children,' I thought. 'That's the kind of book I like best. That's the kind of book I would know how to write.'" Enid Blyton enjoyed myths and legends too, and poetry and annuals, and magazines like Strand Magazine and Punch. She was fascinated by Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopaedia: "It gave me my thirst for knowledge of all kinds, and taught me as much as ever I learnt at school." Grimm's fairy-tales she considered "cruel and frightening" and, although she liked Hans Christian Andersen's stories, some of them were "too sad." Among her favourite books were Lewis Carroll's "Alice" books and R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral Island, but the one she loved best of all, and read at least a dozen times, was The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. What appealed to her "wasn't so much the story as the strange 'feel' of the tale, the 'atmosphere' as we call it. It hung over me for a very long time, and gave me pleasant shivers." < 7. SENIOR SCHOOL In 1907 Enid Blyton became a pupil at St. Christopher's School for Girls in Beckenham. She was not a boarder, like so many of the characters in her books, but a day-girl. Intelligent, popular and full of fun, she threw herself wholeheartedly into school life. During her time at St. Christopher's she organised concerts, played practical jokes, became tennis champion and captain of the lacrosse team, and was awarded prizes in various subjects, especially English composition. In her final two years she was appointed Head Girl. Outside school she and two of her friends, Mary Attenborough and Mirabel Davis, created a magazine called Dab, for which Enid wrote short stories. The title of the magazine was formed from the initials of the contributors' surnames. Enid's first holiday abroad in 1913 was to stay with one of her French teachers, Mlle. Louise Bertraine, at her home in Annecy, France. 8. HER PARENTS' SEPARATION Thomas and Theresa had little in common and grew more and more unhappy and frustrated in their marriage as the years passed. They had frequent violent rows, causing their children great distress. At night-time, Enid, Hanly and Carey would sit at the top of the stairs with their arms around one another for comfort, listening to their parents' heated arguments. One night, when Enid was not quite thirteen, the children heard their father state angrily that he was leaving and would not be coming back. To Enid's shock she learnt that there was another woman in his life, Florence Agnes Delattre, a secretary, and that from now on he would be living with her. Since marital breakdown was regarded as a scandal in suburban Beckenham in 1910, Theresa forced Enid and her brothers to pretend, if asked, that their father was merely "away on a visit." This pretence, which the family kept up for years, appears to have left Enid with a lifelong tendency to cover up anything unpleasant and put on a façade. In 1951 she wove this traumatic experience into a novel, The Six Bad Boys. Her father's leaving was hard for Enid to accept and she seems to have viewed it as a rejection of her personally. Years later, when she was married, she had difficulty conceiving a baby and was found to have an under-developed uterus, equivalent to that of a girl aged twelve or thirteen. It has been suggested that the trauma of her father's departure may have had a long-term effect on her physical as well as her emotional development. 9. EARLY WRITING Deprived of Thomas's support and inspiration, Enid was now more than ever at the mercy of her mother, with whom she did not see eye to eye. To assuage her unhappiness she took to locking herself in her bedroom and writing compulsively, setting a pattern which was to be repeated in adulthood. She had a vivid imagination and had known for some time that she wanted to be a writer, and now she spent every spare minute honing her talent. Her mother despaired of her, dismissing her work as mere "scribbling." Enid sent off numerous stories and poems to magazines in the hope that they would be published but, except for one poem which was printed by Arthur Mee in his magazine when she was fourteen, she had no luck at this stage, receiving hundreds of rejection slips. Her mother considered her efforts a "waste of time and money" but Enid was encouraged by her schoolfriend Mary's aunt, Mabel Attenborough, who had become a good friend and confidante. 10. MUSIC Towards the end of 1916 Enid Blyton was due to begin studying at the Guildhall School of Music. She had a gift for music and her family had always assumed that she would become a professional musician like her father's sister, May Crossland. Throughout her childhood Enid had spent many hours practising the piano but, as she grew older, she begrudged devoting hours to the piano when she would rather be writing. She was aware that her true talent lay in telling stories, but found it impossible to convince her family of that. 11. TEACHER-TRAINING It was after a spell teaching Sunday School in the summer of 1916, while staying with friends of Mabel Attenborough at Seckford Hall near Woodbridge in Suffolk, that Enid suddenly knew what to do. She made up her mind to turn down her place at the Guildhall School of Music and train as a teacher instead. That would give her close contact with the children for whom she knew she wanted to write, and she would be able to study them and get to know their interests. Enid lost no time in putting her plan into action and, in September 1916, she embarked upon a Froebel-based teacher-training course at Ipswich High School. Things had deteriorated badly between her and Theresa and it was around this time that Enid broke ties completely with her mother, spending holidays from college with the Attenboroughs rather than returning home to her mother and brothers. She kept in touch with her father, visiting him at his office in London, but she could not bring herself to accept Florence, with whom Thomas had had three more children, and she and her father were not as close as they had once been. 12. FIRST RECORDED PUBLICATION OF AN ENID BLYTON WORK In 1917 one of Enid's poems, "Have You...?" was accepted for publication by Nash's Magazine. Since a couple of earlier published poems (including the one printed in the Arthur Mee magazine) have never been traced, "Have You...?" is the first recorded publication of an Enid Blyton work. 13. TEACHING Enid Blyton proved to be an inventive, energetic teacher and, after completing her training in December 1918, she taught for a year at a boys' preparatory school, Bickley Park School in Kent. Next she became governess to the four Thompson brothers, relatives of Mabel Attenborough, at a house called Southernhay in Surbiton, Surrey. She remained there for four years and, during that time, a number of children from neighbouring families also came to join her "experimental school," as she called it. The accounts of lessons at "Miss Brown's School" in Enid Blyton's Book of the Year (1941) surely owe something to her years as a teacher at her own little school in Surbiton, which she later said was "one of the happiest times of my life." 14. THE DEATH OF HER FATHER It may have been a happy period on the whole but it was in 1920, while teaching at Southernhay, that Enid received the news that her father had died suddenly, of a heart attack, while out fishing on the Thames. At least, that is what she was told but the truth was that he had suffered a stroke and died in an armchair at home in Sunbury, where he lived with Florence and his new family. It appears that the true whereabouts of his death was not made public as it would have caused embarrassment owing to Theresa having been so secretive about the breakdown of her marriage. Enid had continued to visit her father at his London office, despite being estranged from the rest of her family, and the news must have come as a dreadful shock. However, she did not attend his funeral or even mention his death to the Thompsons. It may be that, having cut herself off from the rest of her family, she did not feel up to dealing with such a difficult and emotional occasion and answering awkward questions from either her family or her employers. Or perhaps her way of coping was to shut away her feelings, as she had been taught to do as a child. 15. SUCCESS AS A WRITER Enid persevered with her writing and, in the early 1920s, began to achieve success. Stories and articles were accepted for publication by various periodicals, including Teacher's World, and she also wrote verses for greetings cards. 1922 saw the publication of her first book, Child Whispers, a slim volume of poetry, and in 1923 a couple more books were published as well as over a hundred and twenty shorter pieces—stories, verses, reviews and plays. 16. MARRIAGE TO HUGH ALEXANDER POLLOCK On 28th August 1924 Enid Blyton married Hugh Alexander Pollock, who was editor of the book department for the publishing firm George Newnes. The two of them had met when Enid was commissioned by Newnes to write a children's book about London Zoo—The Zoo Book (1924.) Hugh had been born and brought up in Ayr and had joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers at the beginning of the First World War, being awarded the D.S.O. (Distinguished Service Order) in 1919. His first marriage had ended when his wife had an affair, and he had to obtain a divorce in order to marry Enid. The wedding, at Bromley Register Office, was a quiet occasion, with no member of either Enid's or Hugh's family attending the ceremony. The couple honeymooned in Jersey and Enid was later to base Kirrin in the Famous Five books on an island, castle and village they visited there. After the wedding Enid and Hugh lived first of all in an apartment in Chelsea, moving to their first house, newly-built Elfin Cottage in Beckenham, in 1926. 17. EARLY WORK AND FIRST NOVEL Enid Blyton worked on a number of educational books in the 1920s-30s, among other things, and in 1926 she began writing and editing a fortnightly magazine, Sunny Stories for Little Folks. It became a weekly publication in 1937 and changed its name to Enid Blyton's Sunny Stories, finally becoming Sunny Stories. What could be said to be Enid Blyton's first full-length novel, The Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies, was published in 1925 (it was later re-titled The Adventures of Binkle and Flip.) However, that book is episodic in nature, reading more like a collection of individual stories about two mischievous rabbits, and The Enid Blyton Book of Brownies, published in 1926, is perhaps more deserving of the title "first novel." In 1927 Hugh persuaded Enid to start using a typewriter. Before that she had written her manuscripts in longhand. Hugh was instrumental in helping his wife establish herself as a writer by publishing her stories at Newnes and, almost certainly, by teaching her about contracts and the business side of her work. 18. LIFE AT ELFIN COTTAGE Hugh and Enid led a quiet and contented life in the early years of their marriage, their leisure time consisting of gardening, occasional outings to the theatre and cinema, and seaside holidays. Hugh indulged his wife's playful, childlike side and they would build snowmen together, play "catch" and French cricket in the garden, and have games of "conkers." 19. OLD THATCH In 1929 they moved to Old Thatch, a sixteenth-century thatched cottage with a lovely garden near the River Thames in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire. Enid described it as being "like a house in a fairy tale." It had once been an inn and Dick Turpin was said to have slept there and stabled his horse, Black Bess, in one of the stables. There was also a tale of treasure hidden on the premises, which has never been found. At Old Thatch Hugh and Enid began to have more of a social life, enjoying dinner parties, tennis and bridge. In October 1930 they went on a cruise to Madeira and the Canary Islands aboard the Stella Polaris, the details of which remained vividly in Enid's mind, providing her with material for books written years later such as The Pole Star Family and The Ship of Adventure, both published in 1950. 20. PETS As children, Enid and her brothers had not been allowed to keep pets. Their mother was not fond of animals and their father was worried that cats and dogs might spoil his garden. Enid had once found a stray kitten which she called Chippy and kept secretly for a fortnight, but when her mother found out about it the kitten was sent away. Enid made up for that by having plenty of pets when she was grown-up—dogs, cats, goldfish, hedgehogs, tortoises, fantail pigeons, hens, ducks and many others. One of her most famous pets was Bobs, a fox-terrier. Enid Blyton wrote letters for her Teacher's World column about family life as seen through the eyes of Bobs—in fact, she kept on writing these "Letters from Bobs" long after the dog had died! 21. BIRTH OF GILLIAN AND IMOGEN Enid and Hugh had trouble starting a family but eventually, on 15th July 1931, their elder daughter Gillian was born. After a miscarriage in 1934 they went on to have another daughter, Imogen, who was born on 27th October 1935. 1938 saw the publication of Enid Blyton's first full-length adventure book, The Secret Island. She had already written another fairly long adventure story, The Wonderful Adventure, in 1927, but that was really a novella rather than a full-length novel. Enid was by now giving more time than ever to her writing, relying increasingly on domestic staff for housework, gardening and childcare, and she did not have a lot of time to spend with her children. She played with the girls for an hour after tea and sometimes took Imogen out with her to meet Gillian from school. Enid and Hugh no longer had as much time together either. Both were very busy with their work and Hugh, who had been working with Churchill on his writings about the First World War, was falling into depression at the realisation that the world was on the brink of another war. He turned to alcohol for consolation, drinking secretly in a cubby-hole beneath the stairs, while Enid sought solace in her writing and in the close companionship of her friend, Dorothy. Dorothy Richards, a maternity nurse, had come to help out for a few weeks after Imogen was born, and she and Enid had quickly become firm friends. Dorothy, who often came to stay at Old Thatch, was a serene figure who gave Enid a feeling of security at a time when her relationship with Hugh was beginning to disintegrate, and Enid felt that she could rely on her and confide in her. 22. GREEN HEDGES It was to Dorothy, not Hugh, that Enid turned for help and advice when hunting for a new and larger home, settling on a detached eight-bedroom house, about thirty or so years old, in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. The house was mock-Tudor in style, with beams and lead-paned windows, and was set in two-and-a-half acres of garden "with a great many little lawns surrounded by green yew hedges." Enid organised the move in August 1938, while Hugh was ill in hospital with pneumonia, and her Sunny Stories readers chose a name for the house—Green Hedges. 23. DIVORCE OF HUGH AND ENID Enid continued writing during the war years. Hugh rejoined his old regiment—the Royal Scots Fusiliers—and was soon posted to Dorking in Surrey to train Home Guard officers. His absence put even more strain on the already fragile marriage and, while on holiday with Dorothy in Devon in the spring of 1941, Enid Blyton met the man who was to become her second husband, surgeon Kenneth Fraser Darrell Waters. Hugh had also become romantically involved with novelist Ida Crowe, and he and Enid were divorced in 1942. Kenneth divorced his wife too, with whom he had had no children. 24. MARRIAGE TO KENNETH FRASER DARRELL WATERS Kenneth and Enid were married at the City of Westminster Register Office on 20th October 1943, six days before Hugh's wedding to Ida. Gillian and Imogen had not seen their father since June 1942, when he had left for America to advise on Civil Defence, and sadly they were never to see him again. Although she had promised that Hugh would be free to see his daughters after the divorce, Enid went back on her word and refused to allow him any access at all. She cut her first husband out of her life just as she had done with her mother, perhaps pretending to herself that neither had ever existed. In doing this she was continuing the pattern of behaviour—pretence and denial—that she had learnt in childhood, and making a fiction of her own life. Her autobiography, The Story of My Life (1952), contains photographs of her "happy little family"—herself, her second husband Kenneth, Gillian and Imogen. There is no mention of Hugh and, although it is not explicitly stated, readers are given the impression that Kenneth is the girls' father. Kenneth, a surgeon, worked at St. Stephen's Hospital in Chelsea, London. He was an active man who enjoyed gardening, tennis and golf. While he was serving in the Navy in the First World War, his ship had been torpedoed at the Battle of Jutland, permanently damaging his hearing. As a result, Kenneth found social situations awkward. His deafness made communication difficult, causing him to come across as rude or insensitive at times. Immensely proud of one another's achievements, Enid and Kenneth were very happy although they were bitterly disappointed when, after discovering she was pregnant in the spring of 1945, Enid miscarried five months later, following a fall from a ladder. The baby would have been Kenneth's first child and it would also have been the son for which both of them longed. Kenneth and Enid travelled abroad together only once, in 1948, when they joined friends for a three week semi-business holiday in New York, sailing out on the Queen Elizabeth and back on the Queen Mary. Again, Enid Blyton was to use this experience in a book—The Queen Elizabeth Family, published in 1951. Otherwise, most of their holidays were spent in Dorset where they purchased a golf course and a farm in the 1950s. The farm in Five on Finniston Farm (1960) was inspired by Enid and Kenneth's own farm, Manor Farm in Stourton Caundle, while Five Have a Mystery to Solve (1962) is set firmly in a part of Dorset which Enid Blyton loved, with Whispering Island being based on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour. 25. MAJOR SERIES AND OTHER WRITING Enid Blyton ceased writing her regular column for Teacher's World in 1945, after almost twenty-three years, giving her the opportunity to widen the range of her writing activities. Daughters Gillian and Imogen were both at boarding-school and she had begun most of her major series by then including the Secret series, the Famous Five books, the Find-Outers mysteries, the Adventure series, the St. Clare's books, the Cherry Tree/Willow Farm series and the Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair books. These were later to be joined by the Secret Seven books, the Barney (or "R") mysteries, the Malory Towers series and the Six Cousins books. Noddy made his first appearance in 1949 and by the mid-fifties there was a huge amount of Noddy-themed merchandise in the shops. Altogether, Enid Blyton is believed to have written around 700 books (including collections of short stories) as well as magazines, articles and poems. She wrote an incredible variety of books for children aged about two to fourteen—adventure and mystery stories, school stories, circus and farm books, fantasy tales, fairy-tales, family stories, nursery stories, nature books, religious books, animal stories, poetry, plays and songs, as well as re-telling myths, legends and other traditional tales. She earned a fortune from her writing and in 1950 she set up her own limited company, Darrell Waters Ltd., to manage the financial side of things. 26. ENID BLYTON'S MAGAZINE In 1952 Enid relinquished Sunny Stories after twenty-six years, launching her fortnightly Enid Blyton's Magazine in March 1953. She wrote all the contents herself except for the advertisements, using the magazine to mould her readership through her stories, editorials and news-pages, encouraging her child readers to be kind, helpful and responsible and impressing upon them that, if they used their initiative, they could do their bit and make a difference to society, whatever their age. Through the pages of her magazine she promoted four clubs which children could join—the Busy Bees (which helped animals), the Famous Five Club (which raised money for a children's home), the Sunbeam Society (which helped blind children) and the Magazine Club (which raised money for children who had spastic cerebral palsy.) Thousands of readers joined and Enid Blyton spoke proudly of the "army of children" who were helping her carry out the work she wanted to do. Enid Blyton's Magazine folded in September 1959 as Enid wished to spend more time with Kenneth, who had retired from his work as a surgeon in 1957. By that time the four clubs had approximately 500,000 members between them and had raised about £35,000 in six years—an enormous amount of money in those days. 27. FINAL YEARS It was in the late 1950s that Enid Blyton's health began to deteriorate. She experienced bouts of breathlessness and had a suspected heart attack. By the early 1960s it was apparent that she was suffering from dementia. Her mind was no longer sharp and she became confused, afflicted by worrying memory lapses and seized by a desire to return to her childhood home in Beckenham with both her parents. Her last two books (excluding reprints of earlier material) were re-tellings of Bible stories, The Man Who Stopped to Help and The Boy Who Came Back, both published in August 1965. Kenneth was ill too, with severe arthritis. The medicine he took for his arthritis damaged his kidneys and he died on 15th September 1967, leaving Enid a lonely and vulnerable woman. Gillian and Imogen were in their thirties by then, living away from home. They visited regularly and did what they could for their mother but she declined physically and mentally over the next few months, cared for by her staff at Green Hedges. In the late summer of 1968 Enid was admitted to a Hampstead nursing home and, three months later, she died peacefully in her sleep on 28th November 1968, at the age of 71. She was cremated at Golders Green in North London and a memorial service was held for her at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, on 3rd January 1969. 28. HER LEGACY Several decades after her death, Enid Blyton is not forgotten. The best of her lives on in her books, many of which are still in print, and she continues to entertain, educate and inspire children around the globe through the words she wrote. She encourages her readers to look afresh at the world around them—to observe, explore, investigate, discover and learn. Long may that continue! To quote a few apt lines from Enid Blyton's "The Poet," published in The Poetry Review in 1919: