Antonia Forest

Is she really writing another one? I've just done a quick online search and I can't see any traces. Do you know when it's due to be published? I'm very curious to see whether she's kept it in the 1980s o brought it into the present day. Or, hey, this is only fiction, she could even take it back a bit!

OOh I am so very excited that sally hancock is writing another one. I liked spring term although I did think it was not quite as witty and dry as AF would have made it.

I discovered Autumn term in a book shop on my 9th birthday and never looked back. Gradually built up my collection as an adult to fill in the gaps. I am surprised others didn't love peter's room, that is one of my favourites.

MIght pop off to trennels now for a bit of a wallow.

I believe Sally Haywood(?) is writing another one...

That reminds me - I was wondering idly where you might take the next book after Spring Term. With another cricket competition coming up you'd have a moderately interesting situation with Nicky and Lawrie in different forms, a dilemma in the 5th form as to whether to put Ginty into their team, and probably some interesting needle between Ginty and Nicky.

I agree with ancientbuchanan about the cricket match. I never understood what on earth was going on in cricket matches till I read Murder Must Advertise and Cricket Term.

I didn't like the Nicola and Patrick romance blooming. They were simply good friends because they got on well together with similar interests. No romance at all. My dd1, who is also 14yo, has a lad she's got on very well with now for 7 years. there is no romance, and I can't see romance blossoming together, they are simply good friends with similar interests, I don't think either would find it hard if the other did get a boy/girl friend either just because there is no interest in each other that way at all.

I love the service in the Minster too. Fantastic piece of set piece writing, equalled only by the cricket match, Imv. Much better than the play or, imv, Buster jumping the cut. . The only other truly wonderful bit on the same kevel is the letter sacking Patrick. But perhaps you need to have gone through Vatican ll to appreciate it fully.

The cricket match is almost on a par with the one in Murder Must Advertise with Nicky's hero, Peter Wimsey, at Brotherhood's. Mr Talbot indeed. Two best descriptions of matches I've read. And that includes Cardus et al.

Should I read Spring Term?

What I like is that there is noone truly admirable. Nicky is near but avoids the Darrell Rivers perfection by her anarchy. Laurie is so convincing, as are Ginty and Ann. And the awful Karen, whom one eventually feels sorry for.

I'm completely with Hakluyt about clothes. Ok, I didn't have brothers but DSis was 6 years older than me. And it was completely understandable to spend money or overdraft on horse or education, but eg holidays would have been a complete no no. Not merely inessential and a waste of money but lower class.

The dress is early 70s late 60s. V Twiggy as worn by Greek shipping heiresses.

I loved this article about Ann.
When I first read the books I really didn't warm to her character, now I feel extremely sympathetic towards her.

Just because it looks like they are becoming closer now does not mean they actually have to though......Rowan and Ann seemed to think maybe it was not a good plan...

Ginty is such a good character, isn't she... so convincing both from inside and out, and so different from anyone else one comes across in girls' fiction.

I do like the Ginty/Monica fallout in Spring Term which feels believable and agonising in a v. classic Forest way. Agree the letter-writing episode is overplayed, though what I really dislike in Spring Term is the welly-icky Nicola and Patrick stuff. Nicola is FOURTEEN FFS, there is no way Forest would have written her like that. It smacks of the fanbase's desperation to get Nicola and Patrick happily married off as soon as possible, an attitude which is as far from Forest's painful human realism as one can possibly get.

I think Keith was certainly fed up with Ginty! In Attic Term she does tell her that while below the third form you might be able to get three conduct marks before being suspended/expelled it would not count in her case. And to be fair, going through someone's locker, sister or not, and reading a letter and lying would probably be enough to make Keith even more fed up!!!
I think Ginty just dug herself into a hole and kept digging!!!

I think the staff are just fed up of Ginty; maybe they also think it's a equal bet if she goes to the good or the bad and want to frighten the bad out of here?

I'm re- reading Spring Term now, and have only just got to the Ginty/ Ann confrontation, so I am not sure if I am remembering it correctly.

The reaction to the letter-reading jolted me totally out of Spring Term, which was a shame as so much of the rest of it was fantastic - the day girls, Winnie, Helen Shaw, finally getting more of Ginty's bitchy friends. But the letter bit struck me as more similar to Dimsie and her mother being ostracised for allegedly cheating at cards in the 1920s, than to anything likely in the 80s.
Given how we all knew who the kleptos were and regarded their thefts as an annoying foible, and how being caught only led to expulsion if by police or if a victim went to staff (and then the thief wasn't one of the shining lights of sports teams), I'm sure there could have been a sympathetic storyline where Nicola owed Ginty pennies, Ginty needed to pay some good cause, 'borrows" some cash, for some reason is embarrassed to come clean, perhaps because the judgemental Ann is in the room, then ends up snowballing her not-actual-lies.

I would see reading the letter as a bit rude, but much worse that she had to go into the locker to get it. If Nicola had left it out, and she'd twitched it to look at it, that would be nothing more than "don't do it again". The fact that she had to deliberately get it out makes it much worse for me. It was a deliberate act to read the letter.

I did have a situation not too dissimilar, which has just come to mind. I borrowed my bf (now dh) computer at college to write a letter to a friend. It was a vey private letter where she'd asked for advice over a sensitive issue. I put a lot of thought, and a lot of my private thoughts as well as a situation I had been in, into the letter. I wanted it on the computer as I could alter it as I went through, and in case she needed me to follow up. Dh created a folder on the computer under my name, and a second one in that as "letters", which I saved it in as "private letter".
Dh lent the computer to his db to write up something about 3 months later (so the letter was no longer on the recent document list) we went out for the day and came back to find him happily sitting there reading my letter.
If I'd left a paper copy out, or it had been top of the list of recent documents I could understand it, but he had to have deliberately gone into my folders, and my letters to find it. That was what I found totally unacceptable.

He got his commupance though. I took one look and switched the computer off at the plug-and he hadn't saved his work, which I didn't know.
Dh wouldn't let him back in either as that showed he wasn't trustworthy-what else he'd looked at while he was there I don't know.

I still don't think it was a suspension issue though.

I think the author wanted Ginty to be caught doing something that we would see as morally bad but not really bad. She couldn't put stealing in that light for a children's book really (even if mostly written for fans).

I can imagine the head of a girls' school overreacting to such a thing. Even in the 80s/90s our local headmistress was rather prone to that. Like the time she stated "our gals would consider themselves above the silliness of red nose day". They proved her wrong by going on stike and rioting all day instead . The local paper had a field day on that one.

Hak, how old are you (ish)? As I said, I don't think there's anything odd at all about the depiction of clothes, but it does seem to me to sit more easily with the earlier period setting. Or maybe more that the 'Mummy's friends to tea' dresses and associated attitudes clash with the interest in cheap fashionable 'gear' and tunics with pea-green swirls in Attic Term, which (as you suggest) I would have thought might have been regarded as 'common', the way Miranda characterises the anti-Semitic girl as something like 'a common little soul with a perm and a Jaguar'.

(Nick must have looked like the Bay City Rollers in her tartan trousers and frilly shirt...?)

I was also at boarding school in the 80s. We were also banned from jeans and could wear trousers only at weekends. And that was right up to Upper 5 (Now year 11). In the junior school, In years 4-7 we had to wear dresses and white socks for Sunday tea.

I was at boarding school in the 80s and the school and many parents were still in the Marlow mind set of changing into suitable home clothes at teatime (trousers allowed only at weekends, jeans never!) Whereas as soon as we got into Upper Fourth and were allowed on shopping trips, rules on suitability were relaxed and while some girls were obsessed with fashion, pretty much everyone had rebelled against twee dresses into at least jeans.

I also thought the Spring Term plot was unconvincing - if Ginty had ended up acquring some money, not stealing, she'd have convinced herself somehow, then that could have worked well. Bunch of kleptomaniacs at my school - almost invariably from the wealthiest backgrounds. I caught out a girl who shared my room, whose dad owned half the town, because I'd been pre-warned to always memorise the numbers on my bank notes.