Any Antonia Forest fans out there?

as for Kay, how hopeless is she? do you think they g et divorced? and what about Edwin horsewhipping Peter! And the way we're meant to be on Peter's side for letting his step-nephew & niece aged 5 and 8 ish (?)walk along the railway track! Certainly time for an AIBU post there...

I love the way Jan Scott is "labelled" and she knows it, and doesn't care...I always thought Miranda was intimidating, all that money and SO self contained and competent.

I loved the Cricket Term becuase of all the Tempest stuff and Lawrie making her "deal" with the Gods and Miss Cromwell almost having a fit when she realises Lawrie's thought processes.

I always wanted a hawk after Falconer's Lure, I had a pony and a male friend, but a hawk would have been so cool.

What about Ginty and Patrick and the exam cheating/joke that went horribly wrong? Patrick wandering around London in the rain was so reminiscent for me and the aimlessness of disgrace...so realistic.

Oh, and Peter SHOOTS Patrick's pet (Jael), the relationships are just so well written.

Ready Made Family...Rose dissappears and you get 2 chapters of descriptions of Oxford! It made me mad to visit the place, when I finally went there as a student I went to ALL the places in town Nicola did (except the house in the suburbs).

And how many other books have such a description of fox hunting that it IS thrilling? especially the bit where Nicola is torn between wanting the fox to escape and not wanting the hounds to be disappointed?

Just fab.

Oh, and when Sprog died, I cried. A whole chapter, just two pages, to say her hawk died.
Better than most adult books.

Retires to bed with Marlow canon at the ready.

you and miranda cockles, she had a bit of girl-love for jan, didnt she?

Jan Scott does it every time for me! Cool, suave, doesn't care about teams, just eats toffees on the roof...

re the quiz - someone once did AF as their specialist subject on mastermind . never saw it but found a reference on beeb website. oooh, lets do a quiz. that'd be fab. can i set the questions?? i'm not joking here guys. we could set a time and date and meet online. people would have to declare whether they had the books by their sides at the time ... somone else would have to set the non-school story q's tho - as i only really got on with ready made family. only read the others maybe once each

god, i hated that clothing/drugs scandal in attic term. only time in her school books that i felt AF missed her target. attic term worst of the school books anyhoos IMHO.

It was really annoying - when I came across the pile, the three I got had already been removed from the records, so I could take them, but the Thursday Kidnapping was still to be done. I asked the assistant to keep it aside for me but she forgot to put a note on it & it disappeared before I came back (I only worked there one day a week when my branch was closed)

oh how fab
you lucky thing Rusty
I did find a copy of Peter's Room in a charity shop clearance bin for 15p once - pre-GGBP reprints
I was fairly cock a hoop
and then another for 50p at a book fair, which I sold on for a very nice £25

I already have that one Franny! It's one of the ones I liberated from the chuck-out pile when I was working at Morden library - along with The Marlows & the Traitor & Falconer's Lure. I will always regret not getting to The Thursday Kidnapping in time - but at least I did get to read it before it was withdrawn.

V looking fwd to that Franny.

Also, oddly, I had the Puffin paperback editions and the typeface used is the most beautiful, elegant one to read. Must check out what it is. And the cover sketches were lovely.

Idris someone should make a Marlows quiz as mentioned earlier
it would be a hoot

I also have a good knowledge of random details . I also love the way the times of them change. Until I read the Marlows and their Maker, I didn't realise that Run Away Home was in the 1980s.

I did love the PLayer's Boy and thought maybe dp would enjoy it too (it is a bit more accessible to men maybe than a book set in a girls's school )
but he didn't really get on with it, I was disappointed

And that Daks was named after the trousers and not because he was a Dachshund.

I have a Dachshund now. (irrelevant)

I am looking forward to it Franny

LOL the details make it so real don't they
I love the way she always set each book in the period in which she was writing it, even though about 20 years had passed, but the characters were only one year older
it sounds like it couldn't possibly work but it just so DOES

Strange the odd irrelevant bits you remember.

I always remember a supper that Patrick's father had - cheese, celery and whiskey. I still think it's just an ideal supper.

And that Patrick generally took a break from revision to watch Up Pompeii! and the news.

anyone else waiting happily for this? I really enjoyed the first one

yes you are right
but let's face it, it was still guff
they all loathed her

Oh yes - Nicola's first folio, I loved it when no-one else read the exam paper properly. And then all that bizzo when it turned out to be Lawrie who won the scholarship, quality stuff.

Wasn't it Tim who objected to the 'guff'? 'I won't sign anything that says 'passed away. Put died and I'll think about it'
Lawrie iirc simply refused to have anything to do with it at all, which is an illustration of her self-centredness (if you don't like her) or her lack of hyp[ocrisy (if you do)

Lois is superb, just brilliant
cannot think of another character who is so convincingly toe raggy but you can completely understand why she does what she does and also see her to be quite charming

oh yes Esther! poor Esther

Oooo FandZ I think that is fantastic!

Off the top of my head things that made the books so different were things that were dealt with in an adult way.

The Marie Dobson affair

The guiding disaster and the shifting nuances - so that it was hard to put your finger on WHY LS was such a slithery character, in a way that actually happens so often in real life

The part where they find the clothes swapshop and they start dressing in hippy gear and it touches on drugs

How things are taken so seriously and dealt with in depth e.g. the Catholicism / Miranda's Jewishness, the architecture of the Minster (the falcon), the falconry, the actual literature of the theatrics, etc. etc. That there's so much history and culture woven in.

Nicola's first folio, her love of Nelson.

I now need to reluctantly step away from the thread - oven timer beeping - but thank you ladies for sharing my enthusiasm - never met anyone in RL who loves the books, or indeed has even read them.

Yes - about human nature, I was just pondering that bit where Miranda ponders how odd it is that Lawrie and Nicola will be able to get away with wearing navy after the whole school has moved to scarlet, but if Sandra did it everyone would say "get the proper uniform for god's sake" (or words to that effect). Talking about the impact of something like glamour maybe?