"Delicately balanced on a razor edge of mutual toleration": Rowan Marlow, Saint or ?

Jacqueline Wilson used to be great in the Waiting For the Sky to Fall era, it's a shame (from my point of view) she moved away from YA to children.

On another note, did anyone ever have Jean Ure's A Bottle Cherry Angel? The main character borrows a book called 'Summer Term by Antonia Forest' which she likes because it's about school and sisters not always getting on. For years I thought that book must really exist, if only I could find it somewhere.

Yes, loved this one (although don’t remember the AF reference!). Jean Ure is brilliant in general, particularly Hi There Supermouse, Nicola Mimosa, the Dancing Dreams series and the (heartbreaking) Play Nimrod For Him. Interestingly she seems to have reinvented herself in recent years as a Jacqueline Wilson clone - my daughter read a later book of hers which had a JW endorsement on the front and seemed to ape her style quite a bit. A shame as her early books are very original.

I certainly hope so! Mrs B and Doris are leaving Trennels around the same time the Marlows are, which seems to be in time to get a considerable amount of the children's party, which ends at seven, and are given a lift home by them for around two, and Mrs B is up in time to have made a big cooked breakfast for the hunters at seven am!

I think I just get a bit impatient with Doris in particular being presented as semi-comic Faithful Retainer in Peter's Room. Whatever about her lack of desire to make something professional of her considerable dress-designing and -making talent, the 'I went to London once for the day and didn't like it' and 'I sometimes see dresses in the papers the fish comes in' and wearing stuff that her cousin, who is in service in Bristol, passes on from her employer once she's finished it with it herself thing feels a bit comic stereotype.

Yes, me! They are available for Kindle too. A good read, if not as comforting as the Chalet School or quite as different as AF. Jenny Overton sounds interesting, @pollyhemlock.

Val Forrest in the Fifth is my favourite Evelyn Smith - available on Kindle.

She does a great job with the kind of people who make you squirm - like Antonia Forest there.

Yes, very striking! I don't know if AF recognised it but Autumn Term has several recognisable plot devices from E.Smith. Who is enjoyable and psychologically thoughtful tho much more glancingly than AF. Well worth a read. Some are on Kindle.

Yes, I loved Wall of Words and still have a copy. There is some discussion on the old Trennels forum (now archived) that AF was something of a mentor to Tim Kennemore - that TK wrote to AF, and that AF recommended TK's first book to a publisher. However, I can't find anything independent to substantiate that, and this 1982 articles from Books for Keeps tells a different story of how TK got published: https://booksforkeeps.co.uk/article/a-name-to-note-tim-kennemore

and the radio (“I’m addicted to Capital.”) (Tim Kennemore)

This really shows in WoW. Bill Maloney and his 'cuddly breakfast show' on Radio Thames is 100% bang on for commercial radio of the era. It makes me nostalgic for our local station which launched in 1982 - so natch we listened to it non-stop (🎼Wiltshire Radio, W.R. with more to say ...🎼and here's an oldie from The Beatles ... )

That Books for Keeps article is as interesting for what it doesn’t say as what it does. She’s clearly very publicity averse, much like AF in fact.

Interesting interview with Tim Kennemore here from 1982! booksforkeeps.co.uk/article/a-name-to-note-tim-kennemore/

@bookworm14 great minds! I have Wall of Words by the way.

Another author for AF fans to look out for is Jenny Overton, who wrote two books , Creed Country and The Nightwatch Winter, about an incredibly Marlow like family. There are lots of siblings, Catholicism, religious difference, a dramatic production, friendship between one of the girls and a solitary, prickly boy, - so many similarities that the author must have been influenced by AF. They’re very good if you can get hold of them .

There’s very little about her online - no author website or anything. She was apparently born in 1957 so not terribly old. I wonder why she stopped writing.

The ending of Wall of Words where Kim is disillusioned about her father is particularly effective and surprisingly realistic for a children’s story published in 1981. I’m not sure what happened to TK. The last of her books that I’ve got is Circle of Doom (2001) which is fun but nothing like as good as her earlier books.

I can't imagine Lawrie wanting to be a Dairy Princess.

I can imagine her acting 'being a Dairy Princess'.

Yes, it does - David is richer than her, and an intelligent, 'thinking man' type.

Kim and Nicola have a lot in common, sporty, intelligent, resourceful but inclined to have 'blind spots' over people they admire (Kim - Mr Tate, Nicola - Giles). In some ways Kim resembles Rowan more than Nicola, she has a Rowan-like detachment and cynicism.

Frances is something of an Ann-type and Anna is not unlike Lawrie in many ways, not least in being somewhat stage-struck, though Lawrie isn't appearance-vain like Anna - I can't imagine Lawrie wanting to be a Dairy Princess.

This is making me want to reread Wall of Words! Must see if it’s available second hand online.

Oh, yes - I have read all the Tim Kennemores mentioned. Changing Times, The Fortunate Few and Wall of Words are all brilliantly written.

In CT I absolutely loved the way Victoria reacted to going back in time - firstly, it taking time for her to realise she had when she went back six months, from March to October so there was no startling change in the weather. I must have re-read that book about a hundred times, I still enjoy it every time.

WoW is fascinating to read now because of the very different attitudes towards dyslexia in the early 1980s - I can't imagine dyslexia as severe as described in the book going undiagnosed for so long. Does anyone else who's read it think that Mr Tate sounds like someone who would nowadays have been diagnosed as autistic or possibly 'AuDHD' ? With his overwhelming special interest in the Russians, love of puzzles, chronic inability to finish anything except the Mephisto crossword, and inability to read other people "if you tell him you're hurt, he's just rather puzzled"?

The Fortunate Few is one of the most horrifying children's books I can think of (that is not a criticism). The ending is particularly chilling, and the realisation that Jodie is essentially dead inside and will probably become another Miss Amey.

The influence of AF's style is particularly strong in Wall of Words - also themes, in the way the story of the Grand Duchesses is brought in, just as AF brings in literary or historical themes, and the Renton Heritage has echoes of the Last Ditch although the Tates really do need the money, and the feeling of security that is lost when the Renton Heritage is sold doesn't seem to affect the Marlows with the Last Ditch, other than Lawrie - and even Lawrie is more upset about being the only horseless carriage now Ginty has Catkin.

The Fortunate Few is astonishingly dark for a children’s novel.

In terms of the girls' school story tradition, the books that had the most AF resonance for me were Evelyn Smith's books, particularly (for an obvious reason) Seven Sisters at Queen Anne's. Her girls read books, took likings (and dislikings) to each other, sometimes broke rules in a good cause. Any other admirers out there?

The Fortunate Few was in my primary school library, and I still remember it quite well - it was stronger stuff than most of what I'd read up till that point. But I haven't read any of TK's other works, and it looks like they're in that annoying gap where they're too old to be in print, not well known enough to have more recent or Kindle editions, and not old enough to be out of copyright and available cheaply.

Yes!! I loved Wall of Words, The Fortunate Few, The Middle of the Sandwich and in particular Changing Times. Also the brilliant short story collection Here Tomorrow, Gone Today, which mixes then-contemporary (80s) school stories and stories with a futuristic setting. There’s one story in particular set in an imaginary future where an elderly pop star has made it fashionable to look old, and teenagers are using cosmetics and surgery to change their appearance to look elderly. It has some interesting parallels with a certain modern phenomenon…

I hadn’t clocked that Wall of Words is dedicated to AF - I wonder if they ever met?

I'd imagine the Merricks would pay cash in hand or I can't see the village women trooping there every year. Pin money / supplementing wages. Probably not at an advertised or negotiated rate but expected and handed over