To wonder whether you'd prefer to go to Malory Towers or the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

I just heard to girls about 11 years of age having an earnest discussion about this on the bus. I didn't think kids even read Chalet School books any more.
I think I'd opt for Malory Towers. They seemed to have more fun. I'd probably be expelled from the Chalet School for cursing, wearing lipstick and forgetting to speak German every Wednesday or whatever it was.

Kingscote is the Antonia Fraser one, with the big family including twins?

I went off that when the girls were wrongly accused of - I want to say starting a fire in a farmyard - on a guide ramble, and were thrown out of the guides so unfairly - and that dragged on for so long, with the older girl lying. You wouldn't have got away with that at the Chalet School.

What queen would you be, Empress? (There's an odd sentence )

SDTG - Antonia Forest, by yes!

And that guide story is why she's so much better than all the others - because people are flawed, and they get away with things for years, and the bad aren't always punished

Antonia Forest, SDTG . Well worth rereading, especially as that one was the first and they get much, much better as the girls get older.

Always thrilled to find another AF fan

"I went off that when the girls were wrongly accused of - I want to say starting a fire in a farmyard - on a guide ramble, and were thrown out of the guides so unfairly - and that dragged on for so long, with the older girl lying. You wouldn't have got away with that at the Chalet School."

But that's the point. You might very well in real life!

Leaf Queen. With a mix of different greens. What would you have, Select?

I couldn't get on board with the Antonia Fraser books at all. The first book started off in the 1940's, fair enough, but as the series carried on she set them in the decade in which she was writing.

So they were 13 in the 1940's but 18 in the 1960's.

I had a big crush on Rowan Marlow in my teens.
Cool, blonde and capable and with a marvellous line in sarcasm...

SDTG -- god, that rings a bell, and I haven't read those books for decades. Weren't they also accused of 'excess of zeal', for letting the younger ones carry heavy rocks?

12 and half in 1948 and 14 and a half in 1980, I think you will find, Squoosh

But she did explain about that in a preface - that she wrote them over a very long period of time and it made sense to set them at the time of writing rather than what would, by then, have been a 'historical period'! I think it is quite fun how bits of the relevant period pop up ('Honestly, why can't we watch 'Up Pompeii'' from child who lost three uncles in the first world war!), and yet the big things (old entailed farm house and girls boarding school) stay exactly the same!

Martorana - are you insinuating that the Chalet School books are not true-to-life?? How very dare you!

God, is Rowan blonde? I've always thought of her as having a neat dark bob... my inner world will never be the same.

AF's attempts to be cool in The Thuggery Affair and The Attic Term (references to hippies, gear, etc) are rather cringy... but overall I don't find the time-shifting a problem, I can see it would be weird to keep writing about the 1940s when they were never meant to be historical stories.

The Chalet School has the opposite problem - the last book was published in 1970 but the triplets are still only 18, which makes it 1957.

They're all blonde, Mooncup - Rowan's is not just blonde but curly, too!

Hmm, I think I'd be Iris Queen, tall and stately (ahahahahahaaahaaa ) in blue/purple.

I always pictured Rowan as dark, too, like a stockier version of Anna Chancellor.

I think I'd like to go to St Ronan's in the Jane Shaw 'Susan' books. Mainly because I'd love to hang around with Susan and Midge.They sound like my kind of people.

Neither, I went to boarding school IRL and it was vile.

Mm yes to Susan and Midge but what about Ghastly Gabrielle?

I know Empress. I much preferred the book that preceded her arrival. Much funnier and better written.
Midge avoided sports at all costs so we would have got on brilliantly. Susan was hockey mad but other than that appeared quite normal.

I could definitely get on with Midge. We would bunk off PE lessons together and lie in the grass out of the way somewhere writing stories.

Love Antonia Forest, though I wouldn't have fitted in at all. Can't act, can't sing, rubbish at lacrosse.

And half heartedly doing a bit of ballet.

I liked Tess as well. I'm a bit vague and absent minded though, so we'd have been a disaster together. We'd be forever found wandering around the corridors trying to find the right classroom - would probably be found years later after our classmates had all left decades ago.

Don't think I know Tess?

Just remembered Dimsie advising an out-of-her-depth prefect to keep the younger ones out of mischief in break by getting them all playing rounders. I'd have been very unimpressed by that when I could have been reading or chatting.

Come to think of it RowanMumsnet is dark. Is it possible that people have seen pics of her and are subconsciously linking her to Rowan Marlow?