Has anyone ever read Malory towers?

[Orangejelly1]

I used to love the books as a child! I read them cover to cover so many times and my favourite character was Darrell. I recently found my old collection and re read parts of them just for old times sake and I was actually really disappointed to see, as an adult, how awful some of the popular characters were. I know it was a product of its time and a different era, but Darrell, Alicia and some of the most popular girls would be called nasty bullies nowadays. I also felt so sorry for Gwen, which surprised me because as a child rearing the books she was my least favourite character.

just wondered if anyone else re read the books and thought this too!

Oh, that would really grate

Ooh that looks fun

If you like that, there's another site you'll love. I'll take you straight to the Sweet Valley/Hunger Games fanfic crossover.

They're a lot rougher round the edges, but somehow I find them fresher, livelier and all the sincerer for it. The series as a whole is poorly-plotted and very bottom-heavy, with three whole instalments before they even make it out of the first form. Although Enid herself is in top-brass character, and is just as xenophobic toward the Americans and French as she is in MT, at SC's Old Money as opposed to the nouveau riche comes in for quite a bit of ribbing. The aristocratic Angela Favourleigh is an unmitigated horror, and unlike some of the nastier characters of MT readers are really not encouraged to like her.

Even so, stark no nonsense St Clare's is still just as much as correctional facility as castle-like MT, with the girls indoctrinated into models of the good wives and mothers of the future. I liked the fact that we follow MT from forms 1 through 6 - especially the instalment with the school cert year - but by this time the plots have become pretty formulaic. Most of the key characters of MT can find an equivalent in the series' predecessor, and a number of storylines are rehashed. The introduction of Felicity et al toward the end of the series is also an annoying distraction. It's as if Enid has run out of things to say about our girls once they [hit adolescence] turn into boring/staid 6th formers, so the younger girls get prominence as cardboard cutouts of their elders but are even more awful than they are, if that's possible!

The best part of St Clare's is that through not following the boring twins through to Year 6, we are spared the nauseating Fond Farewells at the end of MT which put even Gwen to shame! 'Carry the Standard high!' Bleurgh. UGH!

I'm loving this thread. 100% Nostalgia!

Although I agree the new books aren't quite the same, I quite appreciated it last year when I re-read SC and the gaps were filled in. I found it very frustrating that certain forms were missing and I did really want to hear about the twins et al's final year.

I love this thread too. There's so much that is discussion-worthy about the books.
I don't know why I preferred Malory Towers to St C's. And we know what Mal Towers were based on-do we know if EB was inspired by any school/building for St Cs'?

I remember the story of the twins using boot polish instead of Anchovy Paste (I hadn't ever heard of Anchovy Toast before I read the books)!
And Carlotta the 'jumped up' circus girl-but I don't remember much else really?

I remember a lot more about Malory towers although it could be just me, I had the books as a present and I loved them and read them cover to cover-I was irked as an 11 year old when I reached the end, I wanted a sequel. Perhaps my love of reading stemmed from them although I am not sure, I've always been a reader.
I remember being so scared of boarding schools though, I would have personally hated to be educated at one, school was bad enough mind you so was home when I didn't have to be there all the time. I am trying to think of what girl I would have been most like. (Goes off to see if there's an online quiz...).. :)

It occurred to me that if EB had structured St Clare's the same as MT, we'd probably have the same stories and characters, just set in different years with minor alterations to reflect that. So it would be -
The Twins at St Clare's - first form
The O'Sullivan Twins - second form
Summer Term at St Clare's - third form
Second Form at St Clare's - Fourth form
Claudine at St Clare's - Fifth form (the first or second term, before studies were allocated)
Fifth Formers at St Clare's - Sixth form (Hilary might have been head for this book, but left for India at the end, so it could end with the twins being chosen as originally written for the fifth).

That is true. What are the main differences between MT and St Cs' would we say?

I can't put my finger on it.

I think St Clare’s is more general - overview of all the girls rather than centred around Darrell.

There seem more girls who are a bit troubled at St Clare’s. Carlotta, Mirabel, Margery. I suppose MT had the girl who cheated (Elsie?) but the ones at SCs seemed to come from more unconventional backgrounds.

SC didn't have a main protagonist...it always started with the twins but they were never the focus in any of the stories and their characters weren't very developed. It was more of an ensemble cast. That perhaps made it a bit more palatable if there were characters you were supposed to like and didn't, because the story didn't hinge so much on them.

SC also didn't have the same antagonist in every book.

I remember the story of the twins using boot polish instead of Anchovy Paste

No, it was Antoinette, Claudia's sister, when Angela was trying to get her to fall in love with her for a power trip. I felt sorry for Alison and Anne-Marie, they didn't do anything to deserve it. And Alison even told Angela it was wrong. I always found it a bit of a contrived way of getting a boarding-schoolish prank in there.

St Clare's have a lot more midnight feasts - there's one in almost every book, I think, and they turn out fairly happily. There's only one in MT, the ill-fated midnight swim planned at the last minute with surplus food provided by Clarissa's old nurse.

There's much more sense of MT as a very distinctive school and location, which much admiration of the coastal setting, the castle-like building, the swimming pool in the rocks. SC seems to be a fairly bog-standard building in grounds that are nothing out of the ordinary.

St Clare's books were published before the Malory Towers ones. It's said Enid based a lot of Malory Towers by what her daughters told her about life at their boarding school. If you go by the daughters ages they would have only been about 5 and 10 when the first St Clare's was published so not started at boarding school yet.
I wonder if that's some of the reasons for the differences and why Malory Towers is more 'realistic'.

That makes a lot of sense. I don’t know why but I always assumed she wrote MT first and had sort of stopped caring when she wrote SC.

Blyton was also using her experience of school (sports etc) in her school books - she was a day girl at a private school (St Christopher's) in Beckeham.

I also wonder why she didn't carry on with the "Naughtiest Girl" series after "NG is a monitor" (1945) - I would have thought that the publishers would have liked the series as it was a mixed school (maybe broader appeal to boys and girls)

This thread's prompted me to reread these books. The school in Naughtiest Girl actually sounds more of a hellhole than the other two put together.

Blyton's locations are very vivid as they're often based upon real places. Malory Towers was reputed to be Lulworth Castle and the pool on the rocks that fills up with tidal water is Dancing Ledge, near Swanage. She mashed together both locations, uprooted them from Dorset and replanted them in Cornwall, and voila!

St Clare's was supposed to be a stark, no-nonsense place where the kids even had to do their own mending (ouch, harsh) and the 'dormitories take six or eight girls and aren't nearly as nicely furnished as the maids' bedrooms are at home', in the assessment of stuck-up twin Pat O'Sullivan. Oh you little snob!

I have something of a 'thing' for tracking down locations in literature. I know people who've mapped the topography of early-twentieth century London from the books of that period, and the geek in me is fascinated by this and hopes one day they'll produce digital maps!

I'm also betting 'Castaway' of 'Five go to Smuggler's Top' is based on Rye in Sussex. Both the history and general appearance of the place seem to fit very well.

@Flapjacker48 Enid's day-school experiences would have been very different to boarding school though. I don't know if the current St Christopher's school in Beckenham is the same original building (I go past it sometimes on the bus) - the old part of the building is teeny tiny. It expect it would have been a very small school in Enid's time.
I always like that the rival school lacrosse team always seems to be from a school called St Christopher's (I can't remember though if she used that in Malory Towers or St Clare's or both).

@Needmorelego

Of course, but some of her experiences at senior school:

"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"

I remember the twins actually wanted to go to another, extremely posh school that their friends were going to. Ringmere I think. It was so posh that their friends needed evening gowns. But Mrs O’Sullivan told them it was a very snobbish school and no way were the twins going there.

MarieVanArkle That would explain why the locations are so vivid in MT. Transplanting bits of Dorset to Cornwall was a brilliant idea.

It was so posh that their friends needed evening gowns. Echoes of The Chalet School.

"Peterswood" is the find-outers series was apparently based on Bourne end.

I recently re-read the last two St Clare's books - bloody hell! You'd never get away with that these days (nor would you want to). Poor Alma Pudden, who turned out to have a problem with her glands being fat-shamed, Spanish tempers, the French having no sense of honour etc.

There were some great messages too though - there was mousy little Gladys who gave a speech on how she would be proud of her mother even if she was the dowdiest, plainest woman at open day, Angela realising that her mothers ways were most unsavoury, girls being taken out by other girls families so they wouldn't be on their own. Then there was Alison with her crushes on Angela and Miss Willcox. Perhaps she was the first lesbian in children's literature?

"We started reading Thomas the Tank Engine to our kids when they were three or four and had to stop because it is absolutely horrendous."

Oh I'm SO glad to find someone else who agrees with me!! I have a 2 year old and a 3 year old and I'm so uncomfortable about those books!! (And loads of others to be fair).

Hmm, I did read them, but none of those names ring a bell. I do remember an American girl though, who said 'wunnerful', and maybe an Arabella?