Did anyone watch the Enid Blyton prog on BBC4?

[bluejeans]

It was really good and well done - but sad

Want to find someone else who watched it as everyone in RL will have watched Flash Forward/Life/I'm a Celebrity

LOL - I thought I saw Lily Rose!
What about Dorothy - I'm sure I've seen her before.

I thought it was SO well done.
BBC4 have really cornered the market on these beautifully made and performed exposes of cultural icons - anyone see Trevor Eve as Hughie Green - Ken Stott as Tony Hancock?

Terribly sad but wonderful.

Dorothy was in Alan Partridge as his secretary...

It was fabulously done, and H B-C as Enid was superb.

her oldest daughter certainly had nicer things to say about he than her youngest. Read earlier that the two daughters just didn't speak to eachother at all when they were older but that it was teh youngest daughter who looked after EB when she was old and ill.

Kenneth - Ewan McGregor's uncle in rl, he was also in Holby City.

Dorothy - in a lot of sitcoms.

Old Enid was a bit of a horror, how rotten to have a tea party for children and not allow her own to attend.

why would she do that?
I didn't see the film, what was so sad then -the way EB behaved towards her family? I don't know anything at all about her life.

She was just vile.

She wouldn't pick her baby up when she was crying - she was too busy writing. She had nanny come in when the baby was only about 1 week old. She packed both her girls off to boarding school as soon as she could. When they were at home they were allowed one hour a day with her.

She had an affair, the wife came to see her and she denied it all and slept with the bloke that night. She told her husband to take the blame for her affair and she would let him see their daughters whenever he wanted. She of course didn't keep her part of the deal, she threw letters away that the husband wrote to them and didn't let them to talk to him on the phone.

She eventually married the bloke she was having an affair with.

There was loads more.

It was heart breakingly sad to see the way she treated her husband and children. Hard to have any sympathy for her - she lived in a fantasy world full of imaginary children, but didn't actually like real children much. She surely had mental health problems.

Dorothy was played by Claire Rushbrook who played the daughter in Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies - a v different role!

THe person this portrayal reminded me of was Margaret Thatcher!

Wasn't it just fantastic! Totally compelling and HBC was really excellent
First bit of TV I've thoroughly enjoyed in ages.
But my god, wasn't EB a woman with serious issues.

It was so strange to see someone who was brilliant with all kids except her own... Thought Matthew MacFadyen was really good as her unfortunate first husband - he is usually all cool and brooding, a la Mr Darcy or Spooks.

that sounds really bizarre - only allowing your dc to see you for an hour a day whilst you are spending your time writing books about dc for dc, etc.

I think firstly we've got to remember that it was a dramatisation! But also that at the time it was much more common for children of wealthy families to be looked after by nannies - think of Mary Poppins!

I actually thought it was quite a sympathetic depiction. Even though she was horrible to her husband and kids you could see why she did it. She preferred fantasy because she could control it whereas real life was shit to her when she was young. She made things up when real life was too much, like when the dog dies and she writes a story about him being alive and playful, and when she tells her friend about her father she gives him all the attributes she wishes he had.

Tbh I think her childcare arrangements weren't that unusual for her time and class. Upper class women often didn't do that much with their children even if they didn't have any type of career.

Excellent,but very sad,I felt so sorry for her first husband and daughters.
Plus,I didn't know she was pregnant at 47...

wish I'd seen it now

I think it is sad when women who have achieved something are then revealed as "bad mothers".

If EB had been born now she would never have had children. She was a victim of the time she lived in...women were expected to marry and have children, no matter whether they were suited to motherhood or being wives. She clearly wasn't.

If she had been a man and lived a bookish existence, never married and never had kids, she'd have been admired for her work ethic and dedication.

Was the programme implying that she intentionally climbed & fell, when pregnant - I wasn't sure

arse. forgot this. on iplayer i suppose?

that's an idea. Does anyone remember the title of the programme by any chance?

Enid oddly enough & the Maureen Lipman one isn't available

Yep,on iplayer, just watched it:
here

ooh thanks , watching it now

just been looking at the Enid Blyton Story on youtube and one of her dd's said that one day she picked up from something one of their servants said that the woman with the dark curly hair and the dark eyes who ran their household was actually her mother

!

And she knew from reading books, including Enid Blyton books that a mother has a special relationship to her dc and yet she knew she didn't

Was really quite odd

Yay!!!

Nearly at the end, and her typing about children and burdens has finally answered the question for me. I remember a book I borrowed from a friend, and as an adult all I could find was Pilgrim's Progress which I clearly didn't read in primary school - googling this it must have been The Land of Far Beyond

have just watched the repeat on BBC4, and amazed how her she treated her family. And I agree with Miggsie, if she was born in todays world she probable would not have had kids.