Julian is 12 years old, Dick and George 11 and Anne 10. Then of course, there’s Timothy the dog whom George has hidden away at a fisherboy’s house for a year because Uncle Quentin, her father, got annoyed with him and banished him from the house. They decide to go to Kirrin Island one day, which belongs to Aunt Fanny, George’s mother, but will one day belong to George. They find an old wreck below the surface of the water, which, according to George, contained gold but no one ever found it. After a rather heavy storm, the wreck washes ashore and the children are excited because now they have a chance to look for the gold inside the ship. And what thrill when they find a wooden box lined with tin with something inside. What could it be? And thus begins the first adventure of the Famous Five. They always seem to get into one scrape after another—when they find themselves inside the tunnels of Smuggler’s Top, the house owned by Uncle Quentin’s friend, when they follow a circus up in the hills in two caravans, when they go camping on the moorlands and discover “spook-trains-a-running-at-night”. What adventures the Famous Five had.
These books were written in the 1940s, the first one during the thick of World War II in 1942. India, too, was witnessing a tumultuous period in its history, when our freedom fighters were negotiating the terms of independence with Lord Mountbatten and other representatives of the British empire. In 1947, perhaps on the night when Nehru was giving his famous Tryst With Destiny speech, the five were on Kirrin Island, exploring a narrow tunnel that seemed to go under the sea. They, of course, existed in their own world of tunnels and ginger beer and suspicious-looking men, entirely unaware of the Axis and the Allied powers or the Gestapo or the gas chambers.
In a way, they are a perfect specimen of the breed we call children. They are happy, well-adjusted little human beings who explore caves, solve mysteries and go on adventures. You can, for example, never imagine Julian breaking into pimples or George worrying about which peplum skirt to wear to her friend’s birthday party. The five have far more important things to worry about, like saving the world and putting smugglers in prison.
So, what happens when they grow up? Perhaps they will become Sherlock Holmes-type private detectives who will make a profession out of solving mysteries? Or perhaps they will join the MI6 and drive Aston Martins? What one can’t imagine is the Famous Five as adults sharing an apartment, listening to Taylor Swift, drinking ale and reading Vogue. This is the FAMOUS FIVE, for Christ’s sake. They can’t live ordinary lives, they HAVE to go on adventures.
A stamp printed in Great Britain shows Enid Blyton's Famous Five, circa 1997
But if Bruno Vincent, the writer of Famous Five for Adults, is to be believed, the five grow up into ordinary youngsters who take the tube to work and listen to Apple Music on the way. In Five Forget Mother’s Day, for example, Aunt Fanny comes to stay with the five and relations become strained between mother and daughter. In Five Go Gluten Free, Anne decides that they must all eschew junk food and eat healthy goop like revitalising health drinks containing ginger and leaves, and spaghetti made from courgetti. In Five Go Parenting, the five are forced to look after their cousin’s baby daughter. In short, the five tackle all sorts of modern-day dilemmas like how to survive without booze, what stand to take on the Brexit issue and what kind of pram to buy a baby. Frankly, it was a lark reading Enid Blyton for Adults. I could just imagine the expression on a smiling Dick’s face when the child worker opened the basket and he came face-to-face with a pink-faced, bawling baby who, he was told, now belonged to him.
“While Blyton had no intention of setting up her characters for comic purposes, they are fantastic for writing comedies because they have such different personalities,” said Vincent in an interview. “In my version, Julian has grown up into a blustery, pompous leader who can’t admit when he’s wrong; George is the cynical voice of common sense; Anne is a slightly prim and brittle idealist; while Dick is almost too laid-back. (Timmy the dog is still there, at a venerable 19-years old.) With four such contrasting viewpoints, you can squeeze comedy out of every situation.”
Yes, grown up versions of Julian, George, Dick, Anne and Timmy were a breath of fresh laughs. Yet, I wished I could preserve them in an endless continuum of the present. I wished I could keep them isolated from Brexit, Donald Trump, GM vegetables, phones with not enough storage space, Arnab Goswami and all other similar men with thinning hair and thundering voices. Why can’t I always package and store them away in Kirrin Island, where they will frolic around solving all kinds of mysteries which, let’s face it, even kids know are highly improbable.
