The nature of the bubble she establishes actually gives freedom to fill in the blanks however you want. But because of that she makes the assumption that she doesn’t need to specify race in the way she does in other books. The idea of an isolated all-girls’ boarding school in Cornwall, for Blyton, was obviously that of a specific type of person – upper middle class, and white. As a child I didn’t realise quite what they meant – and I was probably reading fairly edited versions even then – but in some ways it makes Malory Towers one of the easier works to adapt in a modern society.

The Famous Five books seemed to have some racism in every third book or so, while The Magic Faraway Tree has golliwogs lurking in the corners of the narrative. It wasn’t just the mores of her time, she had stories rejected by contemporary publishers for being inappropriate, letters were published in newspapers complaining about some of the ideas in her work. There’s plenty of evidence of it, alongside perhaps her tendency towards misogyny (poor old Anne never gets any respect). There’s no denying that Enid Blyton was a racist. It seemed doubly-apt given the recent announcement that a new TV series based on the books is being made, and the discussions about Enid Blyton’s legacy.

I found my books in my parents’ loft and, in that strange period of time before going away on holiday and trying to save all my new books for the trip, I took the opportunity to re-read the first one. Sure, I liked The Famous Five and The Magic Faraway Tree, but there was something about Malory Towers which really tapped into something for me. I read them again and again – I remember getting a new one whenever we went on holiday, until I had the whole series. When I was a kid, I adored the Malory Towers books. But the first term is not all fun and Darrell has some tricky problems to cope with: her dreadful temper, the mystery of Sally Hope’s odd behaviour, and the spiteful tricks played on Mary-Lou. She quickly settles down and makes new friends, including the clever and mischievous Alicia, who delights the form with her practical jokes. Darrell Rivers is off to boarding school for the first time.

Third term at malory towers