As my discovery of the county was largely due to the children's writer Malcom Saville, it seems appropriate to mention that he was the uncle of Lord Saville whose report on Bloody Sunday is published today.
When that report was already long overdue, I observed in one of my late, lamented New Statesman columns:
Lord Saville would do well to study his uncle’s methods. Take 1950. In that year Malcolm published The Adventure of the Life-Boat Service - a tribute to “this wonderful and typical British institution”.
He also published The Master of Maryknoll - an exciting tale of a stolen violin set in the hills above Ludlow. He published The Flying Fish Adventure, which was set in Marazion in Cornwall. And he published The Sign of the Alpine Rose, set in the Austrian Tyrol.
If Lord Saville has shown anything like that industry he would have produced his report years ago and we could have spent the £180m on ginger beer.
4 comments:
I had no idea. Up the Lone Piners!
I read Malcolm Saville books too, having graduated there from Enid Blyton.
I found out recently that he had also written a script for an "information film" called Trouble at Townsend, during the war and starring none other than today's international singing star Petula Clark, when she was about 10.
I wish I could find his books again. They seem to have disappeared in the last 20 or so years.
Tris, there are 176 Saville titles listed on eBay UK at this moment. I think the Malcolm Saville Society has issued the original Trouble at Townsend on DVD.
Thanks so much for that information... guess where I'm headed now!!!
<:¬)
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