Escape to Literature

“I cannot remember a time when I didn’t read.” Not the first - or last - person to write that. Of course, at three or so I wasn’t really reading; but I was often caught with the latest James Hadley Chase upside down in front of my nose. Soon the availability of crayons and whatever paperback my parents were reading encouraged my first attempts at creative ‘writing’. My parents read what their friends read; whatever was on the single rotating bookstand in NAAFI Shops from the Rhineland to Singapore.

As many children did then, I started with Enid Blyton: short stories like Greedy Gubbins, the dog who stole sausages and got his unjust desserts; The Island, Castle, Valley and so on of Adventure; the Secret Seven came next and, of course, the Famous Five. So “terribly, terribly” middle class; so very different from the life of a service (other ranks) brat. That’s what made them exotic.

But life changed for me when I read Stevenson's Treasure Island. A different time, a different world - and so thrilling. Naturally, I then devoured anything on a similar island, pirate or adventure theme. Ballantyne, Defoe, Antony Hope, Rider Haggard and others came next, even the exotic Sabatini. It was a short leap from there to Dumas and Hugo. I don’t imply this happened in – say - two short years: only, from this distance, it seems a headlong rush through my childhood years: escaping, adventuring, swashbuckling.

I notice only now the change from Blyton to Ballantyne occurred when I started boarding school. This was the one thing other ranks’ children enjoyed as the officers’ did: the Boarding School Allowance could be used to pay boarding fees, if you could get into the school. I never read a Malory Towers book; Blyton being "beneath me" by then. I would have considered them girls books, since they were about a girls' school. I didn't read Jennings or Bunter. Stalky and Co. I did read, and I never forgave Kipling for it.