When rearranging the bookcases a few months ago I found that book 13 of my Famous Five collection had gone missing, a big disaster as I loved the Famous Five as a teenager, and so I kept an eye out and was able to pick up this copy cheap at the Oxfam shop, it is in a much better state than the rest of collection which came from Church Sales.
It is ideal reading for the train, light and engaging, and I still find the Famous Five delightful even through my more mature eyes, even if I am more aware of great escapism they represent, the irony of having have spent a childhood sat at home reading about and wishing I was the sort of person who went of adventures.
Enid Blyton is often a target for the "liberal" Mafia who attack her for the idolising of a narrow strip of middle class existence, and here the presence of "cardboard cut out" travellers as the villains make this an exhibit for the prosecution - and when the traveller boy that the Five befriend is asked what has greatest wish would be, that his reply is to live in a house does just make you winch.
But here Blyton was only holding a mirror to her contemporary world, and the recent "battle of Dale Farm", or "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" shows that outside a tiny strip of middle class existence forces far more influential than Blyton are keeping the mirror true.
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