Monday, June 15, 2009

An interview with Malcolm Saville

Longstanding readers will know of my affection for the children's writer Malcolm Saville (1901-1982). In particular, my early reading paved the way for my adult love of the Shropshire hills.


Bear Alley shares my enthusiasm and has brought together a number of links concerned with Saville's work.

In particular, this interview that Malcolm Saville gave to Books for Keeps in 1980.

3 comments:

Duncan Macdonald said...

Thanks for this. I have recently re-read all the Lone pine books thanks to e-bay and they brought back many happy memories and caused me to acquire and avidly read many of his other books that I had not read as a child. Some of his books now command quite considerable sums of money on e-bay. It's certainly worth getting the Newnes originals where possible as the paperbacks were heavily abridged.

Frank Little said...

Going off at a tangent, mention of Barbara Sleigh in that interview reminds me of what good radio adapters there were in the 1950s. Bertha Lonsdale is another name that comes to mind.

Jonathan Calder said...

I'm pleased to meet another Lib Dem Saville fan, though his own politics were essentially One-Nation Tory.

You are right that the original Newnes editions are better, both as literature and social history. I was buying them in the 1990s when prices were a bit lower than now.

Girls Gone By are republishing paperback editons of the original text. And someone has recently brought out the scripts of the BBC radio adaptation of Mystery at Witchend.