Enid Blyton’s Famous Five set to celebrate 75 years of detective work

IF you’re of a certain vintage, you may remember reading about The Famous Five the first time Enid Blyton’s classics were published.

The year 2017 will see us celebrate 75 years since the very first book, Five On A Treasure Island, came out.

So this year, Enid Blyton Entertainment and Hodder Children’s Books will team up with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) to mark this special anniversary.

Many kids, of course, learned plenty about flowers, plants and gardens via Blyton’s descriptive powers, as she had her five friends head off on all sorts of adventures.

That’s why we’ll see a Five Go On A Garden Adventure activity, with the accent on the values of our favourite fivesome, friendship, heroism, adventure, outdoors and daring.

Each of the RHS’s four gardens will offer fun activities, with themed adventure trails, garden displays, craft workshops and obviously a fair old smattering of story-telling.

The four gardens are Wisley in Surrey, Rosemoor Garden in Devon, Essex’s Hyde Hall and Harrogate’s Harlow Carr.

There will be a picnic party at all four, on August 11, with Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy the dog all sure to be there — it is, after all, Enid Blyton’s 120th birthday.

The author was a regular visitor to Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, which inspired many a story, stand-out attractions including Corfe Castle (which became Kirrin Castle in the books) and Brownsea Island (Whispering Island).

She’d only planned to write a handful of books, but sales were so strong that Blyton went on to pen 21 Famous Five novels!

It was only at the start of the 50s that publishers Hodder & Stoughton used the term The Famous Five, and, within a year or two, they had sold over six million copies — these days, over two million more are sold each year.

Born in London’s East Dulwich in 1897, Enid Blyton was also a poet and teacher, and passed away in 1968.

Almost half a century later, how nice to be celebrating one (or five!) of her most-famous creations.

READ MORE: Why we’re still obsessed with Sherlock 130 years from his first appearance