Favourite childhood books

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Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Yay! Tricky in a skirt though, eh? So I don't use mine for commuting if I have to dress up, whereas I will occasionally brave the hybrid in a frock.

Ah, I just never wear skirts or dresses (with one exception at our wedding...)
 

Arch

Married to Night Train
Location
Salford, UK
Ah yes, I remember the Willard Price books as well. (Am I right in thinking that's 3 women who remember enjoying them? Interesting, given that you'd think they were more "boy's books" (not of course that one should describe books thus, but hopefully you know what I mean.))

Yeah, just shows kids will simply gravitate to what interests them, given a chance.
 

Ganymede

Veteran
Location
Rural Kent
Yeah, just shows kids will simply gravitate to what interests them, given a chance.
True, my sisters liked them too, it was because it was about animals but also because I just saw myself as Hal Hunt. I mean, not that I "liked" him, I wanted to be him. You did learn a LOT from those books too even though some of it was patently bollix (rescuing that dolphin in Diving Adventure, its lungs would have blown up due to pressurised air...). I always liked it when they were stuck somewhere and had to hunt and forage and build a raft and ESCAPE. Hmm. Yes. That's the dream...
 

Hyslop

Veteran
Location
Carlisle
Interesting this.One that springs straight to mind from early childhood-Twizzle and Footso the Cat-still here somewhere I believe.
 

slowmotion

Quite dreadful
Location
lost somewhere
You are quite right, but also if teenage boys were to draw 'those things' (how quaint), they would almost certainly be vulvas not vaginas. Just saying.
Exclusively, we drew willies. Our limited knowledge of other bits came from Clegg & Clegg, The Biology of the Mammal. Our copies pre-date this edition by quite a few years. It was a brilliant text book and stood us in good stead for the subsequent practicals.
clegg and clegg.jpeg
 

Gravity Aided

Legendary Member
Location
Land of Lincoln
Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, The Sketch Book(Legend of Sleepy Hollow,etc) The Prince and the Mermaid, Grimms Fairy Tales (with the grisly German Version,but in English,IIRC) and some book called Tales of the Sea, which had many an odd story in it. And some book called A Joseph Conrad Omnibus, which had all the famous Joseph Conrad Stories in it. I still have that one. I was pretty widely read, as I had a pretty large library to read from.
 

swee'pea99

Legendary Member
The thing about Johns' racism as displayed in Biggles is that it is insidiously manifest in a set of assumptions rather than explicit actions. I'm not sure that Biggles ever uses racially offensive language directly to another person (unless the various terms for Germans used during the wars are regarded as offensive). But the starting assumption about every single person is defined by their racial and/or national origins. Black people are stupid, lazy and needing leading; orientals probably clever but potentially duplicitous; Americans naive; French and other Mediterraneans emotional and ineffective; Scots hard working but destined for subordinate positions; Germans sufficiently like English to be quite decent chaps if they hadn't had the misfortune to end up on the wrong side; etc; and "half-breed", a pretty offensive term in itself, is a lazy indication by Johns of someone who should never be trusted because their mixed background prevents them being true to any one thing, innit. There are plenty of examples (well, some, anyway) of Johns allowing his characters to overcome the handicap of their origin and being treated surprisingly positively by him (Biggles' own chosen successor in the unfinished final book is technically a "half breed"), so when he put his mind to it, he could overcome his racism; but the universal, unthinking (and offensive) assumption is what becomes wearing after a while.
That's fascinating, and about as good a definition of racism as I can remember coming across. Ie, not the widely held misconception that racism is about not liking certain kinds of 'other', the conviction that people's nature are set in stone by their racial origins. And in that - true - sense, I don't think racism is anything like as redundant as we often (like to) imagine.

I tend to think of myself as relatively enlightened and 'nice' - a lifelong Guardian reader, with all that that entails. But if I'm honest, I do also tend to think that, for just a couple of examples, if you were after a passionate lover and a guy to make you a reliable piece of machinery and you had to choose between a German and an Italian for each, it would be a bit perverse to go for anything other than the 'obvious' divide. And, moreover, that this genuinely does reflect some kind of inherent national/racial characteristics.

The interesting rider to this, (arguably) is that the one big difference since the days of Biggles is that the English, I suspect, no longer take it as read that they are at the top of any 'natural pecking order'. In Johns' day, it was a given that to have been born English was to have won life's lottery from the get go. I suspect that's no longer the case, and that the English now feel they're 'all right, and generally quite good at stuff - and decent, on the whole', we're generally speaking a pretty second-rate lot. We don't actually make things as well as the Germans, we're not as passionate as the French, we're not as good at maths as Asians. And so on...

So we're no longer 'superior'; but we're probably just as racist as we ever were. Terrible really. But we can't help ourselves - it's the way we're made.
 

Spinney

Bimbleur extraordinaire
Location
Back up north
In Johns' day, it was a given that to have been born English was to have won life's lottery from the get go.
I think only if you were born into the upper classes, or middle classes as well, maybe? Not sure this would apply to the working classes.

(and 'class' is as bad a label as race, really, but it is a convenient short cut here for what I was trying to say, and def. did apply in Biggles's day!)
 

raleighnut

Legendary Member
That's fascinating, and about as good a definition of racism as I can remember coming across. Ie, not the widely held misconception that racism is about not liking certain kinds of 'other', the conviction that people's nature are set in stone by their racial origins. And in that - true - sense, I don't think racism is anything like as redundant as we often (like to) imagine.

I tend to think of myself as relatively enlightened and 'nice' - a lifelong Guardian reader, with all that that entails. But if I'm honest, I do also tend to think that, for just a couple of examples, if you were after a passionate lover and a guy to make you a reliable piece of machinery and you had to choose between a German and an Italian for each, it would be a bit perverse to go for anything other than the 'obvious' divide. And, moreover, that this genuinely does reflect some kind of inherent national/racial characteristics.

The interesting rider to this, (arguably) is that the one big difference since the days of Biggles is that the English, I suspect, no longer take it as read that they are at the top of any 'natural pecking order'. In Johns' day, it was a given that to have been born English was to have won life's lottery from the get go. I suspect that's no longer the case, and that the English now feel they're 'all right, and generally quite good at stuff - and decent, on the whole', we're generally speaking a pretty second-rate lot. We don't actually make things as well as the Germans, we're not as passionate as the French, we're not as good at maths as Asians. And so on...

So we're no longer 'superior'; but we're probably just as racist as we ever were. Terrible really. But we can't help ourselves - it's the way we're made.
My favourite 'Biggles' book is the lost one 'narrated' by Micheal Palin called "Biggles goes to see Bruce Spingsteen" during which reference is made to Biggles "We rule it Map of the World"
It may have been from a "secret policemens ball", dunno a mate did the cassette for me, must google it in a bit.
EDIT- it is on you tube, and seems to be from the first Secret Policemans Ball.
 
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I was always in trouble for being an avid reader

I remember reading "The Horse and His Boy" by CS Lewis as an end of day thing at school... we would all take turns in reading

When we came to the Summer Holidays we hadn't finished, so for my Birthday I was given the Box Set of the Narnia Chronicles

SO on return, I had not only read the project, but the whole series, so quickly became bored in the reading sessions.

Same with Alistair Mclean, I read Caravan to Vaccares in August when I was about 13, and by Christmas I had read all his books.

It hasn't changed, I still love books, and to this day I will often read an author's entire works one after another.
 
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