LOOKING FOR ENID was published by Portobello Books in 2007. You can still get the lovely hardback in a few places. The paperback and an ebook were released at the end of September, 2008. All these editions can be bought here: “HOORAH!”
EVELYN!: Rhapsody for an Obsessive Love, my take on Evelyn Waugh, was about to be published simultaneously as a hardback and an e-book by Beautiful Books in 2011 when the publisher went into administration. “SHAME!”
It was partly the frustration of the lost e-book that inspired me to set up a website to promote EVELYN!, though the site is intended to work primarily as a stand-alone project: www.evelynwaugh.org.uk
The Waugh website gives me so much pleasure that I wondered if I could reflect my continuing interest in Enid Blyton in a similar way. I soon realised that I had several ideas that had little chance of being published in print but which I thought might work in a screen context. And as I’ve worked on these ideas I’ve just got more and more excited about this initiative. “HOORAH!”
Today, May 21, 2012, I’m posting ’The Secret Seven’. I hope to be adding to this website regularly over the next few weeks, months and - let's face it - years.
*******************************************
March 2, 2018. A review of Looking For Enid recently came to my attention. It's by the writer and researcher L. H. Johnson, and it begins:
'This is possibly the strangest and yet, maybe, one of the most brilliant biographies of an author I've ever read. It's an approach that I don't think would have worked for anybody but Enid Blyton and so, perhaps, the unorthodoxy of Looking For Enid was always destined to work when its subject was such a furiously unorthodox figure herself.'
The whole review can be read here, but it concludes:
'I'm still giving this four stars, and that comes from a recognition of this book's mad brilliance. It's infuriating, yes, and could do with stepping away from the socratic exposition that McLaren does tend to engage in with his partner, but it's sort of fabulous and vividly unique. I don't think I've ever read a book like this that is so - madly honest - about what it's like to be a fan, and to love something, and to also just want to find out more. Looking For Enid certainly concludes by finding her; I'm not sure that it's my Enid, but I do know that the ride towards that point is kind of unforgettable. Mad, weird, totally bizarre, and a bit super odd at points, but also, sort of brilliant.'
That's the kind of review I had envisaged for the book, in my optimistic moments. But for this website I want to keep things more down to earth. Sensible, even. If there's the odd bit of madness and brilliance thrown in, that will be down to Goon and Fatty, respectively. Never me.