Having re-read some of the Arthur Clarke books from my very early youth had me thinking about other books I read at an early age. Books were hard to come by in those days and library visits were when my parents were able to take me so I recall having a shelf in my room with about 20 or 30 well thumbed paperbacks on it, and deciding which one I would re-read next. (Yes, I was a precocious reader).
Sometime around my 12th(?) birthday I remember receiving a box set of 6 “Lone Pine Club” books in a carboard slipcase and reading them over and over again. Over time I even purchased a seventh volume and crudely modified the slip case with corrugated cardboard and sellotape to hold the new addition!
I did the author a great disservice by believing in my later years thinking that they were just another series by the ‘Secret Seven’ author Enid Blyton. So I’d like to take this chance to apologise to the actual writer, Malcolm Saville and I’m very pleased to see that he has his own society dedicated to keeping his name alive.
The books seem to be out of print now, and I cannot even find a single photograph of the boxset that I was given (I’m sure it was a dark blue slip-case), however as is often the case with works of this vintage, archive.org came to the rescue so I was able to re-re-read with considerably older eyes!
And I did enjoy it, all over again. The story is fairly straight-forward (as befits the target age group), a mother and her three children take up residence in a farmhouse just below the Long Mynd to escape the blitz. They make friends with another evacuee from a neighboring farm, and the daughter of a local reservoir caretaker and form the Lone Pine Club. The descriptions of the den I remember vividly, and the club rules signed in blood and buried in the sardine tin!
They almost immediately stumble upon mysterious behaviour by the residents of a house on the other side of the mountain and are soon embroiled in some real adventures.
The twins were just as annoying as I remembered, and I always thought it a shame that the girl they meet felt it necessary to use a boy’s name, but everything else was just great. The fly-leaf map was instantly familiar as well.
The story was good, exciting but not horrific or too dark. Heroes and villains were clearly drawn and everything seemed fairly plausible. I would describe it as a “wholesome” book, and I mean that in a completely un-ironic way. The club members are good people, the bad guys are clearly bad and the adults all act in ways that you would expect.
I was really pleased to re-acquiant myself with all the club members and may well read more of the series.