A thousand thanks to the reader who left a comment directing me to a Radio Who's Who for 1947 and the entry for Elaine Macnamara, the actress who played Dickie Morton in two 1946 dramat… Read More

We've seen that the third actor to play Malcolm Saville's child character (and my first literary hero) Dickie Morton was tried for murder at the Old Bailey as a young man.That was Cavan Malo… Read More

This is a tremendous video by Rediscovering Lost Railways that blends archive and contemporary footage. It shows us the 19-mile Lynton & Barnstaple Railway under operation and what remai… Read More

Brownlow Square was a little forgotten corner of London. It wasn't really a square because two of the sides were longer than the other two. Three narrow streets ran up hill into it and peopl… Read More

Today is the anniversary of Agatha Christie's birth on 15 September 1890. That has made me think about her play The Mousetrap and its roots in the notorious killing of a child, Dennis O'Neil… Read More

Writing in the new Fortean Times, Francis Young notes that the Devil of English folkloreis a considerably less threatening figure than the Devil of theology and often becomes the dupe of sai… Read More

They found themselves speaking in whispers as they came to the wood. There was no mistaking it for neither of the girls had seen anything like it before. The stunted oaks were not only growi… Read More

The writer of Life Must Be Filled Up set herself the task of re-reading all 20 of Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine stories, from Mystery at Witchend (1943) to Home to Witchend (1978). She re… Read More

This is not what you expect to find when you do a little gentle research into the BBC Children’s Hour dramatisations of Malcolm Saville’s early Lone Pine books:Leicester Evening… Read More

Good news from the Shropshire hills: the coming weekend sees the return of the shuttle bus that takes visitors to the Stiperstones and the Long Mynd. It will run every weekend through the su… Read More

When the editing of Roald Dahl's books was in the news, I wrote:Successful children's writers generally get a couple of decades in the sun. My own favourite as a child, Malcolm Saville, publ… Read More

Successful children's writers generally get a couple of decades in the sun. My own favourite as a child, Malcolm Saville, published his first book in 1943 and got a little longer, but in his… Read More

The other day I wrote about how Alan Garner ran up against the limitations of children's holiday fiction. I should also have emphasised that Susan Cooper's attempt to vault over them in Over… Read More

"There was one document, though, that really galvanised Dickens: in early 1843, parliament was presented with a report on the extent of child labour in the country. It detailed unimaginable… Read More

The death of 12-year-old Dennis O'Neill on a farm in the Shropshire hills in 1945 created a national scandal and led to the reform of the law on the fostering of children.It was also th… Read More

Press play to listen to this article Voiced by artificial intelligence. Presented by Airbnb. By ELENI COUREA PRESENTED BY Send tips here | Subscribe for free | Listen to Playbook… Read More

The estate agents industry is a very profitable and popular industry around the world. As a beginner, it is not easy to distinguish between different estate agents. However, it will get easi… Read More

Heard a cuckoo for the first time in years yesterday. I turned the money over in me pocket so I should be alright for money this year😉 #cuckoo #stiperstones #shropshire pic.twitter.c… Read More

Barney Bubbles is a name synonymous with graphic design. Treading the line between art, graphics and direction, Bubbles was best-know… Read More

Bloomberg reports:The U.K. could require foreign states to name their spies operating in the country on a government register, under a crackdown being considered by ministers.It's an interes… Read More

Embed from Getty ImagesHere is my favourite writer when I was a child giving a reading at Joan Dashwood's Rainbow Bookshop in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 14 January 1967 Read More

At the first sight of the two children Penny whistled softly in surprise and Jon polished his glasses again. They were boy and girl twins about 10 years of age and were amazingly alike. With… Read More

Embed from Getty ImagesI was there in 1967 and I remember it. But as I was only seven years old, that is to be expected.We did, though, have a drug-influenced game at primary school. It invo… Read More

Neste domingo (20), a TV Band exibirá em seu bloco Cinema na Madrugada, o filme “Segredos de Um Crime“. O longa tem a direção de Matthew Saville e foi lan&cc… Read More

Neste sábado (06), a TV Band exibirá em seu bloco Cinema na Madrugada, o filme “Segredos de Um Crime“. O longa tem a direção de Matthew Saville e foi… Read More

The Romans mined all this land for lead long, long before men came back, in the last century, to this haunted corner of Shropshire. These miners tore up the earth, built engine houeses, sank… Read More

"As the coronavirus rips through Europe and the world, Britain’s response to the pandemic has shown it’s suffering from another dangerous disease: unshakeable belief in its own e… Read More

Neste sábado (31), a TV Band exibirá em seu bloco Cinema na Madrugada, o filme “Segredos de Um Crime“. O longa tem a direção de Matthew Saville e foi… Read More

As promised, here is the second and final part of this video - you can watch part 1 here.Marshbrook is the Onnybrook of Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine stories, while its signal box may be the o… Read More