In praise of older books: We Couldn’t Leave Dinah by Mary Treadgold (1941)

It’s an adventure story, a war story, a pony story. I read it when I was a horse- mad 10-year-old; my father, a veteran of the second World War.

1941. The Germans invade Clerinel, a fictional Channel Island. In the chaos of evacuation, the Templetons, Mick (14) and Caroline (13), are left behind while the rest of their family escape. They shelter in their Pony Club headquarters, a cave beneath the cliffs. Their house is occupied by General Schleiser and his granddaughter Nannerl, “short, stumpy. . . flaxen pigtails. . . cheeks like shiny little penny buns”. She has her eye on Dinah, Caroline’s pony.

But the Templetons have bigger worries than Nannerl. The Nazis are preparing to use Clerinel as the staging post for an invasion of Britain. But when? Mick must foil the plan. He must pose as Petit-Jean, an island stable boy, infiltrate the Schleiser household and find the date of the invasion.

Complicit

Mary Treadgold wrote intelligent, multi-layered children’s fiction. The Templetons fear that their friend, Peter Beaumarchais and his father, have been complicit in the Nazi takeover. But Peter explains that he is half-German and grew up in Nuremberg. Visitors have come to Clerinel with a stark message: “If we did not do as the Government wished our relatives in Nuremberg . . . would be arrested and put into a concentration camp.”

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As the German army tightens its grip on the island, the children know where their duty lies. When Mick discovers the invasion date, it’s Caroline, riding her beloved Dinah, who carries the message to Monsieur Beaumarchais. He will do the right thing.

The children, job done, are rescued by the destroyer, Ibex. They hear the British bombers attacking the German fleet. They have stopped the invasion. “They’ll try again,” (the Commander) said . . .”But we shall always beat them. Don’t you worry.”

A happy ending? Not quite. The aftermath of war is rarely happy, neither in real life nor in the best of children’s stories.