After the astounding news about Edwina Curry and John Major, civilisation is now rocking with the revelations that Enid Blyton, the author of over 600 books for children, was a serial adulteress who enjoyed the pelvic affections of many men, and even a gal or two. Bridge evenings were, apparently, when she would really go on the predatory rampage. A bid of two no trumps - no doubt - could set her pulses racing; and with an offer of a pair of spades, she was on the floor, heels in the air and howling.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has read her early unpublished works, The Famous Five Go Cottaging and Ulrika Joins The Secret Seven. Other, more literary novels included one about a Nottinghamshire lady and her passion for her mitten-maker, Lady Chatterley's Glover, and of course her epic novel of lesbian love, Outlando.
She never saw these appear under her own name, though they are believed to have influenced certain writers in the Bloomsbury set. Undeterred by early failure, she then embarked upon her famous series of highly explicit novels, which in a sanitised form later became the Toytown series, with Noddy, Big Ears and Constable Plod.
Minor adjustments
In her original stories, set in Gaytown, Noddy is a rent-boy, Big Ears is a bisexual drugs baron, and Plod a bent vice cop on the take from the Mafia. Though those stories were critically acclaimed within her own literary circles, she had to make certain minor adjustments to suit the nurseries of the world. Thus Enid Blyton embarked upon her career as the best-selling writer of the 20th century.
Critics are still uncertain about where her real literary strengths in the lesser-known body of her work lies. Some maintain that Golly Romps in the Dorm at Mallory Towers is one of the great erotic novels in the English language. Others are emphatic that the love scene between George, the boyish girl of the Famous Five, and Timmy, the dog, is one of the most moving in modern literature.
Enid Blyton lived her art. Her passionate affair with Neville Chamberlain was the talk of all London society, though of course, not a word surfaced in the press of the time. In her private diaries she can almost be heard to growl with lust at the manly magnificence of his torso, at the heroic proportions of his maleness and his priapic readiness at all times. She confesses that he took her freely and often, sometimes without warning as she bent over the stove, and always with passionate vigour.
She wrote in her diary: "I thirst for Neville, his lean masculine body, his merry quips, his dashing cavalier attitude to life. He is physical perfection. I watch him trotting the length and breadth of Brighton beach with his swimsuit, Homburg and umbrella, while young women gaze at me so enviously."
Three-in-a-bed frolic
But she was, of course, far too unconventional to settle just for Neville. She had a famous three-in-a-bed frolic with Agatha Christie and a rather boastful Winston Churchill; and the uncomplimentary comparisons she later made about Winston's cherubic equipment compared with Neville's proud member cut deep. "Never," she intoned solemnly, "has so much been made of so little by so few." The enduring division within the Tory party of the 1930s - and possibly the origins of the Second World War - can be traced back to that encounter.
She, of course, was above such tiresome matters. At that time she was focusing on the The Famous Five Go Brazilian Commando, in which, after their visit to a waxing-room, our heroes choose to abandon underwear altogether. It was here that she embarked upon her most daring narrative innovations, with George, a female, adopting a fedora and a Thompson sub-machine gun, and Julian, a male, took to sporting a tutu and mascara while listening to Noel Coward songs.
The most striking feature of Enid Blyton at this stage in her life was her versatility. Not merely did she have an affair with Wallis Simpson - Mrs King - but she was also writing her Gripping Tales for Tiny Tots, with tales of fairies, elves and gnomes, and illustrated cartoon-pictures giving advice about careers in gynaecology or sex-counselling.
Her efforts were not always appreciated. Her series in her weekly Enid Blyton's Comic for Children, containing bullet-points on what budding young lesbians should wear, seem not to have been very popular with parents or the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the comic soon was banished to newsagents' upper shelves. So she then dedicated herself to what appeared to be purely children's stories, which became the basis of her modern reputation.
Blameless tales
These were blameless tales of the English countryside, in which poachers called Jem or Seth, stubbled ne'er do wells with a squint, are tracked down to their lairs by our heroes, and soon brought to justice. And the Famous Five always concluded their adventures with a picnic of thickly buttered crusty farmhouse bread, a huge ham, fairy-cakes and lashings of ginger beer, courtesy of kindly Mrs Jones, the apple-cheeked farmer's wife.
Blytonologists could knowingly tap their noses when reading such stuff. It's rhyming slang. Ginger beer equals "queer", equals gay sex; ham equals wham bam, thank you mam; bread equals dead, implying a touch of necrophilia, probably with poor Seth; and as for the "fairy" cakes and "lashings", the meanings are perfectly clear.
So much for Enid Blyton. Next to be outed: John Henry Cardinal Newman.