Previous letters pages can be found here.

I’m now on to volume 3, I think I have the full run of these but we will see!

Letters page from Volume 3, issue 1.
January 5th to 19th, 1955.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

 A letter from Margaret Whittall, Reigate.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I had a birthday party some time ago, and I invited Jill, Judith, Rosemary and Susan, Gay, Sandra and Carolyn. I asked them each to bring me a threepenny piece instead of a present. We collected five shillings altogether, and I am sending this money to buy Christmas presents for your little children at the Home.
Love from
Margaret Whittall

(I think you are very kind, Margaret, to go without presents for the sake of others. But I am going to give you one, because you have won my letter prize-and deserve to!)

A letter from Elaine Sykes, Chadderton, Lancs.
Dear Enid Blyton,
My Christmas tree is 35 years old and some of the glass decorations are 46 years old. It was first my aunty’s and then it was given to me when I was born. Do you think any other reader can beat this record?
Love from
Elaine Sykes
(F.F. member).

(Well, we’ll see if anyone has an even older tree, Elaine. But I should hardly think so!)

A letter from Katharine Thorburn, Lahore, Pakistan.
Dear Enid Blyton,
Thank you very much for the F.F. badges that you sent me some time ago. Our Club is getting on very well. We have a proper enrolment and enrol each other. We have our meetings in a squash court, and each week each one of us brings money for something- perhaps for the Bengal Flood Relief or something like that. I am coming to England to go to boarding school next March. Love from
Katharine Thorburn.
(F.F. member).

(It is fun to hear news from F.F. members overseas, and we are glad to have yours, Katharine. I hope you will love England when you come here.)

Back to three letters this week – and a Christmas tree picture even though it’s January! I feel like I recognise it, from one of the stories about children making a Christmas tree for the birds. There are at least three of those that I know of…

Having checked, it’s from Enid Blyton’s Book of the Year, the story of What they did at Miss Brown’s School in December. I’ve included a scan here (its the second Soper bird Christmas-tree) where you can see additional birds flying around it.

I hadn’t given these illustrations much thought before. They usually relate to something said in one of the letters, but are presumably there just to fill up extra space on the pace. It does make sense that they would use works they already had, and crop them to fit rather than paying someone to draw something new!

I’ll have to pay more attention to them now, and see if I can recognise any others.

As for the letters the prize-winner is another fund-raiser. Warning – I’m going to do some maths again! If Margaret invited seven people, and they brought threepence each that’s 21 pence, or 1 shilling and 9 pence. Even if Margaret added her own thruppence that’s only two shillings total so either some children brought rather a lot more, or they did some other fundraising that was not put in the letter, for them to reach 5s.

My Christmas tree is only about 8 years old but I have several decorations which had been my Gran’s, and must date to at least the 70s, so they are as old as Elaine’s. I wonder how many letters Blyton got from children telling her about their old trees and decorations after this one?

And finally a letter from Pakistan. It is difficult to glean much from short letters like these but my guess is that Katharine is from a British family living in Pakistan – though this is after Pakistan achieved independence from Britain in 1947. She was perhaps born there, as she doesn’t say ‘back’ to England.