kidboots After watching the "E. Nesbit" episode from "The Edwardians" I realised why her books ("The Railway Children", "The Enchanted Castle" etc) have become classics enjoyed by children and adults alike - it is because she truly loved children and could put herself into their world. Enid Blyton as portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter was a harpy - a person who could write formularized children's books that appealed to only the young but had no empathy with her own!!I watched this as a couple of friends had recommended it and was completely absorbed in the whole strange story of Enid Blyton's life - and Helena Bonham Carter can take full credit for this. I think the signs were there from the start, having a father who is the apple of your eye desert you, then trying unsuccessfully to escape from a mother, who from the couple of scenes she had, was not going to sugar coat life - here was a girl who wanted to escape reality.From the film she didn't seem to struggle for recognition with her writing, once she started she married her publisher who then began to drink heavily when he realised she was completely self absorbed and only thought of herself and her "little friends" - he and the kids could go to Hell!! One of her children, Imogen Pollock wrote a book about what having Enid Blyton for a mother was really like, called "A Childhood at Green Hedges" and I am sure the film must have borrowed heavily from this. The film opens with an explosive Enid answering a charge from the B.B.C. that her books are not her own but as the film unfolds it's clear that she has written every single word, she doesn't have time for anything else, she certainly wouldn't win "Mother of the Year"!! Enid is so full of love and gratitude to her fans, her "little friends", but as exasperated Hugh says "if they knew you they wouldn't like you" - she takes them on outings, invites them to parties where they can eat as much red jelly as they like but up at the top of the shadowy stairs it seems like the only children not having any treats are her own!! Worse is to come when Hugh goes to war, Enid takes up with Kenneth Walker (Denis Lawson) and he returns to find Enid about to divorce him. He shoulders all the blame for the privilege of seeing his daughters whenever he likes but with the divorce finalised, Enid reneges on her promise and also is the means of him never being able to work in publishing again!! Her new husband is just as happy to shield her from life's brutal facts. One scene where the father comes home on leave and the little girls are eager to show him their rabbits - ""There were two but Mummy and Uncle Ken ate one". Another is when Enid puts a little Noddy doll in pride of place on a table and moves her family photos to the very back and in the most telling (for me) Enid, as a new mother, just staring and staring at her little baby screaming, not having the least inclination to pick her up or soothe her, wanting desperately to get back to the books for her little friends.Life can't always be put on hold and when her brother Carey reappears in her life (she had told everybody that her family had died) to tell her that her mother had just died and why had she forsaken them, plus a few shocking truths about her beloved father, Enid suffers a complete breakdown which may have led to the dementia that killed her.Pretty gripping stuff if you only know Enid Blyton as the author of Noddy, The Magic Faraway Tree, The Secret Seven and the Famous Five!!!

sinogreen I enjoyed this film and thought all the performances were excellent. As I watched it, however, I couldn't help but think that no real person is as unremittingly awful as the Enid portrayed here. The film also implied that Enid's life was one of complete lack of fulfilment and success. Erm, this was one of the most loved and successful writers ever? I could imagine a totally different film where Enid's driven approach to writing and her 'neglect' of personal relationships would have been put down to her artistic genius. As it was, despite her huge success, the Enid here was basically portrayed as a failure and a bad person because she wasn't a chocolate-box mother, she had one affair and had one unhappy marriage. The film seems to be saying that despite her success she ultimately was a failure because she didn't pass the test as a wife and mother.For this reason, I actually thought the film was a bit sexist, although perhaps reflecting sexist attitudes of the time. A good watch in itself, but didn't make me feel I'd got to know Enid Blyton.

Gordon-11 This film is about the life of the famous and prolific author Enid Blyton, who wrote over 750 children books."Enid" is very powerful in portraying the character of Enid Blyton. Helena Bonham Carter portrays Enid Blyton to be a detached, phlegmatic, rude and deceitful hypocrite. This portrayal is very powerful, and I do hate Enid so much for her unloving ways towards her family. It is so effective, I feel so sorry for the husband and her children. The production is also of great quality, with high standards of costumes, sets and cinematography.I used to pride myself for having read all the Famous Five books. If this portrayal of Enid Blyton's life is accurate, that I think I cannot put my hands on an Enid Blyton book again.

James Hitchcock Quite by chance, British television recently showed on the same night biopics about two famous female children's authors of the early twentieth century, "Miss Potter" about Beatrix Potter and "Enid" about her younger contemporary Enid Blyton. I must admit that I never liked either of them when I was a child, although this had nothing to do with any prejudice against female writers; I continued to enjoy the works of E. Nesbit even after discovering that the "E" stood for "Edith", and I loved the historical novels of Rosemary Sutcliffe. Beatrix Potter's books, however, always struck me as twee and babyish, and as for Blyton I found her works dull and formulaic. (OK, I probably didn't use the word "formulaic" in those days, but when you had read one you had read them all. All 753 of them). I also disliked the preachy, moralistic strain in Blyton's works.In this film Blyton is played by Helena Bonham Carter, although there is no physical resemblance between them. All the photographs I have seen of Blyton show her as a severe-looking, unattractive woman, whereas Bonham Carter, in her early forties, is as lovely as she ever was. Helena, of course, was once Britain's reigning Queen of Period Drama, although she has now abdicated that particular crown in favour of Keira Knightley, with Carey Mulligan as heiress presumptive. "Enid" might appear to represent a return to the sort of role Helena was playing twenty years ago, but in fact the title character here is very different to the sweet young heroines she played in films like "Lady Jane" or "A Room with a View". As in the "Harry Potter" series, where she plays the evil Bellatrix Lestrange, she gets to play a villainess. The portrayal of Enid Blyton is this film is a remorselessly negative one. She is shown as snobbish and ruthlessly ambitious, caring for little except her own financial success. She is cold and unfeeling to her first husband, Hugh Pollock, to whom she is unfaithful. When during the war he leaves to take up an important command, she complains bitterly that he is putting his duty to his country before her. She poses as a lover of children, but neglects her own daughters Gillian and Imogen. She wants little to do with her mother and her two brothers. When she wants to marry her lover, a doctor named Kenneth Darrell Waters, she decides that she will divorce Hugh on the grounds of his (non-existent) adultery rather than allowing him to divorce her, and expects him to oblige her wishes. (There was a curious convention during the first half of the twentieth century that it was morally worse for a wife to cheat on her husband than vice versa; a woman who had been the guilty party in a divorce case would be forever branded as a harlot. Rather surprisingly, the English courts, which in other contexts held strictly to the maxim "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth", were prepared to turn a blind eye to the vast amount of perjured evidence that was manufactured to uphold the legal fiction that no married woman was ever guilty of adultery). Indeed, the only thing that seems to upset Enid is the rumour that her books are ghost-written. (This was a persistent rumour during her lifetime, largely because people could not believe that one woman could be so prolific. Today, it seems to be generally accepted that she did indeed pen every book that bears her name). Bonham Carter is a very talented actress, and her performance here is a good one, but it never becomes a really great one. Indeed, the script never gives her the chance to give a great performance, because the portrait of Blyton is so negative and one-dimensional, never allowing her any good qualities except an immense capacity for hard work. There are also good contributions from Matthew Macfadyen and Denis Lawson as Blyton's two husbands. Hugh Pollock was nine years older then his wife, whereas Macfadyen is in fact eight years younger than Bonham Carter, so the make-up department also deserve credit for making him seem credibly middle-aged. Another weakness of the film is that the early scenes were very rushed. In the space of a few minutes Enid goes from an Edwardian schoolgirl to a married, middle-aged author with two children in the 1930s. One of the film's theories is that Blyton's emotional difficulties in later life were the result of her coming from a broken home after her father, whom she idolised, left her mother, so it is unfortunate that her early life was not examined in greater detail. I never met Enid Blyton- she died when I was a young child- so for all I know she might have been every bit as unpleasant as the character portrayed here. I just wondered why the film-makers bothered to make a biopic of someone they obviously regarded as a prize bitch. 6/10