Enid Blyton's stories branded "racist"

Iconic children's author Enid Blyton, popular for her Noddy and Famous Five books, has divided the idyllic English town she lived in, over a festival celebrating her life and work. Organisers in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, are planning a week of activities in honour of the writer, who died in 1968 aged 71. The festival is due to be held in June in the south-east England county to mark 75 years since she moved to the town. There are also plans to install a plaque to mark the spot where her home once stood. But some locals have opposed the idea of such a festival. Architect Anthony Mealing, 63, is spearheading a campaign to stop a celebration of Blyton's books, which he classifies as "racist and offensive". "The moral of one of her stories is: Don't leave any money around if there are any black children about as they will steal it. She was anti-semitic and very racist. People don't believe me because she is too high an icon, but she was," he told the Daily Mail. Mealing's view was criticised on the internet, with one resident writing, "Enid Blyton was a fantastic story writer who deserves her place in history. She should be celebrated." Many of Blyton's 600 stories have been updated since her death to remove what is deemed as inappropriate content in today's times. The golliwog � a racially offensive reference � of the Toytown garage in her Noddy books was replaced by 'Mr Sparks' and her work 'The Three Golliwogs' is now 'The Three Bold Pixies'. Former librarian Kari Dorme, the coordinator of the festival being organised by the Beaconsfield Society, says Blyton's original works should be accepted for the time in which they were written. "In the early 1990s, some of her publishers made certain text changes � mostly to bring her stories into line with modern thought and sensitivities, particularly with regard to what some construed as snobbish, racist or sexist attitudes. Even names were modernised. You have to accept them in the time in which they were written, which was at least 60 years ago," she said. "Her books still sell at the rate of six to seven million copies a year, in more than 40 languages. Enid Blyton is a marvellous story teller, a real page turner. I feel that recognition should be given to the great contribution that she has made to children's literacy," she said. Blyton's books were and still are enormously popular throughout the Commonwealth and across most of the globe. Blyton first moved to the house in the Beaconsfield town of Green Hedges and lived off Penn Road with her husband, Major Hugh Pollock. The author, who later divorced and remarried, spent most of her life there until she moved into a London nursing home, where she died. Her house was demolished in the early 1970s and the site is now called Blyton Close.