The clubhouse is well worth a visit for the most spectacular views of Brownsea Island in the middle of Poole Harbour, and you do not need to be a member to have a drink or a meal here. He had to find something to do while she scribbled in her notebooks, I suppose.

Today, there is only one pier and the Grosvenor is gone but Swanage retains its old-fashioned charm.īlyton was such a frequent visitor that she was elected president of the annual Swanage Carnival and Regatta, while her husband bought the Isle of Purbeck Golf Club. She would take up residence in the jaunty little seaside town of Swanage, staying at The Ship, the Grosvenor Hotel and latterly the Grand Hotel and she would take a customary swim around both piers before dinner, with her second husband, Kenneth Darrell Waters, in tow. I do wonder what the Five would make of today's nudist beach at Studlandīlyton grew up in south London then Kent but fell in love with the Isle of Purbeck, taking holidays there as an adult sometimes two or three times a year. Today’s discerning audience, no doubt, will be asking their parents tricky questions such as, “Mummy, what’s tinned fruit?”, “How come they’re allowed to play with axes?” and “Why do they keep calling Dick a brick?” To mark the Five's 75th anniversary, the whole series is being published this month with new covers and illustrations by Laura Ellen Anderson.ĭressing them in skinny jeans and high-top trainers is a brave attempt to contemporise the Five, but the visuals are at odds with the quaint, original text. In ‘Five on a Treasure Island’, Enid Blyton set Corfe Castle on the imaginary Kirrin Island but changed nothing of the edifice itself.įive on a Treasure Island was published just a year after Blyton's visit to Corfe, and the phenomenally successful series ran for 20 more books, ending with Five Are Together Again in 1963.

Kirrin island