But she died in 2007, just before her 76th birthday. However, Darrell’s parents drive all the way down for half term in her father’s ‘plain black car’ (Gillian’s stepfather invested in a black Rolls Royce after the war, courtesy of Enid’s phenomenal earnings from her writing.) Did Enid herself go to Cornwall that term? Well, there is no 1945 diary of Gillian’s as far as I’m aware, but there are reasons to suspect Enid did make the journey. In First Term at Malory Towers, Darrell Rivers makes the journey to school by taxi to London and special school train to Cornwall. Her signature then owed something to both her parents (and nothing to her natural father).
In advance of her switching schools in 1945, she had changed her surname to that of her stepfather, Kenneth Darrell Waters. Gillian’s diary for 1946-1950 is inscribed with the name ‘Gill Darrell Waters’, with the two little underlines familiar from her mother’s signature. Tuesday, Jan 29: ‘After tea Mummy finished Malory Towers, which I read.’ How do we know this? Because Gillian’s diary mentions that Enid was writing the second Malory Towers book in January, 1946, with teenage Gillian reading it hot off the typewriter:įriday, Jan 25: ‘I read as far as Mummy had got with second book of Malory Towers.’ All the same, it was to be a significant move if only because it inspired the glorious Malory Tower series of books, outdoor swimming and all.įirst Term at Malory Towers came out in the summer of 1946, but we know it was written towards the end of 1945. Gillian wasn’t new to the boarding school experience as she’d attended Godstowe - just six miles from Green Hedges - since the autumn of 1942. Enid’s elder daughter had just turned 14 when she first went to Benenden School as a boarder in the autumn of 1945.
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