Enid Blyton: we all know there are issues, whether it’s those of race or class, or because she was “a tenacious second-rater”, as the BBC put it when keeping her off the air for 30 years. But she’s still hugely popular, so in honour of what would have been her 118th birthday, here are my top five Blytons.

Five Run Away Together

I had to include a Famous Five. Let’s face it, their adventures just make the Secret Seven look a bit tame, and Timmy is a much better canine companion than the latter series’ Scamper. Despite stiff competition from Five Go to Smuggler’s Top, this one has always been my favourite. Julian, Dick and Anne are visiting George for the summer, but when Aunt Fanny is taken ill, they are left with the nasty Stick family in charge. They’re so awful – planning to poison Timmy, no less – that the gang escape to Kirrin Island. I remember tons of descriptions of tasty food, and a rather daring rescue.

The Circus of Adventure

I loved all the Adventure series – and Dinah in particular, with her fiery temper, was far more to my liking than the Famous Five’s Anne. But it was Philip’s legendary gift with animals that I really coveted, and in this novel, he tames two angry bears. Enviable stuff. It also involves another kidnapping, rescuings galore, acrobats and all sorts of danger, in my memory. According to this detailed review from the Enid Blyton Society’s site, it was Prince Aloysius of Tauri-Hessia (!), next in line to the throne, whom the baddies were after. I remember this novel fondly, so I’m sorry to see, in Anita Bensoussan’s review, that it contains “what is perhaps the most cringe-making sentence of the series when Philip, exasperated with Gussy, remarks: ‘Why don’t foreigners bring up their kids properly?’” Blyton fail.

First Term at Malory Towers

Are you a Malory Towers fan or St Clare’s? The latter might have boasted the acrobatic Carlotta, and twins Pat and Isabel for mistaken identity hi-jinks, but I was always a Malory Towers girl – and even more since I recently learned that heroine Darrell Rivers was named after Blyton’s second husband, Kenneth Darrell Waters. How bizarrely romantic. Anyway: midnight feasts of ginger cake and sardines, an swimming pool hollowed out of the rocks, lots of jolly lacrosse matches, the sharp-tongued Alicia and the awful Gwendoline Mary. Beat that, St Clare’s.

Adventures of the Wishing Chair

I wrote – outraging many – that my adult revisiting of The Faraway Tree with my daughter left me disappointed (the Saucepan Man is just plain creepy). I am hoping that when we come to The Wishing Chair stories, I will not be let down, because Mollie and Peter’s adventures on their flying chair – the Grabbit gnomes! Chinky their pixie friend! – are a huge part of my childhood.

Shadow the Sheep Dog

I thought I’d choose a lesser-known Blyton as my final pick. I debated The Adventurous Four, and The Children of Willow Farm, both of which I remember fondly. But Shadow the Sheep Dog – in which not that much happens, other than various sheepdog trials, a temporary blinding, and lots of loyalty - won out. It was the start, I think, of an obsession with animal books of all varieties that began around the age of eight and lasted for a good couple of years – Just Nuffin, and all of Colin Dann, Brian Jacques, Robin Jarvis, et al.

But please tell me what I’ve missed. I’d entirely forgotten about The Adventurous Four until I began researching this blog, and I’d love to be reminded of other old favourites. The Naughtiest Girl in the School, anyone?