![]() Entertainment Renuka Shahane shares her first impression of Shah Rukh Khan when they met on Circus set: ‘He was a Delhi boy, very brash’.Entertainment Sushmita Sen reveals she suffered a heart attack: 'Angioplasty done, stent in place'.Under sanctions, Myanmar teak finds its way to luxury US, EU markets via India.Explained Myanmar teak trade: highly prized, highly dodgy.In series for older children, such as the Famous Five, Black or dark-skinned characters are often pitched as heartless or shown in a comical light (in Five Go To Smuggler’s Top, 1945, a dark-skinned boy is named Sooty, and he refers to his White half-sister and himself as the “Beauty and the Beast”). In her supremely popular series Noddy, the antagonists are almost always golliwogs - a racial caricature of a Black rag doll, first introduced by cartoonist and author Florence Kate Upton in 1895. In almost all her books, “gypsies” and foreigners are cast as sinister, often dishonest. It may, perhaps, be possible to contextualise Blyton’s views on gender roles in this light, but her tacit commentary on race was untenable even for her time - one that had seen two World Wars against fascism. While World War II would see more women joining the workforce, before that, for a majority of middle-class women, a life of domesticity was the norm. In the UK, it was not until the 1928 Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act that all men and women over 21 were granted the right to vote on equal terms. ![]() ![]() Later woke interpretations have cast George, the star of the Famous Five series, as gender-fluid, but Blyton, by all indications, wasn’t thinking so far ahead.īlyton wrote the bulk of her work between 19, a tumultuous time in world history. Her problematic gender politics, most apparent, perhaps, in her Famous Five series, divides domains into feminine and masculine, in which scientist fathers remain closeted in studies cheerful aunts and mothers produce “smashing” picnic hampers and teas girls do the washing up after meals and are almost invariably feminine and in need of chaperoning those who are tomboyish are aberrations and never as wise or mature as a “real” boy. The shortcomings of Blyton’s prodigious output has been a matter of debate over decades. The charity English Heritage has updated the information associated with the plaque outside Blyton’s London home. It mentions Blyton’s rejection by the Royal Mint for commemoration on a 50p coin in 2016 because “the advisory committee minutes record, she was ‘a racist, sexist, homophobe and not a very well-regarded writer’.” While the update is part of the charity’s attempt to re-evaluate controversial aspects of British culture, it has reportedly stated it has no intention of removing the plaque from outside Blyton’s home in London. In 1960 the publisher Macmillan refused to publish her story The Mystery That Never Was for what it called its ‘faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia’…” the update now includes. A 1966 Guardian article noted the racism of The Little Black Doll (1966), in which the doll of the title, Sambo, is only accepted by his owner once his ‘ugly black face’ is washed ‘clean’ by rain. “Blyton’s work has been criticised during her lifetime and after for its racism, xenophobia and lack of literary merit. The charity English Heritage, which installs iconic blue plaques at sites that were once the working or living quarters of Britain’s culturati, has added fuel to this debate with its latest update to the information associated with Blyton’s plaque. 3 Centre for Policy Research’s FCRA licence suspended: What is the CPR and what does it do?.2 Why has SEBI barred actor Arshad Warsi and others from the securities market?.1 Myanmar teak trade: highly prized, highly dodgy. ![]()
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