I have only two problems with ‘Noddy’,
The plots and the writing (both shoddy).
If only Ms Blyton
Had worked with the light on
(Or simply been flung in a wadi).

These lines paraphrase my earliest memory of literary criticism. Ms Nicholls’s passion was commendable, her logic less so. A wadi-flinging before 1922, when Blyton published her first title, might have seemed arbitrary and over-harsh. Yet once she’d made it into print, the damage was irreversible – the smug racism, compulsive sexism and wooden stereotyping were out there, a viral formula spreading relentlessly from mind to mind to mind, yea, even unto the third and fourth generation.