I’ve written before about Elisabeth Beresford and her Wombles but no alphabetical list of my favourite characters from children’s literature would be complete without these early eco-warriors from London’s Wimbledon Common.
Has anyone ever been womble-searching? It’s on my list of things to do (that and find Narnia in Hampstead Heath.) A quick look at the Wimbledon Common website and it seems I’m not the only one who harbours hopes of finding a womble – they currently have an advert saying ‘Wombles needed!’ – but this is a cunningly worded appeal for folk to help collect litter.
Why did I like wombles so much? They are very much Londoners – the books reference places such as Hyde Park, the Serpentine, and Fortnum and Mason. Womble names, chosen at random from a map of the world, are interesting to pronounce. They collect rubbish and renew it in some way to make it magical. They have a philosophical nature and saw the good in people. Most importantly, they are part of a hidden world. My favourite chapter in the books was the one about the lonely elderly gentleman who bumped into Great Uncle Bulgaria one Christmas Eve. He was invited back to the burrow for a party and ended up thinking life wasn’t so bad after all.
Not only that, but the TV show had the best theme tune!
The Wombles (first of five titles)
Published: 1968
Author: Elisabeth Beresford
Storing fact one: I’m a hoarder who has had to curb her natural hoarding habits and try and live a bit more sensibly. For now (bwahahaha...)
Recycling fact two: I was the sort of child who always wanted empty tubs and cereal packets so I could make things.
Renewing fact three: I used to make walkie talkies from yoghurt pots and telescopes from toilet rolls. I was convinced that they worked.
Collecting fact four: I used to collect an awful lot of strange things – buttons, badges, beads, erasers, key-rings, tips of coloured lead pencils (they looked pretty in a tin!), and stickers.
Collecting fact five: Favourite stickers to collect were Garbage Pail kids, which always smelt slightly like the rubbish bubble gum that also came in the pack.
Showing posts with label Elisabeth Beresford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elisabeth Beresford. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 May 2011
Monday, 3 August 2009
Elisabeth Beresford
Underground, overground, wombling free – the wombles of Wimbledon Common are we…
Elisabeth Beresford was born in 1926 to a literary family, her father being a novelist and book reviewer, and her godparents being the poet and novelist Walter de la Mare and children’s book writer Eleanor Farjeon. Other family friends included D. H. Lawrence, and Rudyard Kipling.
She worked underground as a WREN wireless telegraphist during the Second World War, and afterwards worked as a journalist, contributing to the Today programme, Women’s Weekly, Punch, Lady, and Women’s Hour, amongst others. Apparently Women’s Hour ‘were a terribly bossy lot’ at the time! (The Times, 2007)
Although married by now to sports commentator Max Robertson, Elisabeth used her maiden name when publishing her first children’s book, Awkward Magic, in 1964. This started a series of books (Travelling Magic, Vanishing Magic, Invisible Magic, basically Lots-Of-Magic) but nothing she wrote captured the public’s imagination quite like the early eco-warriors who lived on a Common…
The family were living in Wandsworth, and one Christmas-time Elisabeth took her two small children for a walk on nearby Wimbledon Common, and her daughter Kate mispronounced the name as ‘Wombledon’. Later that same day Elisabeth drafted a story idea for ‘the wombles of Wimbledon’ and decided to base the names of the characters on different family members. Madame Cholet was based on her own mother, Great Uncle Bulgaria her father-in-law, Tobermory her brother, and Orinoco her son. The book, The Wombles, was published in 1968, and illustrated by Margaret Gordon.
After it was featured on children’s story-telling TV show Jackanory, Elisabeth was approached by Monica Sims, who was the BBC's head of children’s programming, with a view to making an animated TV show. Monica looked at the original books, and said ‘Elisabeth, we don’t think that’s what a Womble looks like’ and so they employed Ivor Wood, a celebrated puppeteer, to come up with the definitive womble. His first attempts were rejected, and Elisabeth had to keep taking him for a drink to keep his spirits up! (The Times, 2007)
Eventually, as we all know, they did come up with an idea of a womble that kept everyone happy, and the books from then on reflected that design. What I love most about the books is that London itself is a very distinctive character, and simply shines through the narrative. From Orinoco’s dream shop Fortnum & Mason (written as Fortune & Bason) to Great Uncle Bulgaria’s fondness for The Times newspaper, from mentions of Queen Victoria to adventures on the Serpentine – the settings are just as delightful as the stories. And the stories were so ahead of their time – the wombles recycled everything, they were vegetarian, and the stories made children wish to emulate them. I used to have great fun tipping wastepaper bins on my bedroom floor and playing ‘wombles’ – my mother was thrilled, you understand.
The two books featured here are both the same age as me, and I of course didn't do them the disservice of squashing the spine for these pictures, but scanned first one side, then the other, and joined them together in Photoshop.
More reading: The Times interview
Elisabeth Beresford was born in 1926 to a literary family, her father being a novelist and book reviewer, and her godparents being the poet and novelist Walter de la Mare and children’s book writer Eleanor Farjeon. Other family friends included D. H. Lawrence, and Rudyard Kipling.
She worked underground as a WREN wireless telegraphist during the Second World War, and afterwards worked as a journalist, contributing to the Today programme, Women’s Weekly, Punch, Lady, and Women’s Hour, amongst others. Apparently Women’s Hour ‘were a terribly bossy lot’ at the time! (The Times, 2007)
Although married by now to sports commentator Max Robertson, Elisabeth used her maiden name when publishing her first children’s book, Awkward Magic, in 1964. This started a series of books (Travelling Magic, Vanishing Magic, Invisible Magic, basically Lots-Of-Magic) but nothing she wrote captured the public’s imagination quite like the early eco-warriors who lived on a Common…
The family were living in Wandsworth, and one Christmas-time Elisabeth took her two small children for a walk on nearby Wimbledon Common, and her daughter Kate mispronounced the name as ‘Wombledon’. Later that same day Elisabeth drafted a story idea for ‘the wombles of Wimbledon’ and decided to base the names of the characters on different family members. Madame Cholet was based on her own mother, Great Uncle Bulgaria her father-in-law, Tobermory her brother, and Orinoco her son. The book, The Wombles, was published in 1968, and illustrated by Margaret Gordon.
After it was featured on children’s story-telling TV show Jackanory, Elisabeth was approached by Monica Sims, who was the BBC's head of children’s programming, with a view to making an animated TV show. Monica looked at the original books, and said ‘Elisabeth, we don’t think that’s what a Womble looks like’ and so they employed Ivor Wood, a celebrated puppeteer, to come up with the definitive womble. His first attempts were rejected, and Elisabeth had to keep taking him for a drink to keep his spirits up! (The Times, 2007)
Eventually, as we all know, they did come up with an idea of a womble that kept everyone happy, and the books from then on reflected that design. What I love most about the books is that London itself is a very distinctive character, and simply shines through the narrative. From Orinoco’s dream shop Fortnum & Mason (written as Fortune & Bason) to Great Uncle Bulgaria’s fondness for The Times newspaper, from mentions of Queen Victoria to adventures on the Serpentine – the settings are just as delightful as the stories. And the stories were so ahead of their time – the wombles recycled everything, they were vegetarian, and the stories made children wish to emulate them. I used to have great fun tipping wastepaper bins on my bedroom floor and playing ‘wombles’ – my mother was thrilled, you understand.
The two books featured here are both the same age as me, and I of course didn't do them the disservice of squashing the spine for these pictures, but scanned first one side, then the other, and joined them together in Photoshop.
More reading: The Times interview
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)