What Enid Blyton and Brambly Hedge don’t tell you about being Black in the British countryside | Books
It all started with Brambly Hedge and those exquisite drawings of Mrs Apple’s kitchen at Crabtree Cottage: her shelves overflowing with homemade jams, woven baskets heaped with currants and rosehips, drying herbs strung up in bunches along wooden beams. I could only have been four or five when I read Jill Barklem’s books, but I already knew I wanted to sit at Mrs Apple’s table and taste her freshly baked bread and blackberry puddings. I longed to be young Wilfred, off on an adventure, gathering the blackthorn’s golden…