Tenterden Famous Face: Gillian Baverstock

The works of Enid Blyton have charmed and entertained generations of children, and her work still has many fans to this day. Although beloved by children around the world, her relationship with her own children was a controversial one, including Tenterden Famous Face Gillian Baverstock.

Enid Blyton had two daughters – Gillian and Imogen. Gillian was born on 15th July 1931 to Enid and her first husband, Hugh Pollock. Her sister Imogen was born four years after. When Gillian was born her mother was already a successful children’s writer, but her career really took off not long after Imogen was born.

The daughters remember their childhoods and their relationship with their famous mother very differently; Imogen was outspoken about how cold, distant, and emotionally immature Enid was, a woman who could love the children who were her readers but had no maternal feeling for her own daughters. Gillian was her mother’s defender for years, praising her as a brilliant and driven writer who nevertheless always made time for her family. The two sisters were estranged in later years, and even in a famous interview given to Gyles Brandreth for the Daily Telegraph they had to be interviewed separately.

Gillian spent the first part of her childhood at Old Thatch, an idyllic country cottage in Buckinghamshire. When Gillian was seven the family moved to Green Hedges in Beaconsfield, the red-brick mock Tudor house where her mother would live until her death. The children were raised by a succession of nannies, which maybe helped protect them from the reality of their parents’ crumbling marriage. Hugh Pollock had started drinking heavily, and both he and Enid started pursuing extra-marital affairs. They eventually divorced in 1942.

Gillian was educated at Benenden School in Tenterden, where she was enrolled under the name of Gillian Darrell Waters, as by this time her mother had remarried, this time to Kenneth Waters, a surgeon. After studying History at St Andrews University, Gillian worked in publishing, including a stint on the Enid Blyton Magazine. In 1957, she married the television producer Donald Baverstock and they moved to Yorkshire where Gillian followed her mother’s early career trajectory and worked as a primary school teacher. She and Donald had four children: Glyn, Sian, Sara, and Owain.

In her later years Gillian appeared at many literary festivals and events to talk about her mother, her mother’s work, and her own childhood. In stark contrast to Imogen, Gillian never wavered in defending her mother’s legacy, both as a person and as a writer, and addressed the now-controversial depictions of people of colour in her mother’s books.

Donald died in 1995, and Gillian Baverstock passed away on 24th June 2007 at the age of 76. She was survived by two of her children and five grandchildren.

by Alice Smales