New project

Having been thwarted in my plans to start a PhD (got accepted but couldn't fit trips to Newcastle into my working life) I've decided to turn the research I've done so far into a book. The working title is 'You Girls Wait Here: gender roles in popular children's adventure fiction, 1930-70'. I collect and still read children's books of that period particularly, and it's so interesting to look at my childhood favourites with an adult's eye, so I wanted to build on that interest. After spending a couple of years reading around the subject I'm now mostly focusing on specific authors -this month it's Malcolm Saville. He was never one of my favourites, but I wonder now if perhaps I read only the Armada paperbacks as a kid; I've discovered the minor frequent cuts in those create quite a different atmosphere from the original hardbacks. I don't really get the rationale behind these abridgements, which happened for other authors too, but it didn't do the writers any favours in my opinion.