So Enid Blyton had a series of scandalous affairs? That’s no surprise to me...

…naked tennis, heavy boozing and multiple affairs with men and women – the new claims about the Famous Five author’s relationship with her female illustrator are not in the least bit shocking to Nadia Cohen, who uncovered a torrid and complicated private life in her diaries and letters

Enid Blyton outside the home she shared with her first husband in Beaconsfield (Alamy)

Infidelity, betrayals and a riot of love affairs are a far cry from the wholesome image of much-loved children’s author Enid Blyton.

Her familiar stories famously told of midnight feasts, nail-biting lacrosse matches and picnics with lashings of ginger beer – a phrase that itself became shorthand for the bucolic world of Blyton’s characters.

But this week, the grandson of Lola Oslow, one of Blyton’s illustrators, has claimed that she had an affair with the author. Nicholas Royle made the revelation in his new book David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine.