London - Just one look at an Enid Blyton book can transport 58-year-old Roger How back to his idyllic Famous Five childhood – because he’s often on the cover.
Although he didn’t realise it at the time, his mother, illustrator Mary Gernat, was using him and his brothers as models for her designs.
When Roger and his siblings Francis, Nicholas and Justin were playing, she would often tell them to freeze in position before making quick sketches that became many of Blyton’s covers, including those in The Five Found-Outers books and The Secret Series.
He now plans an exhibition of a treasure trove of original illustrations that have never been seen before after discovering them in an attic where they had languished for half a century. The long-lost works also included finished drafts for books.
The archive came to light after a customer at Mr How’s picture-framing shop in Milford-on-Sea, Hampshire, commented on a box of old paperbacks brimming with Blyton titles. When he told her of the story behind the covers she encouraged him to look for the originals, which he found recently in his father’s house.
Mr How said: “We were the perfect age to be her subjects.
“I was about four or five and Francis must have been about nine. We didn’t realise the importance of what she was doing. Now I appreciate she was a very good artist.”
Mrs Gernat, who lived with her engineer husband, Michael, and their sons on the Hampshire coast, illustrated Blyton books from 1963 to 1970. She stopped working in 1972, and died in 1998 at 72.
As for the boys, Francis, 60, is now a retired railway consultant, Nicholas, 56, is in finance, and Justin, 54, works for a software firm.
Daily Mail