The Best-Loved Malcolm Saville Books – Richard Griffiths

The identity of the favourite Malcolm Saville book is a frequent topic of debate at Society events. In order to find the answer this question, the last edition of Acksherley! invited you to vote for up to three of your favourite books by Malcolm Saville. There was a tremendous response to this poll with 180 people casting a total of 534 votes. This included eight non-members who used the on-line voting form on the Society website.

Each member who voted was entered in a prize draw. This draw took place at the Annual Gathering at Shrewsbury and Andrew Salter of Kent was the lucky winner of some book tokens. Also at the Annual Gathering before the top ten books in the poll were announced, members were asked to guess which books would be in first second and third places: no-one got it right. However, we had great fun guessing the various titles and looking at the results. A couple of dramatic readings from the books were very entertaining and I fear that Cathy and Chris Elton will be forever typecast as the twins.

Many thanks to everyone who voted in this poll: it was great fun collating the results as they arrived. Naturally, I have my own favourites and it was like watching a horse race as positions changed as the votes came in. Below are the full results of the poll.

Pos	Title	Votes	Pos	Title	Votes
1	The Gay Dolphin Adventure	83	24	Lone Pine Five	4
2	Mystery at Witchend	59	25	Mystery Mine	4
3	Wings Over Witchend	47	26	Spring Comes to Nettleford	4
4	The Neglected Mountain	35	27	Dark Danger	3
5	The Secret of Grey Walls	32	28	The Long Passage	3
6	Seven White Gates	25	29	Where's My Girl?	3
7	Lone Pine London	21	30	Portrait of Rye	2
8	Not Scarlet But Gold	21	31	The Ambermere Treasure	2
9	Redshank's Warning	20	32	The Buckinghams at Ravenswyke	2
10	Rye Royal	18	33	The Luck of Sallowby	2
11	The Elusive Grasshopper	18	34	The Secret of the Villa Rosa	2
12	Jane's Country Year	15	35	The Sign of the Alpine Rose	2
13	The Secret of the Gorge	15	36	Three Towers in Tuscany	2
14	Home to Witchend	11	37	All Summer Through	1
15	The Master of Maryknoll	10	38	Come to London	1
16	Two Fair Plaits	9	39	Diamond in the Sky	1
17	Christmas at Nettleford	8	40	King of Kings	1
18	Saucers Over The Moor	8	41	Strangers at Witchend	1
19	Sea Witch Comes Home	7	42	Susan, Bill and the Golden Clock	1
20	Strangers at Snowfell	7	43	Susan, Bill and the Ivy Clad Oak	1
21	Treasure at Amorys	7	44	The Dagger and the Flame	1
22	The Secret of Buzzard Scar	6	45	Treasure at the Mill	1
23	Man with Three Fingers	5	46	White Fire	1

The Gay Dolphin Adventure is the clear winner with 46% of voters choosing this book. This story set in Rye is a particular favourite of mine and it came as no great surprise that it was the outright winner after hearing how so many people talked, or have written in Acksherley!, about it.

However, it is interesting that 46 books were voted for out of the 90 or so books that Malcolm Saville wrote. Three non-fiction books had a total of four votes: King of Kings, Come to London and Portrait of Rye. It is perhaps not surprising that the stories win our hearts more than the non-fiction books. Of the 68 novels, 43 received votes – nearly two thirds of the stories that Malcolm Saville wrote are someone’s favourite. This clearly shows that he did not just write a few popular books and a large number of the ‘also rans’.

It is interesting to look at the relative popularity of the series.

	Votes	Books	Votes / books
Marston Baines	7	7	1
Buckingham	18	6	3
Nettleford	19	4	5
Jillies	35	6	5
Lone Pine	424	21	20

On the face of it the Lone Pine books with 424 votes appear to over 12 times more popular than the Jillies books with 35 votes. However the number of books in each series needs to be considered and so I have included columns showing the number of books in each series and the number of votes divided by the number of books. The Lone Pine books now appear to be four times as popular as the Jillies books. I will stop this statistical analysis before I start waving my arms around like Peter Snow.

One important fact that must be borne in mind while looking at these results is that someone is very unlikely to choose a book as a favourite unless they have read it. Many people have only read the Lone Pine books which partly explains their dominance of the top books. This poll shows that there are many favourite books that are not Lone Pine stories. If you have not already done so, try a non-Lone Pine story. Perhaps you would like to use the results of this poll as a reading list?

Finally, which book would Malcolm Saville have voted for if asked to choose his favourite? Fortunately, Viv Turner asked him this question and Malcolm Saville’s answer was Jane’s Country Year. If you have read this book, I am sure that you will understand his answer. The fact that it came twelfth in our poll perhaps reflects the relatively small number of people who have read this charming book.

Close window