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1901-1982
Children's author; born at Hastings, Sussex. Malcolm Saville was a prolific and very popular writer of adventure stories for children the first of which, Mystery at Witchend, was published in 1943. His stories nearly always have real geographical settings and usually involve a group of bright alert children solving a mystery or taking part in some kind of adventure. He wrote twenty Lone Pine adventures of which eleven were set in the Shropshire hills:-
He first came to Shropshire in 1936, arriving at Church Stretton by train and then continuing by car through Little Stretton, across the level crossing at Marshbrook to the church at Cwm head and then turning off down winding lanes to a house called Prior's Holt beneath the Longmynd. It was this house together with the valley and hills behind that provided him with the setting for that first story Mystery at Witchend. Other stories followed as he discovered the secret places of the Longmynd with successive visits until he widened his settings to include the Stiperstones range further west. These wilder, bleaker hills, scarred by mining waste and broken on the western slopes by deep valleys gave him a different setting for several of the later books in the Lone Pine series. The secret of grey walls (1947) is set in the small town of Clun.
Although he never actually came to live in the county Malcolm Saville was a regular visitor to and great lover of Shropshire. On at least two occasions he attended Book Fairs organised by Shropshire Libraries and shared his enthusiasm for books, reading and the places he had written about with scores of visiting schoolchildren.
Adapted from An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire by Gordon Dickins, published by Shropshire Libraries, 1987. © Gordon Dickins, 1987.
The following works are also available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
All summer through (1951)
The Ambermere treasure (1953)
The Buckinghams at Ravenswyke (1952)
The dagger and the flame (1970)
Dark danger (1965)
Diamond in the sky (1974)
The flying fish adventure (1950)
Four-and-twenty blackbirds (1959)
The fourth key (1957)
Jane's country year (1946)
The long passage (1954)
The Master of Maryknoll (1950)
A palace for the Buckinghams (1963)
Power of three (1968)
The purple valley (1964)
The secret of Buzzard Scar (1955)
The secret of the hidden pool (1953)
The secret of the Villa Rosa (1971)
The sign of the alpine rose (1950)
Strangers at Snowfell (1949)
Susan, Bill and the bright star circus (1960)
Susan, Bill and the ivy-clad oak (1954)
Susan, Bill and the pirates bold (1961)
Susan, Bill and the vanishing boy (1955)
Susan, Bill and the wolf-dog (1954)
Three towers in Tuscany (1963)
Trouble at Townsend (1945)
Two fair plaits (1948)
White fire (1966)
Young Johnnie Bimbo (1956)
The complete Lone Pine; The 'Lone Pine' books of Malcolm Saville explored by Mark O'Hanlon (1996) has a brief biography of the author; a description of the Lone Pine Club and its members; plot summaries; a gazeteer; an in-depth exploration of Lone Pine Country (Devon, London, Shropshire, Suffolk, Sussex and Yorkshire); and a bibliography.
The Malcolm Saville Society has a comprehensive website giving background biographical and bibliographical information about the author.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 19 August 2004
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