Review of the week and new year's resolution

It's very satisfying to see the steep climb in visits to my website following the Timeshift Ladybird Books documentary last week.

The programme led me to review my website and to realise how horribly neglected it has been in recent months since I've been so focused on learning Chinese.  So my new year's resolution list is headed by the determination to dust off and upgrade my Ladybird sites.

This will involve bringing my 'bookshop' into the 21st century, mending broken links, updating and adding to content. 

I've made a start already.  Somewhere along the line, all the data from my 'Ladybird posh frock' poll has disappeared.  This is an important matter and such vital research must not be lost to the nation.

As a result, I've started again.  But I need your data.  Women of Britain (or elsewhere) please let me know your views (again?).  Which Ladybird frock did it for you when you were a child? (Or maybe still does?)

Please vote and let's replace the missing data.
http://www.ladybirdflyawayhome.com/frock.htm

If you saw the Ladybird Books documentary ...

here's the link to the BBC blog for comments:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/posts/The-Ladybird-Books-Story-How-Britain-Got-the-Reading-Bug#dna-comments

Amidst all the kerfuffle

about the Timeshift documentary, a reminder of the forthcoming Ladybird 'Centenary':

http://www.loughboroughecho.net/news/local-news/plans-pipeline-mark-ladybird-books-6414378

Woman's Hour, Radio 4 today

Just back from the BBC studio in Luton where I was asked to contribute to Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

If was all very easy and straightforward - turn up, sound-check, answer a few questions, go home.

But it was something different, a bit of fun and all part of the long list of interesting activity that my Ladybird Book habit has let me into. 

It was all in aid of publicising the Ladybird Book documentary on BBC4, this Sunday (22nd Dec) at 9.pm.  The programme-makers for BBC4 seem to do so much as a labour of love - which can only be to the benefit of quality journalism. 

The BBC Blog

I was asked this week to write a post for the BBC TV blog.

My post on the BBC Blog is now live:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/posts/The-Ladybird-Books-Story-How-Britain-Got-the-Reading-Bug

Official Advert for Ladybird Books documentary

To millions of people, Ladybird Books were as much a part of childhood as battery powered torches and warm school milk. These now iconic pocket sized books once informed us on such diverse subjects as how magnets work, what to look for in winter and how to make decorations out of old egg shells.  But they also helped to teach many of us to read via a unique literacy scheme known as ‘Key Words’.   Ladybird books were also a visual treat - some of the best known contemporary illustrators were recruited to provide images which today provide a perfect snapshot of the lost world of Ladybirdland: a place that is forever the gloriously ordinary, orderly1950s.

THE LADYBIRD BOOKS STORY: THE BUGS THAT GOT BRITAIN READING takes a look at the vintage years - from 1953 to 1973 - when millions of Ladybird books were sold and almost every household had some.

A date for the Timeshift Ladybird Books documentary

And in this festival of Ladybird loveliness, I find out when the Ladybird Book documentary is due to be screened.

The date I've just been given is ...
December 22nd.
BBC4.

For old/vintage  Ladybird Book fans out there, this has GOT to be a date for your diary.  I am confident that the programme-maker, Merryn Threadgould, will do a really good job with this documentary - the first decent length recount of the Ladybird story. 

With only a few short weeks to make the programme, Merryn quickly became so absorbed in the material she was gathering that she developed what seemed to be a real enthusiasm for the subject.  She quickly came to appreciate the different perspectives that the subject matter has to offer: social history, nostalgia, humour,  literacy, biography, all tied together in a colourful, crafted, hand-sized box. 

I believe this programme, part of the Timeshift series on BBC4, will take a chronological approach, tracing the phenomenal rise and fall of the small, private company Wills & Hepworth in Leicestershire, picking out in particular the role of Douglas Keen.