- Lola Oslow's grandson claims his mother told him about the romance years ago
- Oslow was an illustrator for Blyton and collaborated with her on Book of Fairies
The author of a new book has claimed his grandmother had a secret romance with Famous Five author Enid Blyton.
The grandson of Lola Oslow, who was an illustrator for Blyton and collaborated with her, most notably on Book of Fairies, has claimed she had an affair with the author.
Nicholas Royle, professor of English at the University of Sussex, made the revelation in his new book David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the Sun Machine, published last month.
In it he writes: 'One day my mother said to me: “Your grandmother had an affair with Enid Blyton”. Those were her words.”
It's not the first time Enid has been speculated to have had a lesbian relationship, with a memoir by her ex-husband's next wife claiming she had multiple affairs during her marriage.
The author of a new book has claimed his grandmother had a secret romance with Famous Five author Enid Blyton (pictured)
The grandson of Lola Oslow, who was an illustrator for Blyton and worked with her, most notably on Book of Fairies, has claimed she had an affair with the author (pictured)
Mr Royle does not know exactly when the affair took place and he admitted he wished he had asked his mother more about it when she first told him decades ago.
He said: 'I was in my twenties and I was an angry young man who wasn't the least bit interested in a dead grandmother I'd never met, or Enid Blyton.
'When I look back on it now, I think: how could I have just let that go?'
Over the course of her 40-year career, Enid produced more than 800 books, most of which were sun-soaked tales of midnight parties, lacrosse games and ginger beer-heavy picnics.
She was a published writer in her twenties and already on her way to becoming quite wealthy, but she had shown very little interest in men.
That is until she met Major Hugh Alexander Pollock, a former soldier ten years her senior, who was an editor at the firm that became her permanent publisher.
Yet Enid was certainly not the kind of woman to let such little things get in the way, and by 1924, just a year after they first met, she had become Mrs. Pollock.
However, Pollock later left Enid for another woman named Ida Crowe, who were married together for 28 years before he died.