Letter to the editor: I write in response to Bob Ogley’s article on Enid Blyton (Was Writer A Scheming Adultress?, News Shopper, April 3).

My immediate response to your question is: so what if she was?

How could this possibly reflect on the quality of her writing? I am 66 years old and I was brought up on the stories of Enid Blyton, among others.

Did her politically incorrect and racist views affect my future world view? Since I have had three relationships with black women, one of whom I nearly married, and since I have always been left-wing politically, I would say no.

A recent programme on BBC Radio 4 concerning the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun made the above point, too.

Hamsun was a writer of unique style and had a gift with words and subject matter.

Yet for the past 70 or so years he has not been heard of, particularly in Norway.

He has been ostracised, not on account of his writings, which have been accepted as innovative and original, but because of his collaboration with Hitler and the fascist ideology of the Nazi party.

When the war ended, Hamsun was spared the death penalty but his reputation was ruined. The books which had given him his reputation remain, however.

The words, style and originality which so impressed the likes of Herman Hesse, remain intact.

It is clear the public rejected the man as a fascist collaborator rather than the man as a writer. An orange is an orange.

It will not matter where it is grown. It will be good to eat.

During white South African rule, I refused to buy any produce which would bolster the economy of a supremacist regime.

This was not because the orange was inferior but because of the ideology behind the production of the orange.

Now, thankfully, apartheid is over and I happily to purchase South African oranges.

Those oranges have not improved in quality.

They remain exactly as a good as they were under white rule.

Thus it is with Knut Hamsun and Enid Blyton.

Hamsun’s writings remain exactly the same as they were before his collaboration with the Nazis.

Blyton’s works remain exactly the same as they were before accusations of adultery and racism.

Hamsun and Blyton are the oranges which sometimes become forbidden fruit.

MICHAEL STEPHENSON, address supplied