The Secret Series (Enid Blyton) has one or two narrow escapes from being detained by them. The novel was originally written as a serial and, in 1938, published as a full-length novel. It was one of Enid Blyton's earliest adventure novels, preceding The Famous Five, The Five Find-Outers, The Adventure Series, The Secret Seven, and school books which would appear in following years. The children, reunited with their parents again (and Jack now adopted as part of the family), go on holiday at the rugged Cornish coast with a family friend, Miss Dimity ("Dimmy", who would appear in several further books in the series), and
Enid Blyton for the "most famous and successful of children's authors with her enormous energy and computer-like memory" to be losing her mind and suffering from what is now known as Alzheimer's disease in her mid-sixties. Blyton's situation was worsened by her husband's declining health throughout the 1960s; he suffered from severe arthritis in his neck and hips, deafness, and became increasingly ill-tempered and erratic until his death on 15 September 1967. The story of Blyton's life was dramatised in a BBC film entitled "Enid", which aired in the United Kingdom on BBC Four on 16 November 2009. Helena Bonham Carter, who