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Remarkable! Never heard of Agaton over here on my ice floe but sounds like great fun.

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I am, of course, as happy to bring him to other people's attention as to be reassured that some people *do* remember him ;)

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Nov 12, 2022Liked by Tobias Sturt

My dad read me League of Silent Exploders some time around 1975, in Melbourne. I was hooked for a while, and carefully collected and read them in order. Even so, the last title I remember is Colossus of Rhodes.

These, and Prof Branestawm, were a feature of birthday *and* Christmas that year.

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Ah! Professor Branestawm. We’ll definitely have to cover him. And we ought to do something about series of books too. It’s such a key part of childhood reading, inhabiting a fictional world for a sustained amount of time.

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Nov 12, 2022Liked by Tobias Sturt

Oh for sure. And not just stories from the 60s-70s, but a whole bunch of reissues. Reprinted Biggles books were commonplace, along with pulp copies of the Three Investigators. You could go on and on reading.

In fact, add The Dark is Rising and an older relative's cherished copy of Swallows & Amazons and that sums-up my summer holiday experience circa 1979.

But - Biggles. In shops.

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Oh, definitely. Part of Puffin's genius was the reprints as much as the new work, so that you might be reading E. E. Nesbitt alongside Alan Garner

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Nov 12, 2022Liked by Tobias Sturt

I loved Agaton Sax!!! Spent ages poring over the rogues gallery and got immensely excited when I found another that I hadn't read in the library

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I’m so glad I’m not the only one who obsessed over them (or, indeed, the only one who’s heard of them)

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