SAVILLE, Malcolm

“be true to each other whatever happens”

Born in Hastings at the beginning of the twentieth century, Leonard Malcolm Saville originally became involved with the book trade when he started work for the OUP, going on to work for other publishers and finally ending up at George Newnes.  At the outbreak of WWII he sent his family to Shropshire for safety, whilst he remained at the family home in Hertfordshire.  He used his family’s evacuation, and the area in which they were staying, as the background for the first of his books, in which a family of three children are evacuated to Shropshire, where, with the friends they meet there, they form the Lone Pine Club.  Mystery at Witchend was published by Newnes in 1943 and for the following 36 years Saville brought out a total of 20 titles in the series.    Although Saville states in the preface to the series that “the members of the Lone Pine Club do not grow up” he changed his view over the years, unusually for the genre allowing the children to mature and grow, and even jump decades from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Saville was a prolific author and by the time of his death in Hastings in 1982, he had written around 90 books, including series for younger children, books for teenagers and non-fiction books about travel, religion and nature.  It is, however, the Lone Pine Club which most continues to enthrall its third generation of enthusiastic readers.

Please scroll down to see our current stock of Saville first editions.