Gillian Baverstock

Gillian Mary Pollock, teacher: born Bourne End, Buckinghamshire 15 July 1931; married 1957 Donald Baverstock (died 1995; one son, one daughter, and one son and one daughter deceased; marriage dissolved 1994); died Airedale, West Yorkshire 24 June 2007.

The elder daughter of the phenomenally best-selling children's writer Enid Blyton, Gillian Baverstock always spoke positively about a mother described by Blyton's younger daughter Imogen as "arrogant, insecure, pretentious, very skilled in putting difficult or unpleasant things out of her mind, and without a trace of maternal instinct". A popular figure at literary festivals and much fêted at meetings of the Enid Blyton Society, Gillian Baverstock offered a different picture, of an admittedly difficult woman still capable of delivering a lot of fun, not just in her books but also in her home life. The sisters went on to write strongly divergent descriptions of their childhoods. At the time of Baverstock's death, they were no longer on visiting terms.

Born in 1931 in Old Thatch, a large Tudor cottage in Buckinghamshire a short walk from the Thames, Gillian was looked after by a succession of nannies, not all of whom were able to tolerate Enid Blyton's imperious manner with her domestic staff. Gillian's father, to whom she was very close, was Hugh Pollock, a handsome, previously married editor at the Newnes book department with an outstanding war record. Pollock later worked at Chartwell with Winston Churchill.

Described as a "serene and beautiful child, with shining hair and large expressive eyes", Gillian developed a good relationship with a mother who had only just started her writing career and therefore still had time to spare. But as she got older, she was only allowed to visit her mother every morning after breakfast and then again before tea. Yet Gillian still remembered jolly stories and games, in particular one involving her large, hand-made doll Amelia Jane, later to feature in a famous Blyton series of her own. After her 10th birthday, Gillian wrote years later, "I was given the privilege of having dinner with my mother each evening". It did not seem to strike her that what she still regarded as a privilege was something quite taken for granted by most of her contemporaries.

In 1935 Imogen was born, and Blyton decided to move the family to Green Hedges, a large house outside Beaconsfield. Busier than ever, Blyton had little time for Imogen, who by her own account was always a less amenable character than her sister. The two girls occupied a nursery directly above their mother's study and even the mildest noise from them during a writing session below could lead to sharp words, or on occasions physical punishment.

By 1940 there were also problems in the marriage, with Pollock away from home at the War Office School for Home Guard Officers and drinking heavily. His wife, meanwhile, was having an affair with Kenneth Darrell Waters, a partially deaf and arthritic surgeon described by George Greenfield, Blyton's agent, as "one of the most stupid and philistine men I have met".

Deciding in favour of divorce, Blyton asked Pollock to act the guilty party in return for an amicable separation and access to the children. But after accompanying her beloved father one sunny afternoon to see him off at the station, Gillian - then aged 10 - was allowed no more contact. Years later, she heard that her father had been a silent onlooker at her wedding. Loyal to the last, she always refused to blame her mother for imposing these restrictions.

Although she was doing well at her local school, Gillian was then transplanted to board at Benenden in 1943, an experience she never grew to enjoy. When she returned home for her first holiday, she found Waters installed as her new father. Required to take his surname, so that they could now "all be one family", she managed to have an adequate relationship with him despite his hot temper and rigid views.

Domestic life continued, with each girl during the war doing an hour's weeding a day in the large vegetable garden. A publicity photograph taken in 1949, now on view at the National Portrait Gallery, shows the two sisters playing in the garden, appropriately enough at their mother's feet. She meanwhile is sitting on a canvas chair, the battered typewriter upon which she hammered out 10,000 words a day balanced on her knees. Every evening, Gillian was allowed to read what her mother had written that day, an experience she always enjoyed to the full.

After reading History at St Andrews University, Gillian worked in publishing, at one time helping produce Enid Blyton's Magazine. But like her mother before her, she eventually trained as a Montessori teacher, working for 20 years at Moorfields School for Girls in Ilkley while living in the pretty village of Ben Rhydding. Married in 1957 to Donald Baverstock, a Yorkshire Television director, she had four children, two of whom had early deaths, one son, Glyn, dying as a result of a car crash in 1983 and a daughter, Sian, from a heart attack last year.

But despite these blows, Gillian Baverstock remained charming and generous, unfailingly courteous to everyone, including those who questioned her mother's reputation as a writer or as a person. Constantly giving talks at literary festivals and interviews to the media, she and her sister were also involved in the running of Darrell Waters Ltd, the company that handled the Enid Blyton copyright. But after further family complications, they decided in 1996 to sell their interest in their mother's literary estate. Gillian and Imogen had some time before come to a joint decision to phase out all the golliwog characters in new editions of Enid Blyton plays and stories.

In 1997 Gillian Baverstock wrote Enid Blyton (Tell Me About) followed by an equally slim volume, Gillian Baverstock Remembers Enid Blyton (2000). Both were affectionate if uncritical memoirs, strongly defending her mother both as a woman of her time and as an incomparable story-teller. She and her friend the comics editor Tim Quinn also launched Blue Moon in 1999. This was a children's magazine within which Baverstock retold traditional fairy tales, giving them an unfamiliar twist. Stylishly produced, it is now a collector's piece, having only lasted for 12 issues.

Gillian Baverstock loved spending time in her garden, despite worsening arthritis. Although she looked something like her formidable parent, her gentle and forgiving spirit made her a very different person.

Nicholas Tucker