The Far Island
M Pardoe
The Far Island was Margot Pardoe's first book and concerns Dick and Jane Fraser who, newly orphaned, are sent by their great-grandmother to live on an island in Orkney which she owns. Having been brought up at expensive and fashionable school and being used to spending their holidays in luxurious foreign resorts, the isolation of Mora is a shock for the children but soon they learn how to entertain themselves and to enjoy the activities available to them, culminating in the discovery of the secret of the island. Dick and Jean later reappear in the Bunkle series of books for which the author is best known.
Preview of Chapter 1.
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Bunkle's Brainwave
M Pardoe
Bunkle's Brainwave is the tenth in the Bunkle series and one of the hardest to find. In this book the de Salis family become linked with a large family of delightful Scottish cousins. Billy de Salis (nick-named 'Bunkle' as a small boy by his elder brother and sister who said he talked such a lot of bunk) is looking forward to a rather dull summer holidays at home, because his sister Jill is now married and his brother Robin is on military service abroad. Instead, however, a chance encounter with a Scottish cousin leads to surprising developments, and once more Bunkle and his mother and father get involved in an amusing and exciting adventure in which he and three young Scottish cousins play a major part.
Preview of Chapter 1.
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Bunkle Began It
M Pardoe
Bunkle, Robin and Jill help their father, who is in the British Secret Service, to round up a German spy in Devonshire. The story begins with Bunkle throwing a cushion at an old lady, and the cushion bursts. Later, Bunkle sees some very curious things through a crack in the floor of his attic bedroom.
This is the second in the Bunkle series and our irrepressible hero is back to solve more mysteries!
Preview of Chapter 1.
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Bunkle Scents a Clue
M Pardoe
Bunkle is seventeen, and is spending a few weeks of the school holidays in Somerset, with his parents and his Scottish cousins. It is not surprising the the holiday proves less quiet and conventional than had been planned. Riding about the moors, they are annoyed by a fast Jaguar car. It's owner is traced to an ugly Victorian villa where a professor of science lives in condistions of suspicious secrecy.
Preview of Chapter 1.
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Bunkle Brings It Off
M Pardoe
Buying a goat at a fair leads to a chain of enormously exciting adventures, even by the standards of Bunkle, the youngest of the de Salis children. Exploring a mysterious empty house, meeting a Russian princess, being trapped on a perilous rooftop and foiling a gang of kidnappers are amongst them.
It is of no surprise to his readers that Bunkle does indeed 'bring it off' and whilst saving the day also helps Colonel de Salis in his vital work for the Secret Service.
Preview of Chapter 1.
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Four Plus Bunkle
M Pardoe
This is the first in the 'Bunkle' series about the de Salis family, in which we meet Jill, Robin and Bunkle, so named by his brother and sister because they say he talks such a lot of bunk. They are having an average sort of holiday: Bunkle is infuriating his older siblings, and the most important thing any of them have to think about is the hotel tennis tournament. Then their mother is called away, their governess is taken ill and they find an injured British Secret Service Agent in the hotel, who charges them with taking top secret papers to their father who is also in the Intelligence Service. There follows a race across France and Switzerland...
Preview of Chapter 1.
Available now: Ordering Information.
 

Margot Pardoe was born in 1902. After a well-travelled youth and time spent training as an opera singer in Paris, she began writing after marrying John Swift in 1934. Her first book, The Far Island was published in 1936 and tells the story of two children used to a lifestyle of public school and foreign travel who find their circumstances greatly reduced when they are unexpectedly orphaned. Their previously unknown great-grandmother sends them to live on the remote Orcadian island of Mora where they learn to be more self-sufficient and resourceful but also discover some of the classic elements of children's fiction - a ghost story and lost treasure.

Bunkle, Margot's best-loved character, is the irrepressible younger brother of Jill and Robin de Salis. So named by them because he talks such a lot of bunk, he appears for the first time in Four Plus Bunkle, a marvellous adventure involving spies and stowing away on Continental trains. There were eleven more Bunkle titles and his popularity was further boosted by the BBC Children's Hour radio dramatisations.

The 1940s and '50s were a productive time for Margot with two more series of books appearing as well as two thrillers aimed at the teenage market. The author's last book was Bunkle's final appearance in Bunkle Brings It Off in 1961. Margot retired from writing after this and enjoyed a peaceful retirement, devoting much of her energies to painting. She died in 1996.

Following the publication of The Far Island, we will begin our reprints of the Bunkle series starting with Bunkle's Brainwave.

The Far Island
Four Plus Bunkle
Bunkle Began It
Bunkle Butts In
Bunkle Bought It
Bunkle Breaks Away
Bunkle and Belinda
Bunkle Baffles Them
Bunkle Went For Six
Bunkle Gets Busy
The Ghost Boat (with Howard Biggs)
Bunkle's Brainwave
Bunkle Scents a Clue
The Boat Seekers
Charles Arriving
May Madrigal
The Dutch Boat
Argle's Mist
The Nameless Boat
Argle's Causeway
Argle's Oracle
The Greek Boat Mystery
Bunkle Brings It Off