Diaries reveal dark side to Little Grey Rabbit's creator

Alison Uttley with her creation Little Grey Rabbit Photograph: PR

She created the enduringly charming children's characters Little Grey Rabbit and Fuzzypeg the Hedgehog but the private diaries of Alison Uttley reveal the author to have been a controlling, difficult woman who despised many people, including her near neighbour Enid Blyton whom she called a "vulgar, curled woman". Uttley, who grew up in rural Derbyshire, moved to Blyton's home town of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire as an adult. Bitterly jealous of Blyton's success, despite being the author of more than 100 books herself, Uttley wrote in her diaries of their one and only meeting: "'I was watching a woman ogling [the fishmonger], her false teeth, her red lips, her head on one side as she gazed up close – suddenly he turned to me and introduced her, Enid Blyton! The Blyton photographed and boastful!" she wrote. "When I asked her which books she wrote, she replied 'Look in Smith's window' and turned away, and never spoke again.'" (La suite ici, sur le site de Guardian)