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Last Resort
In which we can’t remember the name of something
We’re stuck.
Twenty years or so ago, there was a series on the telly. It was on ITV, and was probably made by Yorkshire. It was written by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall – they who did Billy Liar, and the TV adaptation of Worzel Gummidge – and it was about Lilliputians living in Victorian England – two men and one woman. There were books based on the same characters, too, and somewhere in the house I have copies still. They were hidden by children – I remember one scene from the telly where the children’s father took up photography, and one from the book where he got his hands on an experimental vacuum cleaner.
But we’ve completely forgotten what it was called. And the internet is being no help at all – Waterhouse and Hall are just too prolific, and the books of the series don’t seem to be listed anywhere. Does anyone have an idea?
Argh. I feel like it was called something like The Voyage of the…
Ah, here it is The Return of the Antelope. Yay.
Surely this was “The Borrowers” by Mary Norton? There are four books altogether – “The Borrowers”, “The Borrowers Afield”, “The Borrowers Afloat” and “The Borrowers Aloft”. However beware the film of the same name which bears only a passing resemblance to the story.
No, it sounds like The Borrowers but it definitely isn’t. The characters in this story were definitely Lilliputians who had sailed to England but were shipwrecked. They were a bit bigger than the Borrowers – about a foot tall, I think. It was on TV a few years before The Borrowers was (in its BBC adaptation), too.
Thank you, FB, that’s exactly it!
(I’ve been a bit lax at comment-authorising lately)
[...] In other news: thanks to Feather Boa for solving my telly-related puzzle from the other day. I would have noticed sooner, but her comment was in the queue and I didn’t spot it until now. Bah. Thank you! [...]