I Shall Just Ask For South By South East No More

It was over four years ago now that I used the blog to ask a question that had been puzzling me for over a decade before that: Why was the television adaptation of the third Diamond Brothers novel by Anthony Horowitz so obscure that no visual record of it existed?

I'd hoped I could find some listings, maybe some continuity relating to it. I didn't know how likely it was that I'd be able to see all six episodes in their entirety, but as the saga went on and on, turning up more and more mysteries in its wake -- most notably the question of whether the series was an adaptation of the book or the book was a novelisation of the series -- I grew more and more confident that there was a copy out there I'd be able to see some day.

And then, in December 2021, Neil James got in touch to let me know that in his attic he had a VHS recording he'd made of the original (and only) CITV broadcasts from April 1991. Retrieving it, he found out we were in business -- it was in pretty good condition for an off-air recording that was approaching its 31st birthday. All he needed to do was digitise it, and I suggested Simon Drake, who had previously provided me with a digital copy of the extended VHS cut of the 1988 movie that preceded the television series, might be able to help out.

We then discovered a truly bizarre coincidence. Although he didn't know he was interested in the Diamond Brothers, Neil already knew Simon. In fact, the day before, they'd been to the cinema together... which certainly made things much simpler.

The VHS was digitised. Simon smoothed out some picture and audio glitches. Yesterday, he sent over copies of all six episodes, and at last I was able to see this TV series I'd been banging on about for so long, and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am to Neil and Simon for making that possible.

And in the process, some mysteries were solved, but a few more cropped up. I am working on a longer piece, which I plan to take the form of a comprehensive episode guide, but let's tackle some of the questions we can now answer, and the new ones that we can't just yet.

The Falcon's Proofreader: Part Two

When they were republished by Walker Books in the mid-to-late nineties, all three of the original Diamond Brothers books by Anthony Horowitz were rewritten for various reasons -- outdated and offensive content, trying to bring certain elements originally written in the mid-1980s up to date, because one of them was tying in with a TV series and thus contained material which was originally in that series but didn't translate well to prose. My two, arguably three, previous efforts have covered the differences between the different versions of The Falcon's Malteser and South by South East (plus a follow-up to the latter, comparing the two different editions to the TV series, here); now we finish things off with the second entry in the series, Public Enemy No. 2 -- the only one of the three original entries not to be adapted for film or TV, which has been put down to its violent nature and unfilmable climax involving a bomb, the River Thames and Isambard Kingdom Brunel's abandoned first attempt at the Thames Tunnel.

The picture at the top of this post is the original 1987 cover; only one subsequent UK reprint featured the original version of the text, the obscure 1991 Lion Books edition. In fact, those 1991 editions (reprinting the first two books in the series and publishing South by South East for the first time, tying into the broadcast of the SBSE TV series) were so obscure that, as far as I can tell, this blog has been the first place on the Internet ever to post images of what they look like. For our third and final exclusive, then, I am very proud to present the cover of the 1991 edition of Public Enemy No. 2:

So, then, if your copy of the book looks like either of those you have the original text. All Walker Books editions, published from 1997 onwards, feature the revised version... and here comes my comparison of the two.

The Falcon's Proofreader: Part One

In 1986 and 1987, two of Anthony Horowitz's earliest novels, the first two Diamond Brothers books, were published by Grafton Books (with paperback editions later printed under their Dragon imprint) -- The Falcon's Malteser (pictured above with its original cover), and its sequel Public Enemy Number Two.

In 1988, The Falcon's Malteser was adapted as a film, retitled in the UK as Just Ask for Diamond, and Lion Books published a new edition of the book tying in to the movie. The following picture of that edition was provided by Giles Leigh:

In 1991, a third book featuring the Diamond Brothers, South by South East, was published, at the same time as a TV serial that was either an adaptation of the book, or the book was a novelisation of the TV series (I haven't entirely worked out the relationship between the two yet, but you can read all about my attempts to do so here) began its one and only UK transmission. In any case, Lion Books also published the original version of that third book, and it looks like this (I have thanked Christian Bernard-Gauci for first putting me onto the existence of this original version before, but let's do so again, especially since it's his picture).

At the same time, Lion also reprinted the first two books in the series. Thanks to Jonathan Craig and his brother, who dug out their old copy for me, I am able to provide what I believe to be the first ever picture on the Internet of what the 1991 reprint of The Falcon's Malteser looked like:

Then, in 1995, the books were taken up by a new publisher, Walker Books, who continue to print the series to this day. But when the books were reprinted by Walker, all had some significant alterations made to them. If you have any of the older copies pictured above, then you have the original version of the text (thanks to Giles and Jonathan, I have confirmed that there are absolutely no differences whatsoever between the '86, '88 and '91 versions -- all three are even typeset the same). If you have any Walker edition, then you have the revised version.

(Note that I do not know anything about non-UK editions of the books, but if you have any information you'd be willing to volunteer about them it would be welcome. There is one other pre-1995 version of the book published in the UK not mentioned above: this, which appears to be an omnibus of four children's adventure books from different authors that were all published by Lion. I see no reason to think that the version of The Falcon's Malteser contained therein is any different, but if you have a copy then I would be grateful for absolute confirmation.)

I have already given an overview of the differences between the original and updated versions of South by South East here, as part of my quest to learn as much as possible about the TV series. But doing that post prompted me to track down the original versions of the first two books -- I'd always been curious about the two copyright dates in the Walker editions indicating there was a different version originally published -- and here we have the differences between the 1986 and 1995 versions of The Falcon's Malteser, with Public Enemy Number Two to follow at some point in the not-too-distant future. As with the earlier SbSE comparison, this is not an exhaustive list of changes, just the salient ones -- pretty much everything not covered here is minor changes to punctuation and removing hyphens from the middle of words.

The Livingstone Art Museum

When I heard that Ian Livingstone -- co-creator of Fighting Fantasy, co-founder of Games Workshop, and without whom this blog would very probably have never been started -- was to receive a knighthood in the New Year's Honours, I thought I should probably come up with something to pay tribute to the great man. And what I came up with was this: a guide to the various times Sir Ian cameoed in the illustrations of his own adventure gamebooks.

Best of 2021

In a way, there were two types of post on this blog last year: one about an extremely obscure CITV series from 1991 that was never repeated or released on home video, and everything else. So when making a list of the best posts, I sort of have to split it in two... but let's begin with a full recap of the remarkable story of The Diamond Brothers: South by South East.

29 on 4 2

So, Channel 4's terrestrial debut of Season 29 of The Simpsons began slightly later than it normally does on the 22nd November, and wrapped up on 17th December. Here, then, are several thousand words examining the various episodes they censored, as well as other notes of interest mostly concerning cases where there are alternate versions of certain episodes, compared to my earlier notes on potentially problematic/interesting-for-other-reasons episodes made before the run started.

Broken Gamebooks #1 ½: Realm of Chaos Redux

Way back in the first ever Broken Gamebooks article, nearly five years ago now, the inaugural adventure gamebook under discussion was the sixth GrailQuest book, Realm of Chaos. I have some startling new revelations to share with you, which were provided by commentator Ed Jolley. (Ed has also left some thoroughly interesting notes on some of my other posts, which you would be well-advised to seek out.)

Five Years

It was exactly five years ago today that the very first post was published to cwickham.blogspot.com. It was, of course, a review of an obscure series of adventure gamebooks from the 1980s.

I'd only started writing that review the day before; as I note in it, I got into a conversation with Andrew Ellard on Twitter about an adventure gamebook he'd had as a child but was struggling to identify, and at his suggestion I ended up writing a review of the series. And suddenly I needed a place to post it. I'd always meant to start a blog some day, and this was the impetus I needed to finally get around to doing so. I decided to see how long I could keep updating it on a weekly basis, which turned out to be almost exactly three years; for the two years since then, I've had a similarly totally arbitrary target of keeping it updated monthly. And, to my mild surprise, some people have been quite interested in what I've written.

To mark the fifth anniversary, then, I thought I'd look at the ten most-read posts according to Blogger's stats page, and see if I can work out why these pieces are so popular and if I have anything new to say about them. If you've been a regular reader over the last half-decade, why not try to guess which posts they are before reading on?

Yes, obviously I know why not, but play along, OK?