There are all sorts of self-portraits in the books I think: Miranda and Patrick both represent facets of Forest herself, I think: Miranda her Jewish origins; Patrick her interest in traditional Catholicism.
Something I like about the books is that the staff are not all shown as upholding school hierarchies and traditions: they have their own prejudices and preferences. Crommie, one senses, might have been the Jan Scott of her own school, impatient with the ideals of community service and flattening uniformity: it's said elsewhere that she quite unapologetically has favourites, for example.
I don't think there's ever been an adaptation mooted, for TV or otherwise.
Tim's mother was the one who insisted on naming her Thalia, despite her father's dubiety about it; the way Tim says it suggests she's still alive and around. I like the hint that Tim's mother is a bit 'arty', like Mrs Todd... Pomona really isn't that intolerable at all, and most of the others come to like her: upthread someone suggests that Pomona and Tim are both, though in very different ways, charming and comfortable in adult company, and Tim really can't take it when Pomona takes some of the limelight from her when they meet at social events at home--I think that's a very plausible suggestion. There's also a theme throughout the series of home/work and school being very different worlds: in part, that's convenience, a way of keeping the home Marlows books (which are often quite hair-raising adventure stories) discrete from the much more mundane world of school, but it's more than that too: Giles has a Service self which is quite different from his home self, as Nicola mortifyingly discovers...
I really liked Back Home as a kid too. I must look it up again.
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There are all sorts of self-portraits in the books I think: Miranda and Patrick both represent facets of Forest herself, I think: Miranda her Jewish origins; Patrick her interest in traditional Catholicism.
Something I like about the books is that the staff are not all shown as upholding school hierarchies and traditions: they have their own prejudices and preferences. Crommie, one senses, might have been the Jan Scott of her own school, impatient with the ideals of community service and flattening uniformity: it's said elsewhere that she quite unapologetically has favourites, for example.
I don't think there's ever been an adaptation mooted, for TV or otherwise.
Tim's mother was the one who insisted on naming her Thalia, despite her father's dubiety about it; the way Tim says it suggests she's still alive and around. I like the hint that Tim's mother is a bit 'arty', like Mrs Todd... Pomona really isn't that intolerable at all, and most of the others come to like her: upthread someone suggests that Pomona and Tim are both, though in very different ways, charming and comfortable in adult company, and Tim really can't take it when Pomona takes some of the limelight from her when they meet at social events at home--I think that's a very plausible suggestion. There's also a theme throughout the series of home/work and school being very different worlds: in part, that's convenience, a way of keeping the home Marlows books (which are often quite hair-raising adventure stories) discrete from the much more mundane world of school, but it's more than that too: Giles has a Service self which is quite different from his home self, as Nicola mortifyingly discovers...
I really liked Back Home as a kid too. I must look it up again.