The latest recruits in the cutthroat battle for Christmas book sales are four resourceful industry veterans with an irresistible appeal to men and women of a certain age.

Dan Dare, Rupert the Bear and Janet and John are at the vanguard of old favourites filling up bookshop shelves and are proof that nostalgia publishing has come of age.

“Nostalgia is a real trend in publishing at the moment,” said Ian Preece, a commissioning editor at Orion, who published last month The Eagle Annual, featuring Dan Dare, the “Pilot of the Future”.

“I think for a lot of people in their 30s, 40s and older there’s a yearning to revisit the simple world of their childhoods.”

The catalyst was the phenomenal success of The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden, which was published last year but packaged like a book from a much earlier era. It topped bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic with its vivid explanations of how to skin a rabbit, climb trees and make the best paper aeroplanes.

“That was a major landmark. It’s led to all sorts of ludicrous spin-offs but it’s also fuelled the case for raiding the vaults for famous children’s characters,” Mr Preece said.

Graeme Neill, of the Bookseller magazine, described nostalgia publishing as the literary equivalent of wearing 1970s-style Adidas trainers. “If we look at the publishing industry it has been behind popular culture by a number of years. People have wanted retro.”

Dan Dare offered a dashing British alternative to American superheroes in the 1950s and 1960s and his adventures captivated a generation of schoolboys. The character has been revived and updated occasionally since his first appearance, most recently by Sir Richard Branson, who announced that his Virgin Comics imprint would create a new series of Dan Dare stories from this month.

There is nothing new, however, about The Eagle Annual, which is a lovingly rendered facsimile of highlights from the original comics.

Janet and John have also been reinvented since their heyday. A 2001 “update” for modern children introduced ethnic-minority characters and had Janet playing football rather than indulging in more traditional girls’ pursuits. But like The Eagle Annual, the Janet and John adventures out this Christmas are faithful reproductions of the middle-class, Middle England nuclear family, wearing skirts and shorts.

As with The Eagle, the Rupert the Bear annuals from the 1950s, the Oor Wullie and the Broons books and the Jackie annual, the books are aimed squarely at adults rather than children.

Alastair Williams, the managing director of Summersdale, the publishers reprinting the Janet and John books, said that they tapped into idealised memories of childhood.

“It’s a lot like going up into the attic and finding something from your past like an old television. It can evoke rose-tinted memories. Something like 70 per cent of the population learnt to read with Janet and John. It’s almost part of our cultural heritage, something that is instantly recognisable,” he said.

In a reminder of an age before health and safety concerns, the children ride on horseback across rivers and climb trees. “Now they say ‘we can’t do this, we can’t do that’, you can’t play conkers, children aren’t allowed out,” Mr Williams said.

Facsimile reprints are a lucrative avenue for publishers to explore but they are also littered with potential pitfalls.

Egmont was criticised for the stereotypical depiction of Africans in its reprint of Tintin in the Congo, despite printing a foreword discussing the issues of racism and changing cultural norms. The reissue of a prewar Broons strip by Aurum Press was attacked because of its depiction of a black character. John Beck, the honorary secretary of the Followers of Rupert Bear, believes that political correctness should not dictate changes to the original texts. Rather, the change in attitudes should be highlighted. “It would open up that debate rather than just editing it all out. It’s important these things are remembered. They should try and make it as real as possible. If you start altering it, it’s no longer a facsimile.”

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