Favourite Children's Authors: Rosemary Sutcliff

Rosemary Sutcliff: The Eagle of the Ninth (1954)

I wonder how kids nowadays would respond to a book like this? It's exerted a strange fascination over me ever since I first read it in our little school library when I was about 10 or 11 - not so much the details of Roman Army life as the curious atmosphere of the land beyond the frontier: the tribal territories past Hadrian's wall which Marcus Flavius Aquila is forced to negotiate in order to recover the Eagle emblem of his father's legion, the lost Ninth.

In particular, I was impressed by the decision of the sole survivor of the massacred army to stay where he was: "There is no way back past the waters of Lethe." I didn't know (then) what the waters of Lethe were, or even how to pronounce the word, but I got the point. Like a white settler adopted by a Native American community, his incentive to rejoin "civilisation" seemed strangely lacking.

Kevin Macdonald, dir.: The Eagle (2011)

That was where the (fairly) recent movie fell short for me - there was too much emphasis on macho heroics, and Channing Tatum was not at all my image of the sensitive, cerebral Marcus of Sutcliff's book.

Michael Simpson & Baz Taylor, dir.: The Eagle of the Ninth (1977)

There is, apparently, an old British TV miniseries as well, but I've never seen it. It looks pretty clunky from the excerpts included on the imdb, but it would be rather amusing to see Patrick Malahide playing a Pictish tribesman at what must have been the very outset of his career ...

So popular was The Eagle of the Ninth when it first appeared, that Rosemary Sutcliff decided to use Marcus's family, the Aquilas, as the basis for a whole series of novels about the last days of Roman rule in England - and the growth of a new, Anglo-Saxon culture in its place. In each of these books reference is made at some point to an emerald seal ring with a dolphin embossed on it, which had been handed down in the family for generations.

Here (courtesy of Wikpedia) are all eight novels in order - not of publication, but of fictional chronological sequence:

Rosemary Sutcliff: Three Legions (1980)

The Eagle of the Ninth Series:

1. The Eagle of the Ninth (1954)
2. The Silver Branch (1957)
3. Frontier Wolf (1980)
4. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
5. Sword at Sunset (1963)
6. Dawn Wind (1961)
7. Sword Song (1997)
8. The Shield Ring (1956)

Sutcliff herself was clearly someone who had to surmount more than her fair share of challenges. Confined to a wheelchair from most of her adult life as a result of contracting Still's disease (or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis) as a child, she grew up in Malta and various other bases where her father, a Naval Officer, was stationed.

As a result she had a rather unconventional education, not even learning to read until she was 9 years old. She eventually left school at 14 to attend Art College. After graduating from there, she worked initially as a painter of miniatures. She published her first book, The Chronicles of Robin Hood, in 1950, at the age of 30. The Eagle of the Ninth, her sixth novel, came out in 1954.

Having been runner-up for the Carnegie Medal for the year's best children's book by a British writer on four previous occasions, she eventually won it in 1959 for The Lantern-Bearers.

Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but the books she wrote in the 1950s and early 1960s seem to me more powerful and lasting than much of her later work. That may simply be a matter of having read them at the right age, however. Certainly it was during that period that her own engagement with the Arthurian legend began.

Rosemary Sutcliff: Sword at Sunset (1963)

Arthurian novels:

1. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
2. Sword at Sunset (1963)
3. Tristan and Iseult (1971)
4. The Arthurian Trilogy:
   1. The Sword and the Circle (1981)
   2. The Light Beyond the Forest (1979)
   3. The Road to Camlann (1981)
5. The Shining Company (1990)

Her most powerful and enduring contribution to the subject, Sword at Sunset, begins - like Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave - with an epigraph: Francis Brett Young's poem "Hic Jacet Arthurus Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus

Arthur is gone . . . Tristram in Careol
Sleeps, with a broken sword - and Yseult sleeps
Beside him, where the Westering waters roll
Over drowned Lyonesse to the outer deeps.

Lancelot is fallen . . . The ardent helms that shone
So knightly and the splintered lances rust
In the anonymous mould of Avalon:
Gawain and Gareth and Galahad - all are dust.

Where do the vanes and towers of Camelot
And tall Tintagel crumble? Where do those tragic
Lovers and their bright eyed ladies rot?
We cannot tell, for lost is Merlin's magic.

And Guinevere - Call her not back again
Lest she betray the loveliness time lent
A name that blends the rapture and the pain
Linked in the lonely nightingale's lament.

Nor pry too deeply, lest you should discover
The bower of Astolat a smokey hut
Of mud and wattle - find the knightliest lover
A braggart, and his lilymaid a slut.

And all that coloured tale a tapestry
Woven by poets. As the spider's skeins
Are spun of its own substance, so have they
Embroidered empty legend - What remains?

This: That when Rome fell, like a writhen oak
That age had sapped and cankered at the root,
Resistant, from her topmost bough there broke
The miracle of one unwithering shoot.

Which was the spirit of Britain - that certain men
Uncouth, untutored, of our island brood
Loved freedom better than their lives; and when
The tempest crashed around them, rose and stood

And charged into the storm's black heart, with sword
Lifted, or lance in rest, and rode there, helmed
With a strange majesty that the heathen horde
Remembered when all were overwhelmed;

And made of them a legend, to their chief,
Arthur, Ambrosius - no man knows his name -
Granting a gallantry beyond belief,
And to his knights imperishable fame.

They were so few . . . We know not in what manner
Or where they fell - whether they went
Riding into the dark under Christ's banner
Or died beneath the blood-red dragon of Gwent.

But this we know; that when the Saxon rout
Swept over them, the sun no longer shone
On Britain, and the last lights flickered out;
And men in darkness muttered: Arthur is gone . . .

It's interesting, in retrospect, to observe just how much this "End of Empire" theme resonated with Sutcliff, as with many other writers of the post-war generation. Imperial Rome was clearly, for them, almost interchangeable with Imperial Britain - and their intense nostalgia for the order and unquestioned assumptions of childhood creeps into all their accounts of "Saxon hordes" overwhelming the last few urbane flickers of Roman civilisation.

Sutcliff, however, was unusual in being able to see the other side of the equation as well. Her doomed Saxon warriors facing the oncoming Norsemen in The Shield Wall shows an evenhandedness of treatment, as well as a determination to back underdogs against aggressive invaders somewhat reminiscent of the revisionist historical novels of her near-contemporary Geoffrey Trease.

Sutcliff's later works on King Arthur largely content themselves with retelling Malory. But Sword at Sunset is still well worth reading. Her intimate knowledge of weariness and despair seems to have made her exceptionally good at depicting self-doubting, non-triumphant heroes.

That's what continues to ring true in her books, and makes her portrayal of the savage, tormented Cuchulain, the so-called "Hound of Ulster", so much more successful than her dutiful recital of The High Deeds of Finn MacCool.

Rosemary Sutcliff: The Hound of Ulster (1963)

When I think now about my first acquaintance with her books, I remember that I was almost afraid of them. She wasn't content with simple plots about everyday dilemmas: there was genuine violence and fear in almost all of them, as well as a lot more squalid (and smelly) local detail than was typical in children's historical novels of the time.

I can't help thinking that the hardships of her own life must have played against the sentimental romanticism implanted by her mother to create a strikingly realistic - and, for the time, very well researched - series of fantasies of the past. Books such as Warrior Scarlet or Outcast do not sugarcoat the subjects of violence and dispossession.

At times, as in Dawn Wind, she let her guard down and allowed a few rays of hope to steal in - her preference though, as in Francis Brett Young's poem, seems always to have been for the defiant last stand.

Anthony Lawton: Which book do readers think is Rosemary Sutcliff’s best? (2022)

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Rosemary Sutcliff (1984)

Rosemary Sutcliff
(1920-1992)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Children's Novels:


1. The Chronicles of Robin Hood. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1950)
2. The Queen Elizabeth Story. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1950)
3. The Armourer's House. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1951)
   • The Armourer's House. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1951. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.
4. Brother Dusty-Feet. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1952)
   • Brother Dustyfeet. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1952. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.
5. Simon. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy (1953)
   • Simon. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy. 1953. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.
6. The Eagle of the Ninth. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1954)
   • The Eagle of the Ninth. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1954. London: Oxford University Press, 1973.
   • Included in: Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
7. Outcast. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy (1955)
   • Outcast. 1955. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy. 1955. New Oxford Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1980.
8. The Shield Ring. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges (1956)
   • The Shield Ring. Illustrated by C. Walter Hodges. 1956. London: Oxford University Press, 1957.
9. The Silver Branch. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1957)
   • The Silver Branch. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1957. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
   • Included in: Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
10. Warrior Scarlet. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1958)
    • Warrior Scarlet. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
    • Iincluded in: The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1963, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
11. The Lantern Bearers (1959)
    • The Lantern Bearers. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1959. London: Oxford University Press, 1972.
    • Included in: Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
12. Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1960)
    • Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1960. Oxford Children’s Library. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
    • Iincluded in: The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1963, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
13. Bridge Builders. Illustrated by Douglas Relf (1960)
14. Beowulf: Dragonslayer. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1961)
15. Dawn Wind. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1961)
    • Dawn Wind. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1961. London: Oxford University Press, 1970.
16. The Hound of Ulster. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1963)
    • The Hound of Ulster. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. London: The Bodley Head, 1963.
17. The Mark of the Horse Lord. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1965)
    • Iincluded in: The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1965, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
18. The Chief's Daughter. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1967)
    • The Chief's Daughter. 1966. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. 1967. Piccolo. London: Pan Books, 1978.
19. The High Deeds of Finn MacCool. Illustrated by Michael Charleton (1967)
    • The High Deeds of Finn MacCool. Illustrated by Michael Charlton. London: The Bodley Head, 1967.
20. A Circlet of Oak Leaves. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1968)
21. The Witch's Brat. Illustrated by Richard Lebenson (1970)
22. The Truce of the Games. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1971)
23. Tristan and Iseult (1971)
    • Tristan and Iseult. 1971. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
24. Heather, Oak, and Olive: Three Stories ["The Chief's Daughter", 1967; "A Circlet of Oak Leaves", 1968; "A Crown of Wild Olive", 1971]. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1972)
25. The Capricorn Bracelet: Six Stories. Illustrated by Charles Keeping & Richard Cuffari (1973)
26. The Changeling. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1974)
27. [with Margaret Lyford-Pike] We Lived in Drumfyvie (1975)
28. Blood Feud. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1976)
    • Blood Feud. 1976. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
29. Sun Horse, Moon Horse. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1977)
    • Sun Horse, Moon Horse. 1977. Decorations by Shirley Felts. Knight Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982.
30. Shifting Sands. Illustrated by Laslzo Acs (1977)
31. Song for a Dark Queen (1978)
32. The Light Beyond the Forest. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1979)
33. Three Legions [aka Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles (2010)] ["The Eagle of the Ninth", 1954; "The Silver Branch", 1957; "The Lantern Bearers", 1959] (1980)
    • Three Legions: The Eagle of the Ninth; The Silver Branch; The Lantern Bearers. 1954, 1957, 1959, 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
34. Frontier Wolf (1980)
    • Frontier Wolf. 1980. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
35. Eagle's Egg. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus (1981)
36. The Sword and the Circle. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1981)
37. The Road to Camlann. Illustrated by Shirley Felts (1981)
38. Bonnie Dundee (1983)
    • Bonnie Dundee. 1983. Puffin Books. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
39. Flame-coloured Taffeta. Illustrated by Rachel Birkett (1986)
40. The Roundabout Horse. Illustrated by Alan Marks (1986)
41. A Little Dog Like You. Illustrated by Jane Johnson (1987)
42. The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff ["Warrior Scarlet", 1958; "The Mark of the Horse Lord", 1965; "Knight's Fee", 1960]. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1987)
    • The Best of Rosemary Sutcliff: Warrior Scarlet; The Mark of the Horse Lord; Knight's Fee. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. 1958, 1965, 1960. London: Chancellor Press, 1987.
43. The Shining Company (1990)
44. The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup. Illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark (1993)
45. Black Ships Before Troy. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1993)
46. Chess-Dream in a Garden. Illustrated by Ralph Thompson (1993)
47. The Wanderings of Odysseus. Illustrated by Alan Lee (1995)
48. Sword Song (1997)
    • Sword Song. 1997. Red Fox Classics. London: Random House Children’s books, 2001.
49. King Arthur Stories: Three Books in One [aka The King Arthur Trilogy (2007)] ["The Sword and the Circle", 1981; "The Light Beyond the Forest", 1979; "The Road to Camlann", 1981] (1999)

Novels for adults:


50. Lady in Waiting (1957)
51. The Rider of the White Horse (1959)
    • The Rider of the White Horse. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1959.
52. Sword at Sunset (1963)
    • Sword at Sunset. London: The Book Club, 1963.
53. The Flowers of Adonis (1969)
    • The Flowers of Adonis. 1969. London: Hodder Paperbacks, 1971.
54. Blood and Sand (1987)
    • Blood and Sand. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987.

Autobiography:


55. Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection (1983)
    • Blue Remembered Hills: A Recollection. 1983. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Non-fiction:


56. Houses and History. Illustrated by William Stobbs (1960)
57. Rudyard Kipling (1960)
58. Heroes and History. Illustrated by Charles Keeping (1965)
59. People of the Past: A Saxon Settler. Illustrated by John Lawrence (1965)

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Rosemary Sutcliff: Blue Remembered Hills (1983)

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Favourite Children's Authors: John Pudney

Bryan Wharton: John Sleigh Pudney (1967)

In his last few years, just about the only thing my father seemed to want to read were old children's books by the likes of Laurence R. Bourne and Percy F. Westerman, as well as 'Biggles', the 'Swallows and Amazons' series, and the school stories and adventure serials in his almost complete sets of Chums and the Boys Own Annual.

Percy F. Westerman: The Bulldog Breed (c.1930s)

"Resting the tired brain," he would call it. They were large books, printed on thick newsprint, with garish cover pictures, and they eventually occupied most of the bookcases in the house - relegating my mother's collection of Jane Austen, George Eliot, and other school-prize classics to the ever-growing rows of cardboard boxes in the basement.

John Pudney: Thursday Adventure (1955)

I was thinking of him the other day when I ran across a battered ex-library copy of John Pudney's Thursday Adventure in a Hospice Shop. I'd never read it before, but our family collection did include various other instalments in the cycle of "Fred and I" adventures: entitled variously 'Saturday', 'Sunday', 'Monday' Adventure - and so on through all the days of the week. There was even a coda of 'Spring', 'Summer' (and so on) seasonal Adventures.

John Pudney: Tuesday Adventure (1953)

The one I remember best was, I think, Tuesday Adventure. At any rate, the plot summary for that one included on the flyleaf of Thursday Adventure definitely rings a bell. I remember thinking it wonderfully imaginative and exciting at the time: it has some mildly Science Fictional elements in it, as do the other volumes, hence the inclusion of its author, John Pudney, in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction database.

For years I'd had in the back of my mind the desirability of acquiring a complete set of these books, days and seasons alike, all 11 of them - perhaps even deducing the hinted-at identity of "I", the narrator of the stories. Is "I" in fact a boy at all? And is Fred "I's" brother, or cousin, or what? For that matter, is "Uncle George" a real relative, or just a family friend?

John Sharp, dir.: The Stolen Airliner (1955)

Now I'm not so sure. Thursday Adventure, despite being the only one in the series to be filmed - as The Stolen Airliner - doesn't evoke quite the same feelings I expected it to. The storytelling seems a little on the perfunctory side, the heroes and villains too neatly lined up for our inspection from the kick-off.

Perhaps if I'd been able to read it when I was younger it might be different. Lord knows I wanted to - but our school library was sadly lacking in thrillers. Never mind, I'll always be grateful for those few unobtrusive SF anthologies it did include.

Anthony Asquith, dir.: The Way to the Stars (1945)

Though I didn't realise it at the time, John Pudney was a far more versatile and interesting figure than he seemed. As a slightly younger contemporary of W. H. Auden, he'd published a number of books on the fringes of the Macspaunday group in the thirties before finding his true audience in the forties as a war poet.

The Way to the Stars, pictured above, is famous for containing two poems by Pudney which are implied, in context, to have been written by Michael Redgrave's character in the movie: "Missing" and "Johnny-head-in-air." The latter, in particular, became a kind of R.A.F. anthem:

Do not despair
For Johnny-head-in-air;
He sleeps as sound
As Johnny underground.

Fetch out no shroud
For Johnny-in-the-cloud;
And keep your tears
For him in after years.

Better by far
For Johnny-the-bright-star,
To keep your head
And see his children fed.

John Pudney: Selected Poems (1946)

It was probably on the strength of this that his Selected Poems was published as a mass-market paperback in 1946.

His subsequent career as a hard-working journalist was punctuated by two sets of children's books, The "Fred and I" series mentioned above, and the "Hartwarp" series (for younger readers) in the 1960s. He also wrote a number of other novels and stories, though his main source of income appears to have been the non-fiction works he was commissioned to write, especially those on aeronautical subjects.

He was also an alcoholic. His eventual success in overcoming this habit forms the principal subject of much of his later verse, particularly that included in his second volume of Selected Poems, which I also own:

John Pudney: Selected Poems 1967-1973 (1973)

What of it, you may ask? He had his day; his "sins were scarlet but his books were read" (as Hilaire Belloc once put it). Is there any real need to resurrect him now? I suppose that I'd hoped "Fred and I" would retain the fascination they held for me as a pre-teen, but they don't, not really.

I don't regret making the experiment, though. It's true that we did feel at the time that my father was disappearing down a rabbit-hole of infantile fiction, dedicated principally (it seemed) to brave boys upholding the values of the British Empire against posturing Prussians, bloodthirsty Bolsheviks, and rebellious natives.

The other main thing he read was history, though, and the essentially tragic nature of that long chronicle of "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago" perhaps justified his predilection for the less testing pleasures of boy's literature.

I, too, now find myself reading old children's books both for relaxation and for the window they supply on the values of even the comparatively recent past. The "Bannermere" books of self-conscious leftist Geoffrey Trease, for instance, may seem fearfully buttoned-up and tame nowadays, but when they they were written - at much the same time as John Pudney's "Fred and I" stories - they definitely constituted a reaction agains the landed gentry assumptions of earlier children's fiction.

Annie Gauger, ed.: The Annotated Wind in the Willows (2009)

Much though I love Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, for instance, it's hard not to concur with my old Edinburgh Professor Wallace Robson's classic analysis of the class values that underlie it: the proletarian weasels' attempt to encroach on the inherited domains of Toad, the local squire, who has to be upheld by our heroes, Mole, Rat and Badger, despite their own contempt for Toad's foolish and criminal antics.

There's a lot to be learned, then, from children's books. It would have to be admitted that they can constitute an insidious form of brainwashing for the precociously literate. But the values of heroism, self-reliance, and refusal to kowtow to bullies encoded in most of them, regardless of fashion or era, is surely not to be despised then or now?

Bruno Bettelheim: The Uses of Enchantment (1976)

So I'll continue to collect and read them despite my occasional misgivings. There's some shocking stuff in some of them, I would acknowledge, but sheltering your mind from any views contrary to your own is not really much of a recipe for continued mental health.

I've always felt there was a lot in Nazi concentration camp survivor Bruno Bettelheim's claim of the continuing value of the shockingly violent and disruptive world of Grimm's fairytales, despite the understandable reluctance of many contemporary parents to expose their children to this barbarous world of ravening monsters and arbitrary power.

The goalposts may shift from era to era, but the need to think your own thoughts, defend your own values, and stand up for what you believe in lies deep at the heart of all the great works of children's literature from Lewis Carroll's Alice to Philip Pullman's Lyra books.

Children who don't read at all are in much greater danger of falling for charlatans than those who've imbibed copious doses of fairytales and beast fables at a formative age.

John Tenniel: The Nursery Alice (1890)

Favourite Children's Authors: Jane Langton

Jane Langton: The Swing in the Summerhouse (1967)

We were always on the lookout for good fantasy novels when we were kids, and after reading all about C. S. Lewis's Narnia, Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea, and J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, we were rather at a loss. One day I overheard my brother and sister arguing over the merits of a book called The Swing in the Summerhouse.

Anne (I think) quite liked it, whereas Ken found it too doctrinaire. In any case, I resolved to give it a try, and since it turned out to be in the Murrays Bay Intermediate School library, I must have borrowed and read it sometime in the early 1970s.

I thought it very good: better, even, than Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, which I encountered at roughly the same time. It was a little frustrating, though, as it made numerous references to an earlier book called The Diamond in the Window, which it turned out that my older siblings had read, but which was unfortunately not in the library (perhaps one of the teachers had lent it to them).

Jane Langton: The Diamond in the Window (1962)

I was pretty excited when I finally ran across a copy of The Diamond in the Window in the local bookshop in Palmerston North (where I was then teaching). The date on the inside cover tells me that it was on my birthday in 1991, so I must have bought it for myself as a present.

You know how it is with old children's books, though - unless you managed to read them at precisely the right moment, their charm can be lost on you. The Diamond in the Window was too obviously infused with Emerson and Thoreau and their Transcendentalist ideology (a bit like Lewis and Tolkien's Christianity), so I couldn't really surrender to it properly. Nor was I able to find a copy of The Swing in the Summerhouse to compare it with, despite searching in vain for many years.

Jane Langton: The Hall Family Chronicles (1962-2008)

1. The Diamond in the Window (1962)
2. The Swing in the Summerhouse (1967)
3. The Astonishing Stereoscope (1971)
4. The Fledgling (1980)
5. The Fragile Flag (1984)
6. The Time Bike (2000)
7. The Mysterious Circus (2005)
8. The Dragon Tree (2008)

The other day I gave in and decided to order the whole series online. It came as a bit of a surprise to find out that Jane Langton had lived until 2018, and even added three new volumes to her series of "Hall Family Chronicles" in the years since 1991!

But then, just the other day, I found a couple of the books in (respectively) The Hard-to-Find Bookshop and Green Dolphin Bookshop in Uptown Auckland, and so I'm glad to have been able to read the first two again, after (respectively) 30 and 50 years. That last seems unbelievable. Can it really have been fifty years since I first read The Swing in the Summerhouse?

In any case, here they all are, in chronological order:

1. The Diamond in the Window (1962)

   Jane Langton. The Diamond in the Window. Illustrations by Eric Blegvad. 1962. The Hall Family Chronicles, 1. A Harper Trophy Book. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.



Jane Langton: The Diamond in the Window (1962)



2. The Swing in the Summerhouse (1967)

   Jane Langton. The Swing in the Summerhouse. Illustrations by Eric Blegvad. 1967. The Hall Family Chronicles, 2. Harper Trophy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1981.



Jane Langton: The Swing in the Summerhouse (1967)



3. The Astonishing Stereoscope (1971)

   Jane Langton. The Astonishing Stereoscope. Illustrations by Eric Blegvad. 1971. The Hall Family Chronicles, 3. HarperTrophy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2001.



Jane Langton: The Astonishing Stereoscope (1971)



4. The Fledgling (1980)

   Jane Langton. The Fledgling. Illustrations by Eric Blegvad. 1980. The Hall Family Chronicles, 4. New York: Scholastic Inc., 1990.



Jane Langton: The Fledgling (1980)



5. The Fragile Flag (1984)

   Jane Langton. The Fragile Flag. Illustration by Peter Blegvad. 1984. The Hall Family Chronicles, 5. HarperTrophy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1989.



Jane Langton: The Fragile Flag (1984)



6. The Time Bike (2000)

   Jane Langton. The Time Bike. Illustrations by Eric Blegvad. 2000. The Hall Family Chronicles, 6. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2001.



Jane Langton: The Time Bike (2000)



7. The Mysterious Circus (2005)

   Jane Langton. The Mysterious Circus. Illustration by Peter Malone. The Hall Family Chronicles, 7. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005.



Jane Langton: The Mysterious Circus (2005)



8. The Dragon Tree (2008)

   Jane Langton. The Dragon Tree. The Hall Family Chronicles, 8. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008.



Jane Langton: The Dragon Tree (2008)

Mind you, some of the initial, non series-focussed cover illustrations for the individual volumes seem more spirited than the ones included above: this moonlit scene for The Fledgling, for instance:

Jane Langton: The Fledgling (1980)

Or this turbulent, energetic image of The Time Bike:

Jane Langton: The Time Bike (2000)

As for the books themselves, what's the verdict, after all these years? Was it really worth the wait?

I can certainly understand why it was The Fledgling which got signalled out from the rest of the series to be a Newbery Honor Book (runner-up to the Newbery Medal, awarded for each year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children" since 1922).

The Fledgling is more intimate and engaging than some of the others, and its characters are less easily divisible into goodies (Transcendentalists) and baddies (Materialists). All of them have their own magical charm, though, and I have to say that I only wish they'd all been available to me fifty years ago when I was truly desperate for such reading.

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Jane Langton (1922-2018)

The Garnett Family (4): Richard the Third

Richard Garnett: The White Dragon (1963)

It's strange how important reading the right children's book at just the right time can be.

I'm not sure just what impression Richard Garnett's White Dragon would have on me now if I were encountering it for the first time, but, as it turned out, it had the effect of introducing me to a whole set of fascinating topics which have interested me ever since:

St. George and the Dragon (St Albans: 2015)


Mummer's Plays

For more on this, I strongly recommend the following:

E. K. Chambers. The English Folk-Play. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.



E. K. Chambers: The English Folk-Play (1933)


In the book, the children find the remains of a pantomime dragon, "Old Snap," and are inspired to resurrect an almost forgotten seasonal play in which St. George battles this personification of winter in order to bring life back to the land again.



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Daniel Defoe: A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain (Folio Society, 2006)


Daniel Defoe's Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26)

Garnett's protagonist, Mark Rutter, also centre stage in his earlier book The Silver Kingdom, reads a passage from Defoe's fascinating compendium of local gossip and anecdotes - combined with direct observation - about a mysterious 'white worm' which can only be seen at certain times of day on a nearby eminence called the 'Wormell' (or Worm-Hill).




Richard Garnett: The Silver Kingdom (1957)


Mark, who is (according to his archaeologist friend from the previous book) a 'born finder', discovers the solution to this mystery by sheer happenstance, and unearths another dragon to set alongside Old Snap.



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Uffingdon White Horse (c.1000 BC)


Hillside chalk figures

Sure enough, the second 'white dragon' in the book turns out to be a chalk figure cut into the hillside. Unlike the more familiar examples, where the turf has to be recut periodically to keep them visible, the 'white worme' of the Wormell has been made out of chalk packed into man-made ditches on this artificial eminence. As a result, it proves possible to re-establish its long-overgrown contours by the simple expedient of drilling small holes in the hillside.




Graham Oakley: Cover illustration (1963)


The above illustration shows the contours of the chalk figure as it is eventually revealed. Mark spots it because the snow melts more slowly on the chalk than the earth of the hill, so he is able to photograph its momentarily revealed shape one evening during the thaw: a 'born finder', indeed!



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Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne: Der Winter (1614)


Ice yachting

Mark's desire to construct an ice yacht for his cousin Tom, a keen skater injured in a road accident years before, and now forced to go everywhere on crutches, forms most of the actual narrative of the book.

This was the era of the can-do hero, when a set of enterprising boys and girls could easily solve a cipher, reconstruct an old building, start an archaeological dig, or - as in this case - master the mechanics of ice-yachting.

It's strangely inspiring to read about, however little it may resemble the pathetic constructions of cardboard and plastic which were all I and my contemporaries could achieve.




Richard Garnett: The White Dragon (1963)


The original cover of the hardback edition, above, shows the success that attends their efforts. 'The White Dragon' and 'The Red Knight' are the names of the two yachts they build out of a few old planks and some leftover ice-skates provided by the local junkshop owner.



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Year of the "Dragon" (2012)


Mahjong

This is more of a peripheral reference in the book, but a 'white dragon' in mahjong is a totally blank tile. It's named from the fact that such a sheet of white can represent a white dragon hiding on a field of snow - or nothing at all, depending on how you interpret it.




The beginner's guide to the greatest pastimes: Mahjong


The book concludes with the gift to Mark from his friends of a blank mahjong tile, the fourth (and last) dragon in the story. When asked what the difference is between a white dragon and a blank tile, he replies: "All the difference in the world." Those, rather appropriately, are the last words of the text.

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Julian Bell: Richard Garnett (1992)

As you'll have deduced from the title of my blogpost, the author of The White Dragon, Richard Garnett (1923-2013), was the third writer of that name, in direct line of descent from Richard Garnett the Philologist (1789-1850), and Richard Garnett the writer and editor (1835-1906). He was the grandson of Edward and Constance Garnett, and the son of David and Ray Garnett.

Despite - or perhaps because of - the weight of this family legacy, he was a pretty competent and multi-faceted character in his own right.

As well as an author of children's books (his only other published work in this vein, the historical novel Jack of Dover, is pictured below), he was also an editor and publisher.

Richard Garnett: Jack of Dover (1966)

This is his history of the firm that he mainly worked for, Rupert Hart-Davis, co-founded by his father, David Garnett:

Richard Garnett: Rupert Hart-Davis Limited: A Brief History with a Checklist of Publications (2005)

Nicolas Barker has this to say of his skills as a publisher in his 2013 Independent obituary:

Garnett was ... [Rupert Hart-Davis]'s production manager, and soon an expert editor as well. Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet, another bestseller, and the three-volume autobiography of Lady Diana Cooper (Hart-Davis's aunt), exercised both skills. Laurence Whistler's books spurred him to become a glass-engraver. His nautical experience came to the fore with the Mariner's Library of sea classics ... But the heart of the firm lay not in these but in scholarly but readable books such as Leon Edel's five-volume life of Henry James, Allan Wade's Letters of W. B. Yeats and Peter Fleming's imperial sagas. All of these achieved their reputation thanks to the joint expertise of Garnett and Hart-Davis. Not for nothing did one of their admiring beneficiaries call the firm "the university of Soho Square".

But commercial success did not follow. Three times the firm had to be bailed out. Control passed first to Heinemann, then Harcourt Brace and finally to Granada. Hart-Davis himself left in 1963; three years later the firm was merged with MacGibbon & Kee and finally Garnett was sacked. As he left, a water-pipe burst in the attic, leaving him to say "Après moi le déluge". ... Fortunately, Macmillan was in need of just his talents, to supervise copy-editing and proof-correction. He soon became indispensable ... Gerald Durrell's books owed much to his editing, which verged on authorial, as did the natural history books of Bernard Heuvelmans.

Barker sees his two greatest achievements as:

1. his 1991 biography of his grandmother, Constance Garnett:


Richard Garnett: Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life (1991)



2. his design work for The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by Kathleen Coburn et al., 16 parts in 34 volumes (Princeton University Press, 1969-2002):


Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Biographia Literaria, ed. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate (1983)

That seems as good a place as any to conclude my survey of this unusually talented family of writers and artists.

David "Bunny" Garnett had six children in all. Two sons - including Richard himself - with his first wife Rachel "Ray" Marshall (1891–1940); and four daughters with Angelica (1918–2012). The eldest of these, Amaryllis Virginia Garnett (1943–1973) was an actress who had a small part in Harold Pinter's film adaptation of The Go-Between (1970). She drowned in the Thames, aged 29 - whether by accident or suicide is unclear.

Richard Garnett himself died leaving two sons, but whether or not either of them - or their own children, for that matter - have literary ambitions remains beyond the grasp of that (would-be) fount of all knowledge, wikipedia.

Joseph Losey, dir.: The Go-Between (1971)

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there."