Far Away and Long Ago
Don Quixote. By Cervantes. (Dent. 1 Is. 6d.) AT a time when the accent is increasingly on the Future—space-men, rocket-ships, flying-saucers—it is encouraging to find that a number of discerning publishers and writers recognise the necessity for maintaining an equilibrium, and accordingly offer us the Past: Tales of Far Away and Long Ago which, through their very essence, possess virtues automatically denied to the newer genre.
Joyce Reason takes us farthest back, for in Swords of Iron she returns to the first century B.C. and skilfully evokes the darkly stirring period that preceded the Roman invasion. This is a book of keenest imagination, for it is a period that has not been fictionally explored, and this is pre-history. The author has succeeded in drawing characters tjtat will be acceptable to children in their earliest teens ; the setting stands up to searching question ; the story grips ; and Alan Blyth's illustrations are both sensitive and powerful. This is the best of the ". Pageant Books " by a substantial margin.
In Three Golden Nobles Christine Price takes a more conventional epoch, that of the Black Prince. She too contrives to make her child characters modern withont allowing them to step out of their frame, and this intelligent child readers will appreciate. It is so easy to blur probability by overdoing the olde-worlde jargon. This Young author is imbued with a strong historical and social sense, and presents a theme which at times transcends the story itself, good as this is.
Cynthia Harnett's Ring Out Bow Bells is set later still, in the year of Agincourt. It is more sure of touch than the last, as might be expected of a Carnegie Medal winner. Here is a stirring tale of the City apprentices, the Guilds and Clubs : all the vigorous, smelly, vital life of London in the mayoralty of Whittington. The book has a greater intellectual content than the last one : the author is most knowledgeable about old London and exceptionally skilful in impart- ing her knowledge. Her sketch-maps and illustrations are an out- standing feature of a book that is alive from first page to last with ripe wisdom, authority and humour.
The most ambitious in this group is Noel Streatfeild's The Fearless Treasure—one of the ntost beautifullj, produced books that has come my way this year. It is a journey into the past undertaken in a number of clearly-defined stages covering the history of Britain from Roman times to Modern. The aim and the conception are excellent ; the mechanics, however, are so elaborate that they confuse not only the reader but, in the early stages, the author herself. For what aged child is this most alertly imaginative book intended ? Its main characters are twelve-plas, but it will be a precocious twelve-year-old who will easily identify himself (and children must do this) with the children who have such mystical' experiences under the guidance of the intangible Mr. Fosse, I read this book with immense pleasure ; I enjoyed it as I enjoy the novels of Claude Houghton and March Cost.' But these authors Write for adults ! Noel Streatfeild has a strong sense of mission, and I should like to think that every wallower in science fiction Might be awakened to such a book as this, for it possesses a quality that will be looked for in vain in that growing class of book until a writer of the calibre of H. G. Wells steps on to the scene.
One other book. It comes outside the framework of this brief
• survey but more than deserves a postscript : The Adventures of Don Quixote, in Dent's magnificent Children's Illustrated Classics, at us. 6d. only, for nearly four hundred finely printed pages and thirty or more exquisite plates in colour and black-and-white by W. Heath .Robinson. This book is worth more than its very modest price (by _today's standards) for the illustrations alone.
GARRY HOGG
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