Seven Miles of Steel Thistles

I’m not afraid of the dark. It’s streetlights I don’t like, especially those glaring orange sodium lights. Have you noticed how strang...

Earthsea, Narnia, Middle Earth – the three classic fantasy worlds I talked about last week – are distinctive places. Most children – most ...

This is the rather lovely cover of ' New Fairytales: Essays & Stories ', a gorgeous book of poems, critical essays and...

Schooldays. I’m about eight years old, I have my brown school reader in my hand, and I’m about to knock on the headmistress’s doo...

In this third post about witches, I’m considering some children’s books in which the characters are recognisably witches, but good ...

The witches from children’s fiction who appeared in my last post were all wicked. But their authors wrote about them with humour, and...

Macbeth:  How now, you secret, black and midnight hags?  What is’t you do? Witches: A deed without a name. “Witch” is not a neut...