Tower and Town, September 2024 (view the full edition)Sam Leith - The Haunted WoodAnyone who enjoys books and reading will have fond memories of favourite stories from their youth. Perhaps you were swept away into strange lands like Narnia, or wandered around the forest with Winnie-the-Pooh, or giggled at the antics of Just William. Whichever it was, Sam Leith's The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading is sure to bring those memories flooding back. Leith opens with a prehistory section around fables and fairy tales, and how children came to be seen as needing a separate literature to adults. Next, it's the Puritan writers, who wanted to educate and moralise, which led into Victorian children's publishing such as Charles and Mary Lamb's retellings of Shakespeare's plays. Leith then takes us from Alice in Wonderland and The Water-Babies all the way through to JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, in a highly enjoyable discussion of classic children's books and the impact they had when they were published. There are omissions, of course, but Leith is clear at the start that he can't include everything. Instead, he concentrates on the books that have had the most impact and are of the highest quality; as literary editor of The Spectator, he's well placed for this task. And while his wood may be haunted, his ghosts are of the distinctly friendly kind. Go back in time with Sam Leith in The White Horse Bookshop at 11.30am on Saturday 28 September. 
Kate Fry |