There are not many authors whom readers wish had written more, rather than fewer, novels but Eva Ibbotson is among them. Like Jane Austen, she wrote just six completed books: A Countess Below Stairs (1981), Magic Flutes (1982), Company of...
Alison Lurie’s Foreign Affairs is one of the great works of comic fiction; it is also a profound meditation on being plain. This might seem a large claim to make given that no less a novelist than George Eliot addressed...
Amanda Craig's recommendations for children's books in 2020.
From hugless friends to heroic mice, these are the best stories to get your kids through the pandemic.
I respect and understand what it is that cleaners do. I know mine is honest, reliable and too bright for this work. The people who go into battle against dirt, germs and chaos are essential, and heroic. If they’re not...
“There is no money, and the Bredins can’t afford to divorce.” The first four words opening my new novel, The Lie of the Land, come from a famous note left by a Minister in the last Labour government to the...
Until quite recently, the myths that a Western child would encounter for education or entertainment tended to be those of either Classical antiquity or the Bible. Perhaps it is this that gave Norse myth, with its tales of ice, ravens,...
“All must have prizes” declare those who watch the annual round of prizes – but while this seems true for some, it certainly isn’t that case for most. Prizes are the signs by which an outstanding author is supposed to...
Ever since Ibsen’s Nora walked out of the “doll’s house”, literature has been questioning marriage and patriarchy. Many of the greatest novels, plays and films we have revolve around the consequences of wives choosing adultery over convention. The price for 19th-century heroines,...
One thing that many adult readers find when we encounter modern literature is how seldom it gives us the momentum and sense of wonder we found in books when we were children. Where are the vivid characters, the adventures, the...