Abhorsen

L is for Ursula Le Guin

A Wizard of Earthsea was a fantasy that, like The Lord of the Rings, seemed to me to be a true tale from somewhere else. Not a made-up story, but something real. I read and re-read it, and wished I knew the true names of the world around me. I felt the same with the two sequels The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore (the later sequels came out when I was in my twenties and thirties). I also found this sense of truth or reality in Le Guin’s science fiction, particularly The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed.

M is for John Masefield and Arthur Mee

The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights by John Masefield (the English poet) are two little-known fantasies. They are full of invention, co

Arthur Mee was probably a horribly well-meaning Christian gentleman who lived and breathed children’s education. Nevertheless, his Children’s Encyclopaedia, of which there were many editions over the years, was a vital source of much of my abstruse knowledge and peculiar trivia. I think I learned all my Greek legends at an early age from an old set of Arthur Mee’s Encyclopaedia that had belonged to my grandmother. Where else could you look up the number of groats to a pe

N is for Andre Norton and E. Nesbit

Andre Norton ran neck-and-neck with Heinlein as my favourite SF author in my childhood. Interestingly, while I can re-read Heinlein, many of the Norton novels do not fare so well. though she was a great storyteller, her prose has dated more. But the good stuff is still good stuff, and in that category I would include Sargasso of Space, Plague Ship, Postmarked the Stars, Star Man’s Son, Star Guard, Android at Arms, Beastmaster, Catseye and Star Gate.

E. Nesbit was for an early part of my reading experience the only fantasy author available apart from Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Some of her books were read to me by my parents and others I read when I was only six or seven. I recently re-read The Enchanted Castle and thoroughly enjoyed it, so I’m going to dig out The Phoenix and the Carpet, Five Children and It and some of the others.

Ois for ‘Oh, dear, I’m ru

Pis for Philippa Pearce

To be honest I haven’t re-read Tom’s Midnight Garden since I was nine or ten and I can’t remember much about it, other than that I really liked it at the time. This points up the fact that I do reread my favourite books, usually once every five to ten years. It only works with really good books, but with them you can always get something new, in addition to the comfortable nostalgia of reading old favourites. I haven’t re-read Tom’s Midnight Garden because I don’t have a copy, a situation that I will soon rectify.

Q is really quite a difficult letter to find an author for. I shall have to embark upon a Quest to find one that I actually read when I was younger.

R is for Arthur Ransome

Swallows and Amazons Forever! I think that Swallows and Amazons and its sequels can be classified almost as fantasy, in that they are children’s adventure stories that couldn’t happen now and probably couldn’t have happened even in the 1920s and 30s when they were written. But then again, they are completely believable and, as a child, I so wanted to be in one of them. Preferably as a Swallow, not an Amazon. My all-time favourite is Winter Holiday. If Lake Windermere (one of the real lakes in the North-West of England on which the books’ composite lake is based) ever freezes over again I shall be there.

S is for Rosemary Sutcliff

The Eagle of the Ninth introduced me to Roman history when I was nine or ten. It was a potent seed, growing into a still-spreading tree of many branches, because I’m still reading fiction and non-fiction about the Romans. The two sequels (though not direct ones), The Silver Branch and The Lantern Bearers, were great discoveries. I remember the excitement of finding out they existed and ordering them in to my local children’s library. I like many other Sutcliff historical novels, but my absolute favourite is not one of the Roman novels, but a medieval one. It is Knight’s Fee, the story of a Saxon dog-boy and his friendship with a young Norman destined to be a knight.

T is for J.R .R . Tolkien and James Thurber

I’m sure that everything that could be said about childhood infatuation with The Lord of The Rings has been said. It is enough for me to add that my mother was reading it when she was pregnant with me, dooming me to the life of a fantasy author. And to add that I love and respect Tolkien’s work so much that while I may try and imitate some of the epic feel and sweep of his work, I trust I will have the courage to never steal his elves, dwarves, dark overlords and other coin to debase for my own foul purposes.

James Thurber must be mentioned for The Thirteen Clocks. This is a deceptive book, for in addition to being hugely entertaining, it is written in kind of hybrid prose-verse style which I suspect many people may have attempted but been unable to bring off. The Golux and the Todal are tremendous inventions, but it is the language which I love most.

U is for . . . uh . . . Uther Pendragon, which allows me to mention T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, though I think the first part The Sword in The Stone is the best. Once again there are two versions, the stand-alone book is not the same as the text as included as part one of the entire sequence.

V is for Jack Vance

My father’s favourite science fiction and fantasy writer was naturally going to get a head start with me. Jack Vance’s prose style is instantly recogniseable, as is his baroque and lustrous imagination, always coupled with a sly sense of humour and great erudition. My favourites are the five Demon Princes books, which despite the series name are science fiction novels: the Demon Princes are criminals on an interstellar scale. I also return often to the Planet of Adventure series. Of his fantasies, the later Lyonesse series are a personal favourite, though I think only the first one was published while I was still in my teens. Almost anything and everything by Vance is worth reading.

W is for Victoria Walker

It’s also for P.G. Wodehouse (the Psmith and Uncle Fred novels are my favourites, not the Jeeves ones), and the historical fiction writer Ronald Welch, who would run second to Sutcliff as my childhood favourite in this genre. But space is of the essence, so I will mention The Winter of Enchantment by Victoria Walker. A charming forgotten fantasy from the late 1960s, the story of a young boy in the 19th century who must take on a great Enchanter to help a girl rescue herself from his clutches. Lots of people are interested in republishing this work, but the author has proved difficult to find, possibly by choice. It’s a pity, because the book should have another run out on the bookshop shelves.

X is for the reader participation segment of this article. If you can think of a writer whose surname starts with ‘X’ that I might have read in the years roughly between 1970 (when I was seven) and 1983 (when I turned twenty) let me know.