An interminable night
I could no longer see my hand before my face: I might as well have been blind. I thought of the miners, who had worked down here. At least they had had lanterns. But even...
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John Christopher is coming!
As The Independent’s Invisible Ink article put it, was there ever an author with so many pseudonyms? With its third publication, The SYLE Press turns its attention from the Hilary Ford novels to those of...
On a knife-edge
Jane had been there before – or rather, Cynthia. In John Christopher’s The Caves of Night, after a caving accident, she finds herself clinging on to the edge of an abyss, with the weight of...
‘Scream, if you like’
He moved towards me without haste. For an instant I was paralysed, a rabbit in front of a stoat; before fear changed and spurred me to action. I managed to get to my feet as...
Like a rat in a drain
I had already noticed a small hill rising out of the rolling contour of the moor, and now saw a building huddled beside it, or the ruin of one. It was low-lying, with a shattered...
The second Lady Bedivere
From his pocket he took a small black velvet bag, tied with black cord. He undid the cord and opened it, tipping the contents into his free hand. Stones flashed in the lamplight. They were...
I thought it was tin!
Long before Jane was pushed down a mine-shaft, before her fictional contemporary Alice fell down the rabbit-hole, even before King Arthur trod the bleak landscape, people had been coming to the west country for tin....
A darker face
I would not deny what had happened to me under the Arthur tree, nor belittle it. His kiss had aroused a feeling in me I had never known or imagined. I could vouch for my...
All for nothing
The rain had gone, the dusk was calm, the sky glowing in the west, and I felt the need for fresh air after being cooped up all day in the house. And the need for...
The better the day, the better the deed
He was grinning still, and I thought there had never been anything I loathed more than that grimace – not even my father’s face twisted in drunkenness. He said: ‘And if I were to carry...