Arthur’s country
We had walked on the drive itself, with gravel softly crunching under our feet, but suddenly Sir Donald put a hand under my elbow and steered me on to the lawn. The grass was heavy...
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More – or less – beastly
A significant character in A Bride for Bedivere is Beast, the ugly cowering mutt whom Jane befriends and who – like many of the others she meets at Carmaliot – turns out to be not...
Disdain at first sight
Sir Donald asked: ‘Have you taken your Chlorodyne?’ ‘Doctor Roberts brought me some mixture of his own.’ ‘Then you should have taken them both,’ Sir Donald declared. ‘I have sent away for some pulmonic wafers,...
My four-legged friend
The figure rose out of the ground in front of me, a shorter distance away than the bird had been. I stopped, my hand on my breast. It was a man: wild, dirty, menacing. He...
Why I wrote THE LOTUS CAVES – Part 2
John Christopher (also the author of SARNIA and A BRIDE FOR BEDIVERE) resumes his account of the writing of THE LOTUS CAVES. First published in 1969, republished on November 4th this year by Simon &...
Why I wrote THE LOTUS CAVES – Part 1
In 1971, two years after its publication, John Christopher (alias Hilary Ford, alias Sam Youd) published an article in the children’s magazine ‘Puffin Post’ to explain his reasons for writing THE LOTUS CAVES — recently...
Beauty and Beast
I came on him unexpectedly, the morning after my arrival. Walking in the garden I turned the corner of a high box hedge and saw him lying in my path, dozing in the wintry sun....
The eldest cousin
‘Here is Michael at last. Jane, permit me to introduce you to the eldest of your cousins.’ I stared as he bowed in greeting. It was true Sir Donald had said nothing of his appearance,...
Welcome to Carmaliot
The village huddled in a valley fold, its single street rising fairly steeply between converging slopes. Above and beyond the clutter of buildings, on the horizon, an immensely larger house was silhouetted against a sky...
A smiling sacrifice
The morning was grey to match my feelings, and bitingly cold. Sir Donald was handed in to sit with his back to the coachman, and I was placed opposite. I was permitted to have the...