“The culture was gradually changing. Geoffrey Trease usually teamed his heroes with an adventurous girl, and Rosemary Sutcliff sometimes threw in a significant female character, like the fierce child Regina in ‘Dawn Wind’ – but the default option for historical children’s fiction remained male, and it sometimes seemed as if the most exciting thing to happen to a girl in all of history had been when Flora MacDonald rowed Bonnie Prince Charlie over the sea to Skye. You couldn’t have adventures in a skirt.”
Read MoreSeven Miles of Steel Thistles
A collection of my essays on fairy tales and folklore. The title is borrowed from an Irish fairy tale in which the hero gallops his pony over ‘seven miles of hill on fire, and seven miles of steel thistles, and seven miles of sea.’
Latest News

Coming of Age as a Viking: Historical Children’s Books and Gender

Myth and Fairy Tales at Tŷ Newydd
Recently back from the wonderful Tŷ Newydd Writing Centre in North Wales https://www.tynewydd.wales/ty-newydd/, where fellow author Catherine Fisher and I tutored a week-long course on Myth and Fairy Tales in…
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Fairy Tales at the BBC Proms
Talking fairy tales and folklore, fox spirits and feminism, giants and selkies – for the BBC Proms
Read MoreRecent Work
The Weirdstone of Talybont
'I was in South Wales, standing on a real hill with a real stone in my hand, imaginatively inhabiting a children’s book I read for the first time in 1965, which has stayed with me ever since.'
All Shall Be Well
'I woke up to see a skinny little imp skipping around the room...'