"Intelligent, informed, brilliantly responsive and some of the best appreciative writing about Narnia I have ever come across. It is writerly rather than academic, and I had no difficulty in whipping delightedly through the whole thing. The best book ever about why we love Narnia!" Francis Spufford
'My baby brother's hair was as soft and dark as fine weeds. I stroked his tiny back, teasing the long fin on his spine. His mackerel tail beat weakly against the water.'
Steel Thistles Press
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.’
'The boy twisted like a cat. With swirl of cloak and a rasping sound, something flashed into the air. A long steel sword…'
'In the black tangle of thorns and brambles at the base of the cliff, Wolf saw a face like a half-moon, white one side and dark the other, floating in an aureole of hair like dandelion fluff. It vanished, pulling back into darkness.'
The Troll trilogy in one volume, 'West of the Moon' is the coming-of-age story of young Peer Ulfsson, set in a Viking world full of danger and magic.