![]() ![]() ![]() Set in the 1890s, its premise is the staple of much children’s literature: a lonely young child, in this case a boy named Kay Harker, has lost his parents and is being brought up by an indifferent guardian and a cruel governess. It was – and is – one of my favourite books, but, while the sheer joy of it is undimmed, I can now see that it stayed in the memory because it is full of deep feelings, and the ultimate resolution of its plot has an emotional satisfaction that I felt as a child but did not then understand.įirst published in 1927, The Midnight Folk is still in print but it is less well known than its sequel, The Box of Delights, which many remember from a successful BBC TV adaptation in the 1980s. So it came as a shock to discover that he was the same John Masefield who wrote The Midnight Folk, which seemed to burst from its pages in a torrent of surprises and delights. That John Masefield, stiff and distant, seemed already to be from a long-dead past. ’ – and wondering what all these strange, beautiful-sounding words meant as I laboured over my ascenders and descenders. I remember copying out his poem ‘Cargoes’ in primary school – ‘Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir. ![]() John Masefield was in his last year as Poet Laureate when I was born in 1966. ![]()
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