Colour Edition

We’re still in the depths of winter here in London, with a preponderance of grey skies, rain, sleet and outdoor temperatures not very far above zero. Actually I find winter extremely pleasant at times, but the cold and rain can grow rather monotonous… Hence I thought I’d just brighten up this blog today by introducing an issue in colour.

This picture is the cover from a book I bought second-hand many years ago. I can’t remember exactly where I got it; perhaps from one of the second-hand book stalls at Norwich market or maybe at a fascinating and completely ramshackle old shop called The Scientific Anglian, which was hidden away in the backstreets of Norwich but is gone now, alas (that bookshop merits a blog post of its very own, I realise.)

It has also been a long time since I read this story – Return to the Lost Planet, by Angus MacVicar, published in 1954 – but my recollection is of an adventure that would have appealed to the sort of children who wanted something more science-oriented than Enid Blyton and thrilled to tales of rocket ships and planets of peril rather than (or maybe in addition to) mysterious castles and islands.

The book is one of a series, about a boy called Jeremy who goes to live with his uncle Lachlan, who lives on a Scottish island and also happens to be an inventor and space explorer. The eponymous lost planet – Hesikos – occupies an orbit between that of Mars and Jupiter and is therefore prone to getting very cold, and this is the case at the beginning of the second book Return to the Lost Planet, which finds Dr Lachlan McKinnon stranded on Hesikos in his damaged craft and trapped by the encroaching ice. Somehow – within four months! – a new spaceship must be constructed and a rescue mission organised.

It’s delightfully escapist. Just imagine having an eccentric relative who lived on an island and could build spaceships in his back yard without requiring some sort of gigantic corporation, an army of minions, endless red tape and a vast slice of the nation’s GDP. It’s surprising just how few people are needed to launch spacecraft in this story – you need a decent engineer of course, a professor or two, someone to do the admin, another person to make a good cup of tea now and then… And imagine being able to hop aboard said spaceship and travel to other planets without being bothered by such mundanities as passports, money, visas, quarantine, border controls or health and safety. Heaven! Wouldn’t it just be fantastic if life was like that.

What I find appealing about these novels is that they hark back to a more optimistic and uncomplicated age, when it was easier to write tales of space travel and discovery without being bogged down too much in the mire of geopolitics. True, these are also children’s stories and so tend to be about unbridled possibilities, without dwelling too much on the real-life limitations, drawbacks and disappointments familiar to our adult selves. Ultimately, perhaps, I’m looking back to my own childhood, when the world seemed to be a truly marvellous place and when anything might have been possible.

Incidentally, Angus MacVicar was a prolific and successful Scottish author who died in 2001 at the age of 93, and I wonder what he made of this rather odd and unheroic post-Apollo era of space exploration (orbiting telescopes and robotic Mars rovers but no starships or Moon bases.)

Who knows, though – he might not have found it so depressing. After all, there are still wonders to be found in the universe. And if they fall short, there always remain to be explored the infinite wealth and vastness of the human imagination.

Kenneth Grahame: The Wind in the Willows

For me, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame is one of those childhood books (like The Hobbit, like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) that were not so much well-loved books – although they were and are, of course – than they were a vital part of my inner life, as personal as the memories of dreams.

It was an interesting and worthwhile experience, therefore, to re-read Willows this year, as an adult. There were some things I had never forgotten – the escapades of Toad, Mole’s rediscovery of his riverbank home, and also the Wild Wood. There were also details I had forgotten but were brought splendidly back to life, upon re-reading the book. And there were things, curious things, that I had never really noticed before, but now strike me as intriguing and strange.

The story itself is very simple, and a summary might be: Mole meets Rat, Mole and Rat meet Badger, Mole, Rat and Badger then get involved in Toad’s misadventures and help him to recapture his ancestral home. And that’s basically it, apart from a few chapters where odd, unconnected things happen. It’s a bit like a river, really; meandering along, slow here, then fast, then a bit slow again, nothing too complicated. Take away the saga of Toad, and there wouldn’t, narrative-wise, be very much left.

But that doesn’t matter. Grahame’s delightful characters carry the show: timid yet plucky Mole, cheerful Rat, gruff and sensible Badger and of course the incomparably impulsive, irresponsible, lovable, larger-than-life Toad of Toad Hall. Their interactions and conversations are a joy to read. And the world they inhabit is also a joy, a sort of cosy, rural, sunlit Edwardian riverscape that never existed in the “real world” but nevertheless does exist, in the imaginations of those who have read and loved this book.

Many things are just as I remembered them. As a child, I found the Wild Wood scary, and this episode still has a sinister, unsettling charge to it. Sitting in my warm room in front of the computer, I can read it with equanimity; outdoors in the wintry dark, this is the sort of stuff than can come back to haunt. And Badger’s house – you know, if I ever became single again, this is the kind of place I would like to inhabit, a bachelor’s comfortable, snug, fire-lit den, preferably underground, with lots of passages and well-stocked larders and, of course, a stout door to keep the Wild Wood out…

There are other aspects of the book of which, as a child, I was completely oblivious. Like the fact that the characters could be said to lead rather privileged lives, defending the interests of the landed gentry against a horde of bolshie upstarts and lower-class types. Or that the characters are also talking animals, who dress and behave like humans, but exist in a world where there are also animals (such as horses) who look and behave just like animals, and humans who are humans but who are also somehow the same size as the animals (how else could Toad disguise himself convincingly as a washerwoman?)

However, it’s best not to expend too much analytical thought on all that, for it matters not a whit. The story exists outside normal time, space and historical realities, and it abides by dream-logic, which is perfectly fine, and logic enough for the story’s purposes.

There are a couple of strange things, though, not noticed much when I was reading it as a child, but which now stand out. The abandoned underground city, with its vaults and pillars and pavements, which is connected by passageways to Badger’s home. And the unearthly but benevolent Presence encountered by Mole and Rat, when they go searching for the missing Little Portly (Chapter VII, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.) Lost cities and pagan gods, what can it all mean? Well, I’m not sure if I’ll ever know, but again there’s nothing to lose sleep over. The reader’s sense of wonder is engaged, and that’s the thing that matters.

The Wind in the Willows was first published in October 1908, almost exactly a hundred years ago, and since then it has not lost a fraction of its ability to entertain and enchant.

Happy centenary, old friend.

(I posted this review last month on Planet Bookworm, and thought I’d better add it to my blog before the end of 2008. How time flies!)