WHITE AND WRONG

The recent spate of weather has led me to think about those books in which winter and the cold are inflicted by, and represent, forces of evil and darkness. The obvious tale in this category is The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but a book in another brilliant series springs to mind, namely The Dark is Rising, in the pentalogy of the same name by Susan Cooper.

The series, having started fairly lightly with Over Sea Under Stone, goes on to explore powerful themes of mythology, good and evil and personal responsibility, involving - as well as its human and animal characters - figures and ideas from British mythology, such as Herne the Hunter and the Arthurian legends. In the archetypal fashion of these series, an apparently ordinary human being finds he does in fact carry great significance in an ancient battle between darkness and light, and is tasked to undertake a quest involving the gathering of objects and the waging of battles in order to fulfil his destiny.

Written beautifully throughout, and laden with engaging, well-wrought characters, the books also handle the interplay between the everyday and magical worlds with great skill. The second volume - The Dark is Rising - is where the story really takes off, and where the scale and scope of the themes and characters are established, as the dark forces intensify the winter weather and lay siege to those who would oppose them.

Don't be deterred by the awful covers which have been slapped on the books recently; go buy your copies now.

David

STORM WARNING

In the first of four blogs looking at the Capuchin Classics to be unleashed in October, I wanted to say a few words about Storm Jameson, author of Love in Winter.

Jameson is precisely the kind of writer that Capuchin was established to r

ecover from undeserved neglect. She published an extraordinary 45 novels (in addition to much non-fiction work) between 1919 and 1979, joining the ranks of writers who united a consummate narrative gift for plot and characterisation with an acute and critical vision of the harm that society, politics and war can do to a nation and its people. Never losing sight of her socialist and humanitarian principles, Jameson became the first woman president of International PEN at the outbreak of World War II, and was instrumental in the escape of writers from German-occupied Europe.

As Julie Birkett points out in her illuminating and inspiring foreword to our edition, which can be downloaded from the Capuchin website, Love in Winter is, as well as a moving and closely autobiographical account of her struggles to obtain a divorce and remarry, a superb so

cial and economic anatomy of London in 1924. The city in this novel is akin to a fantastic, complex living creature, which one of the characters finds is

"growling

in her ears, like a wild beast".

Birkett also points out the importance of writing and writers in Jameson's

world view, and how she looked to them to provide visions of a

happier, safer world.

Storm Jamieson's full, fascinating life is told in Julie Birkett's recently published biography, Margaret Storm Jameson, a Life (OUP 2009).

David