The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde

Yesterday the weather forecasters gave us the oh so cheery news that we are stuck with this freezing cold weather until the end of April, due to the position of the jet stream. I couldn’t help being reminded of the two winters we endured when we lived in Essex and the town of Braintree was snowed in for a week. We had never seen anything like it before, and it is only about 20 miles from the centre of London.

At that time Maggie Thatcher had just got in as Prime Minister and I was blaming her of course because as far as I was concerned she was an updated version of Andersen’s Snow Queen or the C.S. Lewis version, the White Witch in Narnia.

Well I can’t blame Thatcher this time (but we do have a Tory dominated Government.) Maybe it’s The Selfish Giant from Oscar Wilde’s story who is causing the never ending winter, in the shape of bankers and politicians. As it’s Good Friday today I thought it would be appropriate to do a post on it.

I bought this book when my boys were wee, but really it was as much for me as for them because I love the P.J. Lynch illustrations. You can see a lot of Lynch illustrations on Pinterest here. Sadly I can’t see any of The Selfish Giant and I can’t find my own copy of the book, it must be packed away somewhere. If you don’t know the story and want to read it you should be able to find it in The Happy Prince at Project Gutenberg.

If you have a spare half hour you might like to watch an animated version from the 1970s.

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