Tag Archives: Mary Stewart

A Walk in Wolf Wood by Mary Stewart

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A Walk in Wolf Wood cover

A Walk in Wolf Wood is one of Mary Stewart’s children’s books and features some of the themes which often turn up in her adult books, magical fantasy and mystery. It was first published in 1980 and this paperback in 1981. I don’t know about you but I like the fairy tale castle on the cover. I read this as part of the Scotland 2014 challenge. This has been my sixteenth book.

John and Margaret Begbie were having a picnic in the Black Forest with their parents. The parents were drowsy after their meal and when a weeping man walked past John and Margaret they decided to follow him to see if they could help him. So begins an adventure into the past, featuring a duke and his household and a werewolf.

It reads like an updated fairy tale and is an enjoyable story, I think I would have loved it if I had read it as a 10 year old but it wasn’t bad reading as an adult.

Mary Stewart 1916-2014

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It was with sadness but no surprise that I read Mary Stewart’s obituary in the Guardian yesterday, after all she was 97. I think I’ve read most of her books over the years but it is her Merlin trilogy which I enjoyed most, years later she added another two books to the series.

I read the Merlin ones as they were first published, having to wait for the next one to be written and I remember that I had always meant to write to her as in one of the books she had mentioned King Arthur being at Dumbarton Castle, I wanted to ask her if she had entirely made that up or she had seen it written in an old document or book. But I never did get around to writing that letter, and having read her obituary I think maybe she wouldn’t have appreciated letters from readers, as she was such a private person.

We probably do have to thank a disastrous ectopic pregnancy and subsequent peritonitis which meant that she couldn’t have any children for her being able to write at all. Apparently she had wanted four children and if she had then any thoughts of having a writing career would probably have gone out the window for a good number of years anyway.

You can read some tributes from authors which appeared in yesterday’s Guardian here.

Although Mary Stewart was born in the north of England she did marry a Scot and lived most of her life in Scotland, so she definitely qualifies as a Scottish author for the Read Scotland 2014 challenge.

More Book Purchases

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Well I didn’t get to the secondhand bookshops in Aberdeen on Saturday but we went to Stockbridge in Edinburgh on Monday and I was really lucky again.

I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw two Folio Society editions of the Dorothy L. Sayers books – Murder Must Advertise and Have His Carcase – in pristine condition for the princely sum of £3 each! Of course I had to buy them, I only had fairly grotty paperbacks before, but honestly it felt like robbery! I have been looking for a Folio Gaudy Night for ages, but I’ve only seen a well used one before and it was £35 which is much more than I’m willing to pay. I don’t expect I’ll ever see one for £3.

I also bought a Freeman Wills Crofts hardback – Inspector French’s Greatest Case.

And lastly I had a look at the junior section in one of the Stockbridge shops, I’m always looking for unusual copies of Peter Pan and various other children’s classics, but it was a Mary Stewart which caught my attention – A Walk in Wolf Wood, which is set in Germany’s Black Forest.

It’s very rare for me to go to Stockbridge and not find anything worth buying – bookwise anyway.

Read Scotland 2014

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Have you signed up for Peggy Ann’s Read Scotland 2014 Challenge yet? If not then have a wee think about doing it as I’m sure you could read at least 3 or 4 books which would qualify for it without even realising. For instance did you realise that Ian Fleming would fall into the category of Scottish author, and almost all of the children’s classic authors were Scottish or of Scottish descent. Now that Jack has actually retired he is going to do this challenge, his first ever, he should have much more time for reading now, have a look at his post about it here. We will both be doing the Ben Nevis which is 13 books but we’ll end up doing far more than that I’m sure. In fact I think I might manage a purely mythical Jings, crivens and help ma boab category, and if you’ve ever read Oor Wullie you’ll know that those are all words which are used to mean flabbergasted, astonished, for goodness sake! Because I plan to read about 50 books for this challenge.

To begin with I’m reading Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe over the month of January, doing it in four chunks and writing about it each week. Join in with me if you think you’re hard enough! Judith are you still up for it?

At the same time I intend to read Lanark by Alasdair Grey as a respite from Ivanhoe. Lanark was voted the second best Scottish book recently, the first was Irvine Walsh’s Trainspotting but I don’t fancy that one at all. Below is a list of some of the Scottish fiction authors that I’ll definitely be reading during 2014, I’ll be adding more though. Books with a Scottish setting are also eligible for the challenge. Have a look at the Scottish Books Trust for more inspiration.

Iain Banks
William Boyd
John Buchan
Andrew Crumey
O.Douglas
Alasdair Grey
A.L. Kennedy
Dennis Mackail
Compton Mackenzie
Allan Massie
James Oswald
Rosamund Pilcher
James Runcie
A.D. Scott
Walter Scott
Mary Stewart
Jessica Stirling
Josephine Tey
Alison Thirkell
Angela Thirkell

If I read just one by all of these writers then I’ll have bagged Ben Nevis and then some, but I still have my non fiction books to look through and list, it looks like 2014 is going to be a very Scottish (parochial) year for me!

Oh and I’ll be writing about some of the many children’s classics which are suitable for this challenge. You’re never too old for a good children’s book. Remember that you don’t have to have a blog to take part in this challenge.

Thanks for setting this up Peggy Ann.

The Hollow Hills by Mary Stewart

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I first read this one not that long after it was first published, I had wanted to do a reread for Anbolyn’s Mary Stewart Week and the obvious thing would have been to start with the first one in the series, The Crystal Cave, which I remembered I loved first time around. Well that one is packed away in a box in the attic – somewhere. For some reason The Hollow Hills was not packed away, so I read that one. Unfortunately I didn’t get it finished in time for the Mary Stewart Week.

It wasn’t long before I had an honest to goodness Homer ‘D’oh’ moment because I realised that I had completely forgotten that Merlin had used the disguise of a travelling eye doctor when he wanted to move around incognito. I have a horrible feeling that I read book 5 of the Merlin books not realising that one of the characters was Merlin, trust that crafty Merlin to hide in plain sight! Anyway I’ll have to go back and read all of the books in order, with my brain in gear for next time.

Back to The Hollow Hills and this one is about Arthur from his birth until the age of 14. From birth Arthur is given to Merlin to look after, it’s important that nobody knows of their whereabouts. Although by this time King Uther and Ygraine are married the fact that Ygraine was pregnant before they married means that there would be doubt in people’s minds that the child was in fact not that of King Uther but is the child of Ygraine’s first husband. A definite legitimate heir to the throne in the eyes of the people is what Uther wants and he thinks that there will be no problem with him and Ygraine having more sons in the future. But we all know that Arthur is destined to be King, as does Merlin.

I really enjoyed this book again, the Merlin books have quite a lot of the same elements as Stewart’s more contemporary books, magic, suspense a bit of romance and lovely description of the surroundings. It’s also good that Merlin is just a youngster himself, being only about 20 at the beginning of the book, most people seem to write him as an ancient man with flowing white beard.

For years her Merlin books were known as The Merlin Trilogy and it was only a few years ago that I discovered that she had written two more books to add to the first three. I don’t think 4 and 5 were quite as good but I’m going to reread them all eventually whenever I can get a hold of my copy of The Last Enchantment – yes that one is in one of the many boxes of books in the attic too.

When I first read the Merlin books as a teenager it set me off on an Arthurian binge, there are loads of Arthur books out there, mind you an awful lot of them are just not worth reading at all, unless you just want a good laugh!

1. The Crystal Cave (1970)
2. The Hollow Hills (1973)
3. The Last Enchantment (1979)
4. The Wicked Day (1983)
5. The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

The Little Broomstick by Mary Stewart

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The Little Broomstick cover

When Anbolyn@Gudrun’s Tights first mentioned her Mary Stewart Reading Week I thought that it was a great excuse for me to re-read the Merlin books which I adored as a teenager yonks ago. Then I realised that my own copies have already been packed away in the hope of downsizing soon, so when I was browsing in an Edinburgh bookshop just a few weeks ago and came across a lovely 1971 copy of The Little Broomstick – which I hadn’t read before, it seemed like a sign, so I bought it.

Mary Stewart wastes no time in doing what has to be done in every successful children’s story, that is, she gets rid of the parents. It has to be done because those annoying parents are such a dampener to an adventurous spirit!

Mary Smith is ten years old and feels rather lonely, even within her own family. Her brother and sister are twins and five years older than her, talented and attractive. Everything about Mary is plain, even her name.

When their parents have to go to America for a month on business, it’s decided that the twins will stay at a friend’s farm whilst Mary would stay with Aunt Sue. At the last minute Aunt Sue’s children come down with the flu so poor Mary is sent to Great-Aunt Charlotte who lives in a rambling old house close to woods and cherry orchards.

Nobody in the household wants to be bothered by a small girl so Mary finds a friend in a wee black cat which leads her through the woods to a patch of magical flowers. She discovers that when she accidently transfers some of the flower pollen from her hands to a small besom (brush) which she had been using to sweep up the autumn leaves, it turns into a magical broomstick which whisks her and Tib the cat away to Endor College which turns out to be a training college for young witches. A large sign declares that TRESPASSERS WILL BE TRANSFORMED.

The headmistress Madam Mumblechook welcomes her new student, thrilled that she has brought her ‘familiar’ with her, in other words Tib the cat.

Mary discovers that there’s a roomful of strange caged animals, unlike any animals known to man and they are all desperate to be relieved of their misery and it isn’t long before her Tib joins them in their plight. Mary just has to save them and herself!

Like all good children’s books this one will appeal to children of all ages. Looking back to 1971 when it was written I’m assuming that it was the fact that at that time there were a lot of animal experiments going on in laboratories, torturing rabbits with shampoos, make-up and chemicals in general, and forcing beagles to smoke 50 cigarettes a day – oh yes, believe it! There were a lot of animal rights people going about kicking up a row about it all, unfortunately some of them took it a wee bit too far and started setting mink free from fur farms. I can only assume that they were under the impression that furry = cute because they are still causing devastation in our wildlife today, there aren’t many British animals which can defend themselves against mink.

So that’s the backdrop which I think gave Mary Stewart the idea for this exciting adventure story. What I’m wondering though is – did J.K. Rowling read it as a child and did it give her the idea for the Harry Potter books? I haven’t read any of them myself but there seems to be quite a lot of similarities on the surface anyway. Spell lessons and teachers with names like Madam Mumblechook and the like.

On a personal note, I remember adoring the Merlin series as a 16 year old and Mary Stewart does mention Dumbarton Castle in one of them, that’s the Castle Rock which is at the left hand of my header. I thought about writing to her and asking her if she had seen it mentioned anywhere in books when she was doing her research on the subject. I decided against writing to her because I thought that she was a vey old lady who shouldn’t be bothered by the likes of me. Now almost 40 years later she is celebrating her 97th birthday, which just shows me that she was just a spring chicken 38 years ago – that’s young folks for you, they think everyone over 30 is ancient. Long may she continue!

Thank you Anbolyn for hosting the Mary Stewart Reading Week.

The Prince and the Pilgrim by Mary Stewart

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This book was first published in 1995, so that’s a good 20 odd years after Stewart started her Arthurian books. The Prince and the Pilgrim is set in the time of Arthur but he doesn’t feature in the book.

Alexander is the nephew of King March of Cornwall. When Alexander was a baby he and his mother had to leave the court after King March killed his brother, Alexander’s father, in a drunken attack.

When Alexander grows up his mother tells him how his father died and Alexander sets off to avenge his father. On his way to Camelot, in search of justice, Alexander is waylaid by Morgan le Fey, who is known for working her way through her knights, and she uses her knowledge of herbal ‘medicines’ to keep Alexander in her power.

I enjoyed this book and I think I’ll probably give it a 3 on Goodreads but I don’t think it came up to the standard of the Merlin trilogy which I first read when I was a teenager and absolutely loved. I must get around to rereading them to see if I still feel the same about them now that I’m a long way away from being a teenager.

Book Sale at St Andrew’s and St George’s Edinburgh

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We got up early on Saturday morning so that we wouldn’t be too late in getting to the book sale in St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in Edinburgh, the proceeds all go to Christian Aid. It was Linda from Edinburgh who reminded me of the sale, so a big thank you to Linda!

St Andrew's & St George's Church
By the time we got to the church it was really chucking it down with rain and the books outside the church all had plastic covers over them and everbody had packed into the church – it was heaving with folks and it made it very difficult to see the books, but I persevered, and we went our separate ways. I ran out of money, had to find Jack, found him in the crowd, waved madly, he didn’t see me, he went in the opposite direction, the woman at the stall seemed to think I was going to nick her books, but in the end it was all sorted out and the upshot was I spent a lot of money and Jack didn’t spend nearly as much, that’s usually the way of it. As you can see from the photo above, by the time we got upstairs the rain had stopped and the crowd had thinned.

I couldn’t resist taking this photo of the newly redecorated church, it has had a lot spent on it recently and the organ has been refurbished.
St Andrew's & St George's Edinburgh

It was the ceiling which really attracted me though, beautiful, but I’m glad I didn’t have to paint it. Internally the church is really lovely with pale wood, maybe golden oak and the pews all have blue velvet buttoned cushions, I’m sure in my young day that would have been seen as being un-Presbyterian and just too comfy for church-goers. How times
change!
St Andrew's & St George'sChurch Edinburgh

Anyway, to the books, here they are.

books

The three in the middle are:
The House That Is Our Own by O. Douglas
The Provincial Lady in Wartime by E.M. Delafield
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford. I’ve read it, but it was over 30 years ago I’m sure and was a library book.I want to read it again.

The other one which can’t be seen very well is:
We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor. I’ve never read anything by him but I enjoy listening to him on Radio 4 extra on Sunday afternoons whilst cooking the dinner.

Two of the vintage crime Penguins I haven’t even heard of.

The Content Assignment by Holly Roth
Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford

The third Penguin is Captain Cut-Throat by John Dickson Carr.

The Things We See is a Penguin book which just screams 1950s at you and is about design. It has some lovely photos and even the endpapers are 1950s design.

Civil To Strangers by Barbara Pym. I’ve read quite a lot of her books but most of them so long ago, I can’t remember if I’ve read this one or not. If so, it’s due a re-read.

Anna Buchan and O.Douglas by Wendy Forrester is a book which I’ve been looking for.

The Prince and the Pilgrim by Mary Stewart is one I’ve been meaning to buy for ages, it’s the last in her Merlin/Arthur series and I’m going to read it for the up and coming Mary Stewart readalong at Gudrun’s Tights.

Oasis of the North by Dawn MacLeod is about Inverewe Gardens in the north west of Scotland.

Scottish Highland Watercolours by Sutton Palmer is a collection of 16 watercolours of the Highlands, all very scenic.

I could have bought a lot more books and this week I’ve been restraining myself from getting on a bus and going back for another look because I really didn’t get a chance to look at the many gardening and craft books which were on sale. But I think I’ll be good and resist the temptaion, particularly as there is another library book sale locally on Saturday. The George Street, Edinburgh book sale continues until the end of the week.

The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart

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The Ivy Tree is Mary Stewart’s version of Josephine Tey’s vintage crime book Brat Farrar. I read that one last year and really liked it so I was a bit dubious about reading the Stewart take on the same sort of storyline.

It’s set in a farm in Northumberland in the north of England, Roman Wall country. The elderly owner is failing fast and there’s doubt as to who the property will be passed on to after his heir, his 18 year old grand-daughter Annabel, walked out after a row eight years previously, never to be seen or heard of again.

His great-nephew, Con, is desperate to get his hands on the farm and when one day he sees Annabel’s double, a young stranger from Canada, he and his half-sister Lisa cook up a plan to secure the farm with the help of the doppelganger.

Initially I thought it was a wee bit of a cheek on Mary Stewart’s part to so blatantly nick Josephine Tey’s idea but she mentions her several times in The Ivy Tree and I like to think of Stewart reading Brat Farrar and saying to herself “I could do better than that” – and she did!

There were unexpected twists and turns right to the end of The Ivy Tree, and you can’t say fairer than that.

Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart

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Mary Stewart is another of those authors whom I’m trying to read my way through and ticking them off my list as I go. This book was first published in 1991 but my copy is a Hodder and Stoughton which was published this year.

Rose Fenemore is an English tutor at Cambridge but she’s also a secret but popular writer of science fiction. She’s got a bit of writer’s block so when she spots an advert in The Times- ‘Ivory tower for long or short let. Isolated cottage on small Hebridean island off the coast of Mull. Ideal for writer or artist in search of peace.’ – she decides to write off to the box number in the hope of renting it for a holiday. I know, I know – it’s very similar to Elizabeth von Arnim’s An Enchanted April but on the other hand it is something which lots of us do from time to time. Well we do anyway.

Rose’s brother decides to join her in the cottage as he’s a keen photographer and he wants to photograph the wildlife on the island, particularly the elusive stormy petrel, a small sea-bird. Things don’t go exactly to plan and Rose realises that she can’t find peace to write even on the tiny island of Moila, off the Isle of Mull.

This was a quick read and it’s perfect if you’re looking for some light holiday reading and you particularly enjoy books with a Scottish setting. Or even if you just want something to take you away from all the horrible news which we’re getting on a daily basis, from all corners of the world.

I always look to see who a book has been dedicated to because it can be really interestng. Mary Stewart dedicated this one to Culcicoides Pulicaris Argyllensis with respect.

She obviously has a sense of humour as that is the Latin name for the teeny wee midge which plagues the west coast of Scotland and eats people alive! Luckily they very rarely bother me!