First sight of the island
Sarnia went up on deck with the Jelains and stared about her. The morning was blue and still, the sea a deeper blue, with only the gentlest of swells on which the mail packet rocked,...
Author: thesylep-dev
A woman’s place
‘The position of women in our society is a thing that troubles me deeply. For all the progress we have made and are making, for all the advancements of science, there are respects in which...
Forget Winning the Hunger Games!
The internet magazine Wired recently published an article which compared The Tripods by John Christopher (also known as Hilary Ford, also known as Sam Youd) with the Harry Potter books and The Hunger Games.
‘More earthy and meaty than Doctor Who’
The broadcaster and journalist, Ray Gosling, who died last year, reviewing a John Christopher novel, The Sword of the Spirits: The question, in a story for children, is how do you keep as modern as...
Not a true lady
It was Sarnia’s habit to cross the road by the entrance to Chancery Lane, where the sweeper was Gimpy Jimmy. He was a tall thin white-haired man who had left a leg in Spain, fighting under the Duke’s command. He would never accept a coin from her, and she had ceased to urge it on him. He was puzzled, she knew, by the fact that, although a lady in appearance, she went to work. He himself was not in need of money. The position was a good one, and he had lived frugally and saved over the years.
Skulduggery
Hilary Ford on the genesis of Sarnia: I envisaged a woman of the late nineteenth century marrying into this milieu, finding it unendurable and fleeing back with her child to the more ordinary hazards of...
Sarnia
Life holds no prospect of luxury or excitement after Sarnia’s beloved mother dies: potential suitors vanish into thin air once they realise that marriage to the orphan will never bring a dowry. Yet her post as a lady clerk in a London banking house keeps the wolf from the door …
