Five Favourites 20: Pamela Rushby

Today, Pamela Rushby writes about her five favourites.

The Borrowers series by Mary Norton. Four-inch high people living secretly under the floorboards and in the walls? And scurrying out to ‘borrow’ things? You can’t scare me!

The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White I loved this for the use of old English expressions (eg where the hunting Tally-ho! comes from) and for strange facts such as the ‘monsters’ that people believed lived in far-away countries.

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith My favourite book of all time. So romantic- girls living in poverty in a ruined castle. And then the rich Americans arrive. Sigh …

The Bastable series by E.Nesbit eg The Story of the Treasure Seekers. The children are so real – and the stories so clever.

The Marlow series by Antonia Forest eg Autumn Term, Falconer’s Lure, The Attic Term, Sisters at Boarding School, and In the Holidays. You’ve got to love an English boarding school story! Again, the characters are so real, and the situations they’re in very realistic. I also adored the way Antonia Forest started the series off just after WW2, and it finishes in what appears to be Swinging London times – but the characters have only aged a few years. So what? It’s fiction, isn’t it!

One more … The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I loved this as a child, and I was shattered to re-read it recently, and find that it now kind of made me want to vomit. Oh well …