Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week

Halloween is the time when many people's thoughts turn to witches.

I suddenly remembered reading Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week (1982) many years ago; I decided to take another look to see if it contains any article-inspiring content.

This little book for children combines magic-related fantasy with boarding-school life. While there is little to say about the main story and there isn't much material suitable for direct quotation, there are still a few elements that inspire commentary.

The Witch Week of the title, a time of many strange incidents, begins a few days before Halloween, which makes the book very suitable for the occasion.

The cover on this edition is just right for Halloween:

Keeping the balance
A previous article mentions the importance of balancing depressing books with reading material that lifts the spirits.

Witch Week contains both cruelty and humour; scenes that are very painful to read because they involve humiliation and bullying are balanced by witty dialogue and descriptions of amusing incidents.

The power of hate again
Witch Week provides supporting evidence for the proposition that hatred can sometimes be helpful. 

Charles Morgan is a loner and odd one out among the pupils. He lists in his journal everything that he hates, which includes the school buildings and at one point all the people in the school!

This hatred helps to keep him going.

Leslie Charteris and his Saint books: some further thoughts

When the idea of featuring Leslie Charteris's Saint books first came to me, I expected the article to be a short one. I soon realised that there was far too much material of interest for even a long article, so I produced a second post about the Saint stories. That still wasn't enough to cover everything I wanted to say about the books and their author!

This article contains most of the remaining material.

A few green references
After finding many fascinating occurrences of the colour green in the lives and works of various writers including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I decided to see what I could dig up for Leslie Charteris and the Saint. While the results of the investigation are nowhere near what I found for other authors, some references seem worth a mention.

Leslie Charteris spent the last years of his life, from 1967 to 1993, in Englefield Green, a village in Surrey.

Leslie Charteris co-wrote scripts for Sherlock Holmes radio programmes with a Denis Green in the 1940s. 

Rather confusingly, some Saint stories are narrated by a Dennis Green, who appears to be a different person from the one above.

Simon Templar, aka The Saint, is known as the Robin Hood of modern crime; Robin Hood is traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln Green.

The Saint lives for a while in an apartment that overlooks London's Green Park.

The short story The Export Trade features a gang of jewel thieves called the Green Cross Bunch. 

In the short story titled The Green Goods Man, the Saint puts a stop to the activities of a conman who produces counterfeit pound notes, the 'green goods' of the title.

A few early editions of Saint books were published with green covers: