The Cruise of Naromis. August in the Baltic 1939 By G.A.Jones

Every now and then a book pops up out of nowhere and grabs you by the throat. Not in a brash or aggressive way, but by sneaking under your skin and eyebrows and being hard to put down or ignore.

The Cruise of the Naromis is one of these. It came to light in a fairytale way when Julia Jones, the author and publisher, took a long hard look at some papers left many years before by her father George, which turned out to be an almost casual account of a motor boat trip undertaken in the very month before World War II became a reality rather than a lurking fear.

George and his four friends, all carefree and middle-class, joined the RNVSR – a sort of amateur navy for small boat freaks – and took a ‘pleasure trip’ up the Kiel Canal to the Baltic Sea, fraternizing happily with men who very shortly became England’s sworn enemies.

Along the canal through Germany, school children waved happily at them, and German-speaking young men drank with them like traditional brothers of the sea. And all the time Hitler and Churchill were making their dreadful preparations.

Julia’s father gives a peculiarly specific picture of a certain type of young man, in a certain era coming to an abrupt and catastrophic end. His companions tended towards classic English nicknames – he was ‘Honest George’ and there were also ‘Skip’ and ‘Fattie’ – and classic English attitudes. Their boat was also of that ilk: built of wood on the Norfolk Broads, with two diesel engines and a full suit of sails. Think Arthur Ransome, think Captain Flint.

Think, as they did, lovely, dreamy, flaxen-haired German damsels drinking tons of German beer and elegantly smoking cigarettes. Enough to make a young man’s heart ache or break.

Nothing much happens to them on the trip – thank God – but they take a lot of photographs, which they (perhaps disingenuously) see as pretty insignificant. Oh yes, of shipping in the Kiel Canal the week before the war breaks out. They were possibly lucky to end up alive, who knows?

But they did, thank heaven, and because of that we have Julia Jones and the rest of George’s family. Like this book, worth cherishing.

Published by Golden Duck. Isbn: 9781899262335

Black Waters by Julia Jones, reviewed by Dennis Hamley

This is the fifth novel in the Strong Winds sequence and is a tough book dealing with tough – and urgent – questions.   Here, the emphasis is on Xanthe, whose prototype is Arthur Ransome’s Nancy Blackett.  Black, vulnerable yet superbly strong and resourceful, she is the outsider in this story, which could easily be subtitled ‘Xanthe Alone.’ For there is much ranged against her.  

Julia Jones has a genius for portraying evil, which she's already shown in the Strong Winds sequence from The Salt-Stained Book onwards. Here, the contagion  starts during the Olympic yachting trials, where Xanthe’s main rival is the beautiful, rich, ominously-named Madrigal  Shryke. I was creased up with anger at Madrigal. I could hear her speak: I could recognise her particular brand of vitriolic nastiness and utter vindictiveness.  One of the many virtues of this novel is the satisfyingly unexpected nature of her eventual destiny, which suggests surface nastiness comes with deep-rooted character defects.

And this capacity for evil is not confined to Madrigal's devilish articulacy. It spreads into society generally: the Essex coast and the corporate future it seems destined for become a metaphor for our whole society.  It alarmingly raises a central  problem. As Jan Needle asked in a recent blog, are the very rich intentionally criminal? Is the corporate ideal  incompatible with any democratic version of the good life?  Julia Jones’s dramatisation of this mentality in the microcosm of the Essex Blackwater suggests that it is and its far-reaching consequences are now unambiguous. But this is also a superb mystery story. Xanthe, as a way of trying to blunt the misery of her experience at the hands of Madrigal at the Olympic sailing trials, becomes a sailing instructor for disadvantaged children. In doing so she unlocks a family feud which has gone on for generations and conceals  a pure evil of which Madrigal’s nastiness is just a symptom.

Behind all the Strong Winds novels is the inspiration of Arthur Ransome. Many writers, including me, will tell of his influence - how he almost taught us how  to write. But surely his are out-of-date books based solely on sailing and camping? There was no call in what we mistakenly see as his settled, unquestioning world for the moral indignation which is such a feature of Julia Jones's work. After all, the nearest to villains in the Swallows and Amazons series, apart from the incompetent buffoons who steal Captain Flint's precious manuscript, are surely the Hullabaloos in Coot Club and they are only noisy, vulgar and drive their motor launch too carelessly round the Norfolk Broads. Not so. Ransome just once gives vent to  real, deep-felt anger in the way which is reflected so much more all-pervadingly in Strong Winds generally and Black Waters in particular. It's in Great Northern? where Dick Callum, elated at having evidence that the Great Northern Diver really does nest in the British Isles, rows across to tell Mr Jemmerling, the great naturalist, about it. And there he finds that Jemmerling is not what he seems. He is an egg collector. His proposal to prove Dick's discovery to the world is to steal the eggs and have the birds shot before witnesses, stuffed and put on display.

Dick escapes in tears and the novel's central theme, leading to a deliciously satisfactory ending, is thus assured. This to me is one of the great scenes in children's literature. Its power angered me when I was eleven and that indignation is still with me when I reread it now. It dramatises Ransome's revulsion at the deliberate perversion of the moral order Mr Jemmerling presents. A small example perhaps, but Mr Jemmerling in his self-centred greed is himself a corporation in miniature and as symptomatic of the mess we've got the world into as the more far-reaching concerns of Julia Jones in this extraordinary sequence of novels. And it indicates what a worthy successor she is to that wonderful author.

Julia Jones shares and carries on Ransome's wonderful knowledge and experience of sailing, which always leaves me in a state of admiration spiced by a comfortable sort of ignorance. Like Ransome, she is not afraid to put her characters in situations of extreme danger at sea which can be countered only by exceptional expertise. Here, in a climactic scene, we have Xanthe truly alone, and her sailing competence not only proves the point she would have made at the start were it not for Madrigal but contains taut and dramatic writing of a high order. Potential readers who don't know what to expect in this matter can get a taste of it in Julia's short story in Flash in the Pen, the anthology from Authors Electric, now on Kindle as well as in paperback.

Black Waters is available on Kindle and in paperback, published by Golden Duck.

The Lion of Sole Bay, reviewed by Jan Needle

Many times in my life, I’ve been floored by the alleged differences between books written for adults and children. The newish ‘genre,’ YA, only adds to my confusion. Take Julia Jones’s trilogy, which has now mysteriously grown to four parts, and will stop over my dead body. Here’s my simple test: hold up your hand if you preferred Treasure Island as an adult, or a child. Ditto the novels of Arthur Ransome. Or try it in reverse. How many of you loved Agatha Christie as a child and find her embarrassing as an adult? Right, experiments over. What I mean is this. Having just finished Jones’s The Lion of Sole Bay, I am confident that it is about nothing less than love and loneliness, and never mind the age labels. As were the first three.

   Julia’s child characters, let’s say, sprang originally from her reading of Ransome. His was a world of unthinking wealth and privilege that many readers can clearly never enter. But for me, as a child, this class ‘thing’ was never a problem. It was way beyond my life experience, but it just was. I was working class, they weren’t. But they did wonderful things and they sailed. I suppose I imagined John Walker had an accent just like mine. Wow!

   Julia’s characters live in a different world again. Some of them are dirt poor, without the benefit of what our Government so pathetically and offensively insists on calling ‘hard-working’ parents. Some of them, indeed, are in care, some of them have fragile mental health, some of them have mums and dads (or not) who are on the verge of going under. But she involves them in situations that are the backbone of the Ransome books. They interact, essentially, with each other. Adults range from the bizarre to the extraneous, but her children are on their own, and  unlike Ransome’s, have extremely subtle needs.

  Above all things, they know (although they don’t articulate it), that they need love. And Ms Jones understands, from the bottom of her soul, that love is help; and she turns the story screw to make that need grow greater all the time. Not in a melodramatic way at all, however. Julia’s stories tend to make me actually cry.



  The construct of The Lion of Sole Bay is extraordinary, and achingly simple. A boy called Luke, whom we know of old, is left to have a longed-for holiday alone with his father Bill while his extended and fragmented family go off abroad for their own ‘trip of a lifetime.’ Bill lives on an old fishing boat, and works in the local boatyard, where on the night he’s due to meet Luke, he actually meets a little girl called Angela. She is an emotional outcast, hanging on to a gang of older boys, with whom she manages to accidentally pull a shored-up boat down on to Bill, which comes very close to killing him.
The gang run off, but she stays.

  Angela is one of the school’s hopeless ones; friendless, apparently feckless, probably on the spectrum, a heavily-bullied dimwit, always in trouble, much despised. She is terrified of the police, but when she knows that they are coming, she cradles the injured man, and dares to hold his hand.

She has to run at last, of course. But learns later that Bill, now in intensive care, mistook her for an angel.

   Angela, known derogatorily as Ants because the other children (the nice, normal ones) like to pull her pants down in the playground to check for the insects that must be crawling in them because she is incapable of keeping still, has found her name at last, a name that she has subconsciously ached for, an identity that can feed her soul. Angel.



   Ants and Luke, however, are not the only damaged ones in this story. Alongside Bill’s boat, for some time, has lain a Dutch motor barge called Dree Vrouwen (Three Women) manned (irony) by a mad fascistic politician called Elsevier, her mentally ill follower Hendrike, and Hendrike’s thirteen year old daughter Helen.

  These three women have come across the North Sea to liberate the figurehead of a Dutch warship involved in the Battle of Sole Bay, in 1672. It is now the proud sign of a roadside pub at the head of the creek, but to Elsevier it is the material exemplar of an ancient crime.


  Her own planned crime – in her eyes, the reversal of an ancient wrong – can only be carried out on a certain tide. And Elsevier, although mad, is a great general (she thinks), and completely ruthless. She controls Hendrike with herbal potions, fungi, and illegal drugs. She controls Helen through blackmail (Helen loves her mother and must protect her). And she carries a gun.

  A November the Fifth party will be the perfect cover for the sea-going heist, and
 Luke, Angel, Helen are thus thrown together – to hate and mistrust each other roundly. Bill lies in hospital, while other adults are helpless and disbelieving. The North Sea, and the late autumn gales, are waiting hungrily. I’m telling you, they will be horrible.



  As well as the sea, Julia Jones understands the horror of the human condition, and how utterly cruel life can be. But she also understands redemption, inside out and backwards. And she is an absolute master (mistress? Ask Elsevier) of dramatic tension. Some scenes are more thriller than children’s story, but to categorise this book as either misses several points.

The children and the adults in this novel, this trilogy-plus, all need love. Their loneliness is awe-inspiring. With calmness and power, without a jot of sentimentality, Julia Jones gives it to them.

  Call it what you like. For me, its category is universal.


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lion-Sole-Strong-Winds-Series/dp/1899262180

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lion-Sole-Strong-Winds-ebook/dp/B00FNUN414/ref=kinw_dp_ke

Russian Roulette by Giles Milton, reviewed by Julia Jones

Russian Roulette

A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot

Giles Milton

Julia Jones's review appears in the current issue of Mixed Moss - journal of The Arthur Ransome Society

This story begins at the Finland Station, Petrograd, 16^th April 1917. Three Englishmen have been there for several hours already as the train they are expecting is running late. They know that something is about to happen: they are not yet sure how significant it will be. The three Englishmen are William Gibson, an English adventurer staying with his mother-in-law, Madame Schwatz-Eberhard, Paul Dukes, a British Embassy courier, and Arthur Ransome, then a journalist for the Daily News. The man for whom they are waiting is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov – Lenin. Finally the train pulls in to the darkened station. A bright light illuminates the central figure, a band strikes up the Marseillaise, Lenin speaks to the waiting crowd: “Dear Comrades, soldiers, sailors and workers. I greet you as the vanguard of the worldwide proletarian army.”

Ironically neither Ransome nor Dukes appears to have made much of the event at the time. Ransome was well aware of the simmering unrest and latent violence that had intensified in the city since the assassination of Rasputin at New Year. However he had been instructed by the Daily News to cut down the length of his despatches so did not include Lenin's arrival in that evening's round-up. Dukes, though underwhelmed by Lenin's appearance, sent a message of warning to the Foreign Office that was widely treated as a joke. Gibson, whose mother-in-law's house had recently been invaded by rioters, was the most immediately impressed. “Without one word this seemingly wretched little figure made his presence felt to the onlookers in a way they had never before experienced in their lives.” Gibson plays no further part in the story. Both Ransome and Dukes were directly – and dangerously – involved.

Within weeks of his arrival at the Finland Station Lenin had repudiated the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention which set out spheres of influence in Central Asia and protected British India's northern frontiers from attack by Russia. Already the defences were weakened by the withdrawal of troops for service on the Western Front. Lenin was convinced that an alliance between Bolshevism and militant Islam with an attack across the North West Frontier would be the quickest and most effective ways to attack British imperialism and spread the world wide revolution. Russian Roulette follows this strand of history though until March 1921 when the extent of Russia's economic collapse forced Lenin to sign the Anglo-Soviet trade agreement and disown Manabendra Nath Roy's bizarre “Army of God” which he had financed and sent across the border only months previously.

What has this this new twist in the Great Game to do with Arthur Ransome, readers may ask? Giles Milton's contention is that the effective development of British espionage in Russia was the key ingredient in monitoring and thwarting Bolshevik ambitions as Lenin and the Comintern plotted to export their revolution. Grigori Zinoviev, first chairman of the Communist International (Comintern) had also been on the train that had arrived that at the Finland Station that April night. In March 1919 when the Comintern was founded and Lenin pledged global revolution Ransome was once again a witness. This time he had no doubt that what he was hearing mattered. “I could not help realising that I was present at something that would go down in the histories of socialism.” And by this time – March 1919 – he was officially part of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (later MI6). Paul Dukes had also been recruited.

After the killing of the Tsar and his family in July 1918 and the landings by Allied forces later that summer, diplomatic relationships between Russian and the outside world were almost non-existent and the position of any British, French or American national was, at the least, precarious. The ambassadors left the country: two hundred Allied nationals were arrested and interned. Official representatives were expelled. George Hill, a member of the Royal Flying Corps, who had originally been sent to Russian to train pilots for service on the Eastern Front, had previously asked Ransome's friend, Karl Radek, what would happen to him if Allied forces landed on Russian soil. Radek told him that he would either be imprisoned or executed “to show Bolshevik contempt for officers of a capitalist power.” In the summer of 1918 Hill realised it was time for him to disappear.

Clandestine information was the only way that the outside world could have any idea what was happening inside Russia – or what Russia was planning beyond its borders. Giles Milton traces the establishment of effective intelligence systems by the legendary 'C' – Mansfield George Smith Cumming, the Chief – from the arrival of Lenin in 1917 to the failure of his Indian ambitions in the early 1920s. Both Dukes and Ransome were recruited by 'C' in the winter of 1918. They were part of an organisation that included Somerset Maugham (who used his experience in his Ashenden stories), Sidney Reilly (the “Ace of Spies”), Augustus Agar who skimmed over the surface or the Baltic minefields in an ultra-light Coastal Motor Boat and George Hill, ex-Royal Flying Corps.

Hill had shared accommodation with Ransome in the Elite Hotel, Moscow. They had enjoyed heated arguments, frequently in their shared bathroom, after which Hill described Ransome as “beating himself dry like an outraged gorilla”. By 1921, when Lenin was finally forced into trade negotiations with London, British intelligence was so good that they were eavesdropping on every communication. “That swine Lloyd George has no scruple of shame in the way that he deceives,” Lenin instructed his trade envoy. “Don't believe a word he says and gull him three times as much.” This message, Milton reports, “was decoded and placed on Lloyd George's desk within hours of it being sent.”

I found it extraordinarily interesting to see Ransome as part of this wider picture. In an odd way Russian Roulette accentuates his individuality. Many of the agents who worked for the intelligence services were motivated either by a taste for reckless adventure or a hatred of Bolshevism. Ransome was neither. He believed he had a mission to explain each side to the other and he was also a man in love. He never allowed his sympathy for the Bolshevik ideology to tempt him to betray his country or his companions – unlike René Marchand, Bolshevik sympathiser and correspondent for Le Figaro, who was a trusted part of the British – French – American plan to overthrow the regime but then told all to Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the Cheka. Marchand was a genuine double agent as Ransome never was. 

Nevertheless, understanding the tension of the situation and the potential for damage, it's easy to see how Ransome's personal views and his relationship with Evgenia Schelpina (Trotsky's secretary) would make him suspect -- as it did to MI5. He should be “shot like a dog” said Major General Knox, formerly of the British Embassy in Petrograd. Those who knew the truth – like Lord Robert Cecil, Arthur Balfour and key players such as Robert Bruce Lockhart and George Hill – valued Ransome's accurate assessments of the situation. “He was extremely well-informed, intimate with the Bolsheviks and masterly at summing up a situation,” said Hill. It was a senior official from 'C's Secret Information Service (MI6) who pressurised the Daily News into retaining Ransome when he left Russia in November 1918. His work was deemed “vital” to British interests. Arthur Ransome was officially enrolled as agent ST76 and sent back to Petrograd.

The only quibble I have with Russian Roulette is its title. Yes, it emphasises recklessness, high stakes, calculation of the odds – many of the qualities of an outstanding agent – but one of the most important themes in Giles Milton's book is the importance of organisation; chains of couriers, safe houses and back-up. 'C' established bureaux in Stockholm, Helsingfors, Riga, Reval which provided essential support for Ransome, Dukes and the others. Those extraordinarily brave agents despatched deep into Russian Turkestan were not employed by the SIS. They therefore had no support network and frequently no means of sending out the information they had risked their lives to obtain. 

That single niggle aside, Russian Roulette is an exciting read, well and clearly written, generously sourced. It's a book that does more than fulfil its brief. As I read Milton's account of the ease with which the shrewd propagandist Wilfred Malleson succeeded in pitting Shia Muslims against Sunnis in Afghanistan, and the shameful episode of Churchill's use of poison gas in Northern Russia, I felt that Russian Roulette, like all good history, not only illuminates its period but has something to say to the present day as well.

Published by Sceptre August 2013

Hardback £20    Kindle edition £10.99

Review of The Lion of Sole Bay by Julia Jones

In ‘The Strong Winds’ Trilogy, Julia Jones pulls off something quite remarkable.  To suggest it was conceived as an ‘homage’ to Arthur Ransome perhaps does both authors a disservice, because what Jones achieves in her trilogy of children’s books; in which the key features of Ransome also appear – sailing, adventure and the resourcefulness of youth in the face of an alien adult world – is something which will appeal to Ransome fans, but also to those for whom Ransome’s style and characterisation is locked in a bygone age. The ‘Strong Winds’ Trilogy is Ransome for our times. Julia Jones gives us 21^st century children facing modern, everyday, real problems. Whether you like Ransome or not, you can enjoy ‘Strong Winds.’  These are contemporary stories, with ‘issues’ but without being ‘issue based.’ More than that, the adventures are founded in the reality of the lives of these very ‘real’ characters.

I thoroughly enjoyed all three books of ‘The Strong Winds’ Trilogy and could recommend them to both adults and young people alike. These are the sort of books you revel in reading for yourself and make the perfect present for other people. They are books that will sit on many a shelf for a lifetime. The only criticism I could have of ‘The Strong Winds’ Trilogy, is that, like all good things, they had to come to an end.

With ‘The Lion of Sole Bay’, Julia Jones has opened the sea chest again. Moving beyond the Trilogy ‘Strong Winds’ is destined to become a series – and I for one hope that Jone will find the time and energy to match Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons series by writing (at least) twelve novels. 

You can read ‘The Lion of Sole Bay’ as a standalone, and if you do so, you’ll rush back to read the Trilogy. If you have read the Trilogy in advance you’ll find in ‘The Lion of Sole Bay’ an author in full stride, completely comfortable with her writing style. This is a tour de force.  Certainly I have grown into the Jones style of storytelling over the past three novels and this time I sat down with some expectations, which were not disappointed.  Jones managed to far exceed my already high expectations. She has taken a ‘minor’ character from the Trilogy, Luke, to be the ‘hero’ of this tale.  In doing so she reminds us that there are no ‘minor’ characters, that everyone has a story.  Jones’ ability to present the world through the eyes of a twelve year old is impressive, and we get lost in Luke’s ‘imagination’ to the point that we start to ‘believe’ as he does. 

‘The Lion of Sole Bay’ has two ‘heroines’, both unlikely – Angel has ADHD and Helen is being reared by a seriously demented mother. The result is the sense of a ‘community’ story, with characters’ lives interwoven and the reader feels every bit a part of the story.  Jones is, as ever, uncompromising in her portrayal of such ‘issues’ as drugs and disability, but the issues are so embedded into the narrative that they never jar or threaten the storyline. They simply make the characters more real because they have the ‘real’ flaws of ‘real’ people.  This requires expertise and sensitivity on the part of an author, and Jones never skips a beat.  I am particularly impressed by the way Jones draws adult characters such as ‘mad’ Peter, and Helen’s drug-fuelled mother Hendrike. While these are shown in a way that helps a child to make sense of them, they are also convincing enough portrayals for adults to stop and think about the relationship between adults and children. We see the child’s perspective and it makes us consider our own responsibilities.  Julia Jones draws both adults and children into her narrative web, and all can learn from the story.

As for the sailing, I leave it to those more knowledgeable than myself to debate the in’s and out’s of that aspect.  Given Jones’ knowledge and love of sailing I’m sure it’s all accurate and ‘ship shape.’ For an ‘armchair’ sailor like myself, I’ll simply say it’s all thrilling enough and interesting enough to form the basis of the story.  But there’s much more to it than sailing.

Structurally the plot moves along with perfect pacing. I found myself slowing down as I read to the end, not wanting the story to end, but desperate to know what happens next. That, for me, is the sign of a truly well written novel. Using a truncated time frame, round Halloween, worked really well on a number of levels and the linking of historical ‘fact’ with the present is an element I enjoyed immensely.

The central story is further enhanced by the opportunity for the reader to ‘engage’ even more.  The ‘Sole Bay Lectures’, delivered to the children by Angel’s father in their entirety (offstage so to speak) during a particularly tense time in the story, are written out at the end for anyone who wants to know more about the original Battle of Sole Bay 1672 which forms an historical backdrop (and in some senses a metaphorical parallel) of the modern ‘adventure’ part of the story.  We are left questioning the ‘fictionality’ of M.V.Vandervelde which is a writer’s conceit I particularly enjoy.

 I get the feeling Jones enjoys writing her fiction as much as I enjoy reading it, and feeling that bond between writer and reader engagement is rare and powerful.   Julia ‘gives’ throughout the novel is so many ways.  She also gives us additional ‘material’  in the form of personal snippets such as reference to Ransome’s Picts and the Martyrs, and The Lady of Stavoren.  None of this reads like ‘research’ but all of it adds an extra dimension to the ‘story.’ As does the ‘Tales from the Wheelhouse’ section at the end where Jones explains her personal connection to the Red Lion.  Add to this a glossary of Dutch words, maps, pictures of the ‘craft’ and a set of wonderfully evocative illustrations by Claudia Myatt, and you are getting an absolute gem for your money.

I have a sense of sadness whenever I finish a Jones novel, knowing I’m going to have to wait a while for the next. But now, with four ‘Strong Winds’ to read again and twelve Ransome to keep me company till the next one comes out, I may just survive until number five hits the shelves? Next year please Julia!

Review by Cally Phillips 

The Salt-stained Book by Julia Jones

Review by Bill Kirton

The references to Swallows and Amazons and Treasure Island, as well as the fact that the protagonist, Donny, is a 13 year old boy, mark this as a book for young adults but its appeal is much wider. In fact, it will delight any reader who enjoys a good story, well told, a cast of characters with humour, energy (and sometimes malice), and a central mystery that keeps you turning the pages. If, on top of that, you like sailing, this is one you mustn’t miss.

It has the feel of a Ransome adventure but goes further than that. Some of the children are troubled by very modern dilemmas which are hinted at with compassion and concern, and the adults who oversee their ‘welfare’ are conveyed with tongue-in-cheek awareness and a subtle humour. Their foster mother, for example, is the reverent Wendy whose tendency is to stand ‘beside the table being Understanding’ and her husband talks to their charges as if he were reading from a social work pamphlet. ‘Why don't you go and make some social contact with Luke and Liam?’ he says at one point. Then, later, his suggestion is ‘You could spend quality time with Luke’.

The social worker herself is even worse. She tells Donny, ‘Research confirms that your unsupported background will have left you seriously deficient in social integration skills’, and she introduces herself by ‘flashing an official identity card and a synthetic smile’ and giving her title as ‘multi-authority leader worker, S. L. A. G., School Liaison and Guidance’. (In case you didn’t know, the term ‘slag’ is a derogatory term applied – usually by men – to women.) She wears a frilly blouse, short leather skirt and pointy shoes which have ‘criss-cross thongs that went right up to her knees. After that there was so much bare leg that Donny had to look away’.

Asides such as this are carefully crafted and scattered through the narrative. The moods and changes of rivers, lakes and the sea envelop the whole adventure and even the boats used by the characters have their own identities and personalities. It’s a richly textured story with many complex depths and a highly enjoyable and thoroughly absorbing read.

The Ghost Drum by Susan Price

Most of the things one would like to say about The Ghost Drum have already been said. When a book has won the Carnegie Medal, been admired and loved on both sides of the Atlantic and included in reference guides such as Julia Eccleshare’s 1001 Books to Read Before You Grow Up it has surely become part of the children’s literature canon. In which case all one might reasonably want to know is why on earth did Faber allow it to go out of print?

But of course that isn’t all. The list of Carnegie Medal winners begins with Arthur Ransome’s Pigeon Post in 1936 and runs to Sally Gardner's Maggot Moon, the 2013 winner. To read solidly through the list would be a literary education. I began The Ghost Drum expecting something good but being prepared to glean at least part of my pleasure from seeing it in its 1980s context. Secretly I was just a little anxious that the brilliant complexities of Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (Carnegie Medal winner 1996) might cast a backwards shadow over The Ghost Drum.  It didn’t. There are points of comparison (the shaman’s drum / the alethiometer, the way the witches are conceptualised, the shape-shifting bear) but The Ghost Drum is a very different type of story.

Our narrator is a learned cat on a golden chain (a reference to Pushkin’s Ruslan and Ludmilla) and we are at once in the world of long dark winters and Slavic myth. The witches’ houses run on chicken legs or cat’s paws but their inhabitants are not as instantly terrifying as the iron- toothed Baba Yaga of Ransome’s Old Peter’s Russian Tales. They are old and wise and various. Their magics are the powers of words and music. They must be learned. At the beginning of the story it is the deepest midwinter night and a slave-woman, huddled close to the big communal stove, has given birth to a baby girl. An old witch is nearing the end of her three hundred year life. She needs an apprentice and has come to take the child.

Now the horror of the slave-mother’s situation becomes apparent. She would like her baby to have a better life but she is afraid. “My baby doesn’t belong to me. I am a slave, her father is a slave, and she and we belong to Czar Guidon. If I gave you the baby, we should be whipped for giving away our master’s property. We should be executed for stealing from him.” This modern fairy-story is about power. The witches and shamans have power but theirs is a power that has been worked for and learned and must be exercised within rules – even by the wicked Kuzma. The Czars and Czaritsas, however, are human and ignorant and are finally driven mad by their own absolutism – though not before they have caused untold suffering and death along the way.

The Ghost Drum is beautifully written using a starkly simple vocabulary. “Far overhead the sky-stars glisten white, bright, in their darkness; underfoot the snow-stars glitter white in whiteness. Between the sky-stars and the snow-stars hangs a shivering, milky curtain of twilight.”  Many of the most telling moments use this simplicity to shocking effect. “Swiftly she was brought into the dazzling light of a small courtyard and there – when the soldiers’ eyes had got used to the light – they cut off her head.” When the Czaritsa Margaretta succumbs to paranoia she sees the ghosts of her naked and starving people in every palace mirror. Naturally she has all the mirrors  smashed and then ground into powder. This then is “poured into jars and put away in the palace storerooms for sprinkling on the food of her enemies. Though a Czaritza, she was a thoughtful and thrifty housewife.”

Fairy stories have traditionally given a voice to the oppressed. The Ghost Drum can be read as an exotic and magical story from a faraway land and simultaneously relished as a satire on the madness of dictators. It’s timeless.

(The Ghost Drum is the first of three linked volumes: Ghost Song and Ghost Dance follow.)

Reviewed by Julia Jones