Henry
Treece
There
was a time when i read everything i could get my hands on by Henry
Treece; it must have started at least forty
years ago, because i know that i was at Shrewsbury House when i first
read any of his books; i can also remember in the very early 1970s,
in Vancouver, visiting the book bus that came around to West Point
Grey, and desperately searching for any of Treece’s works ~ usually
unsuccessfully. It is thus now at least thirtyfive years since i’ve
read these books i loved, and i almost jumped for joy when i came
across this one in the Machynlleth market; in fact, i had to
physically restrain myself so that the stall-holder wouldn’t
suddenly raise the price (50p ~ can you beat it!) knowing she had a
live one. Of course, i could have bought all of them at any time
(assuming i had money!) in any bookshop or on-line, but how much more
joy has been brought to me by this method than that. Furthermore, a
particular joy of this book is that i think it could well be the
exact edition i read previously; certainly, the cover art looks very
familiar, it is a Puffin book, and is price-marked at 3/6 (verbalised
as “three and six” meaning three shillings and six pence, or
rather less than half the very good price i just paid for it [50p equates to ten shillings, old style]!), so
clearly this volume dates to prior to 15 February 1971,
Decimalisation Day. So, the book itself? Well, what can there be
other than joy in rereading something one has held in rosy memory for
so long? To be sure, it’s simple: It was written for children;
it’s more story than history: It is fiction; it’s casually
brutal: It was written prior to the contemporary concern with
correctness and concern for “lesser” peoples. But these are not
really faults, merely descriptions of what, why, and when it was
written. It is also a great story, exciting, based in truth, a
superb introduction to an era of history, and, to put it simply,
extremely enjoyable. I’d like to read this aloud to JAG.
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