Although he wrote more than 40 books in a career that began in the mid-1970s, Robert Holdstock will probably always be best known as the author of Mythago Wood, a novel in which a patch of primeval English woodland is revealed as a gateway into the human subconscious, and the birthplace of myth. Michael Moorcock called it “the outstanding fantasy book of the 1980s”, and it won the British Science Fiction Award, the World Fantasy Award, and, as La Forêt des Mythagos, was awarded a special Grand Prix de l’imaginaire. (more…)

Out with Alex Rider and in with William Brown. A leading head teacher has vetoed some of the most popular modern children’s fiction for his school library, declaring it “so simplistic, brutal or banal” that it is barely worth reading. (more…)

This manor has links to Henry VIII and a children’s storybook hero (more…)