The Witch of Clatteringshaws

Dido, a child Odysseus, is one of the great fictional heroines * The Times *What I relish in particular is the swiftness of the telling, the vigour with which brilliant moments of perception seem to be imporvised in the sheer delight of the onward rush of the story“Quirky” is a word which could have been invented to describe the books in this series … What they are, first and foremost, is fun * Observer *To the last, energy and invention show no sign of flapping * TES *Brilliant in its own right, The Witch of Clatteringshaws is also a wholly satisfying ending to Joan Aiken’s long-running and original saga of Dido Twite and her friend Simon Battersea * Guardian *Aiken is like no one else. No other writer sets invention free with such exhilarating, irresponsible variety as she does. She runs the long distance race of a novel at the narrative pace of the sprinter * Books for Keeps *The last of Joan Aiken’s tremendous Wolves of Willoughby Chase sequence … an action-packed finale * The School Librarian *

Joan Aiken was born in Sussex in 1924. She was the daughter of the American poet, Conrad Aiken; her sister, Jane Aiken Hodge, is also a novelist. Before joining the ‘family business’ herself, Joan had a variety of jobs, including working for the BBC, the United Nations Information Centre and then as features editor for a short story magazine. Her first children’s novel, The Kingdom of the Cave, was published in 1960.Joan Aiken wrote over a hundred books for young readers and adults and is recognized as one of the classic authors of the twentieth century. Amanda Craig, writing in The Times, said, ‘She was a consummate story-teller, one that each generation discovers anew.’ Her best-known books are those in the James III saga, of which The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first title, published in 1962 and awarded the Lewis Carroll prize. Both that and Black Hearts in Battersea have been filmed. Her books are internationally acclaimed and she received the Edgar Allan Poe Award in the United States as well as the Guardian Award for Fiction in this country for The Whispering Mountain.Joan Aiken was decorated with an MBE for her services to children’s books. She died in 2004.

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