People have suggested I find another subject for a biography, but I suspect it won't be another children's writer. "Alice" transfixed me at the age of seven, and I yearned to know the author.

Get 'em young, and you've got 'em for life, as the Jesuits (almost) said.

Star in the Hand
A couple of other books made a deep impression on me as a child, though. One was "Star in the Hand" by E.F. (Elizabeth) Stucley. It is about a Cornish fisherman's son who becomes a theatre director. It has a tremendous sense of place and period and as a child I remember thinking she really understood everything she was writing about. I was stuck in dreary Army quarters in Germany, but E.F. Stucley offered a door into Edwardian Cornwall, with its joys and its limitations.

So Who Is E.F. Stucley?
I've turned up a few other books by E.F. Stucley but none has the artistry perfection and truthfulness of this story. Wish I could find out more about her, but almost all I know is that she was Cornish.

Children who don't like reading and don't have access to stories miss out on such a lot.