Top Ten Books

I was already thinking of posting a top ten of my favourite-ever books. Then I heard the news that Barry Letts had died. He wrote my favourite Doctor Who novel ever. I took it with me to read on the train to Ilkley on Saturday. I must have read it a dozen times since I bought it in 1980. Of course I loved all the Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke Doctor Who books, but there was something very special about the Daemons. There was something very cheery about this kids' lit excursion into Dennis Wheatley territory.

It's a properly cosy supernatural adventure story, complete with village pub and a witch's coven under the ancient church. We've got malevolent living gargoyles and appearances by what appears to be Old Nick himself. The whole village of Devil's End is placed under a force shield and all the brilliant characters are at the mercy of the villainous Master and Azal, the Daemon from deep space.

It's the opening chapters that I loved the most, with the live TV broadcast from the opening of the Barrow in Devil's End. It's a sequence that finds echoes in TV - Stephen Volk's masterly 'Ghostwatch' in 1992 and, of course, the wonderful 'Most Haunted.' There's something very special about this sequence of events in Letts' novel (and the original TV version too): with the Doctor and Jo racing through the stormy countryside in their vintage roadster, and the arrogant achaeologist scraping away with his trowel, live on telly. And the men from UNIT, of course, obliviously watching the rugby on the telly, eking out their Hallowe'en with corned beef sandwiches.

The other book I'm picking out here for my top ten is Nina Bawden's 'Carrie's War.' I read this when I was eleven and many times since. It's the tale of evacuees being moved to Wales during the war, a brother and sister, who wind up staying with a mean shopkeeper. He won't even let them stand on the stair carpet in case they wear it out. His sister looks after them kindly, though, and they meet the rest of his family, down in the valley, and they uncover some pretty dark secrets from the past. It's such a sad story this one, somehow. Everyone feels rather thwarted and lost, at first. But even the horrible characters are redeemed. We even feel for Mr Evans, in the end. It's a book about loyalty and love. There are slightly Gothic touches - with cursed skulls in libraries and old houses burning down.

It was my first day atWoodham Comp I was given this to read. Thank you, Mrs Sewell, our English teacher that year. Every English teacher I had at Woodham Comp was a saint. That first day I'd had a horrible time, so far. We'd had a hideous PE lesson, involving a Cross Country run: a mile up and down hills in cold black mud. That awful PE teacher screaming at us all the way. We were told this would happen every Monday till Christmas. And then the boys had a metal work lesson, in which we were told we mustn't be scared of the many frightening-looking machines: the lathes and brazing hearths and god knows what else. No, we had to get used to such things if we were to go on and be successful in finding a factory job when we grew up.

Then, at the end of the day, came our first English lesson with Mrs Sewell - and she went round passing out copies of Nina Bawden's book. All the boys thought it looked like a book for just girls. They were wrong and I didn't care, anyway. Such a brilliant choice for a first book in a new school. It's all about settling in somewhere new and being scared and becoming brave enough to deal with it all.

Someone else was telling me recently that kids in secondary school rarely get to read a whole book. It's all excerpts these days. They only get to study the bits they'll be asked about in exams. That sort of thing makes me livid. Another example of that whole penny-pinching, mean-minded, exam-passing, hurdle-jumping utilitarian view of the world. The world's full of target-setting nincompoops who like people to 'evidence' stuff rather that actually do it, or experience it.

Anyway - enough ranting!

These are two of my favourites. Nina Bawden and Barry Letts, from round about the same time in the mid Seventies and read by me at the start of the Eighties. Two definites in my all time top ten.