At the heart of Byatt’s novel is Olive Wellwood, a children’s author who lives with her rambling family in an equally rambling house in the wilds of the Kentish countryside. Adults, locked out of that childish Eden forever, strove to recapture some of the magic by poring over fairy tales and fairy lore, folk stories, myths, ballads and stories. There was something very special about this period, when childhood was regarded as a special, almost sacred state. Think of a classic children’s novel and there’s a good chance that it was published in the last years of the 19th century or the first years of the 20th: The Jungle Book Five Children and It and Peter Pan are all good examples. It captures the magic of childhood before going on, ruthlessly, to show how adults create children, only to destroy them. I’ve read several of her novels, but The Children’s Book is my favourite for the way it vividly evokes bohemian life at the turn of the 20th century in England. Byatt is a rare writer: erudite, intellectual, compelling and technically brilliant, with a profound but unsentimental sense of compassion. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, which I first read ten years ago and which enchanted me just as much second time around. First up is an easy one: I’ve just finished A.S. I have been reading and seeing operas and concerts and plays, and I fully intend to write about as much as I can remember through the fog.

(A word of advice: don’t ever do this.) There’s been lots of other stuff going on, some delightful, some rather gloomy, but holidays are now less than a month away and I’m starting to get a grip. On the contrary, I’m clawing my way out of a period dominated by the noble (but absolutely demented) effort of writing an exhibition catalogue, from scratch, including research, in three months. In the immortal words of Granny Weatherwax, ‘I aten’t dead’.

Novel by as byatt