Authors Electric

Stig of the Dump by Clive King Last month something happened to me as a children’s writer that filled me with delight. Something that would have been unthinkable even a generation ago. When I was young, few children’s adventure stories had heroines. In most of the books I loved – Stig of the Dump, The Land of Green Ginger, The Phantom Tollbooth, Tom Sawyer, Peter Pan, Jack Holborn – it was a hero who drove the action. Jack Holborn by Leon Garfield I’m not in the least complaining about that; I loved Barney, Abu Ali, Milo, Tom etc. And of course there were many superb – if less obviously adventurous – stories with female protagonists: The Secret Garden, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte’s Web, Carbonel…  But here’s the rub. It was a well-known truism that girls would always read stories with boy heroes, while boys wouldn’t dream of returning the compliment with ones that featured girls. As a writer, if you didn’t want to halve your potential audience, it made sense to...

But we do need our heroes. I’m not ashamed to admit this will be a trashy post. A soap-post in a world of documentaries. Pulp fiction in a sea of great literary classics. What on earth am I talking about? Heroes. Preferably the dark and brooding ones. Think Heathcliff or Mellors . The bad-boys we love to hate – or hate to love. Or even Mr Darcy – and now I’m struggling to think of a romantic hero we all know and love, as romance just isn’t something I read much. But really this post is just an excuse for us girlies to consider and discuss the abundance of hot men on television. And I’m talking Aidan Turner and Luke Pasqualino here. When you think about it, Ross Poldark – if he was a real person – would have been some pox-ridden, lice-infested, smelly bloke with a chip on his shoulder. Nobody in the late 18 th century would have been particularly hygienic, even in the upper-class (why do you think the Georgian era country houses had wooden panelling on the walls...