The Amazing Mr. Blunden is a renamed fantasy novel from 1969, written by the English author Antonia Barber. Mark Gatiss has called it “an unforgettablThe Amazing Mr. Blunden is a renamed fantasy novel from 1969, written by the English author Antonia Barber. Mark Gatiss has called it “an unforgettable adventure”; high praise indeed from one of the most inventive and talented writer/director/actors on the current English scene. In fact Mark Gatiss wrote the screenplay and directed the most recent film The Amazing Mr. Blunden for Sky One in 2021. In this film, Mr. Blunden was played by Simon Callow.
However, The Amazing Mr. Blunden is not the original name of this novel and 2021 was not the first time this story has been filmed. Written by Antonia Barber in 1969, it was originally called “The Ghosts”. It was made into a film in 1972, directed by Lionel Jeffries, and renamed The Amazing Mr. Blunden. Laurence Naismith first starred as Mr. Blunden, and Diana Dors was Mrs. Wickens. Although I remember going to see this film a few years later, sadly I have no recollection of the actual film at all, although the publishers say it was “to great success”!
Subsequent editions of the book either have both names of the book on the cover, or just the later title. Getting hold of DVDs of either of these films is not easy, and until recently even copies of the book itself seemed in short supply, having being out of print for over thirty years. However, “The Ghosts” was the novel which established Antonia Barber as a writer to watch. It was the second out of an almost four decade-long career, in which she penned many award-winning novels and picture books for children of all ages. “The Ghosts” (or The Amazing Mr. Blunden as I should perhaps call it from now on, since that is the title on the edition I am reviewing) was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, an award she was later shortlisted for again in 1983 with “The Ring in the Rough Stuff”.
The Amazing Mr. Blunden is recommended as suitable for either children or young adults (the suggested reading age is 11+), although personally I think it could also be enjoyed by top Juniors (9-11) with a good reading age. It is supposedly a time-travelling adventure which moves between England in the First World War and Regency Eras.
The setting and premise is reminiscent of several other English ghost/fantasy tales from the early to mid-20th century. There are several common tropes to such novels, such as a family where one parent has died leaving them not very well off. The remaining parent is always very loving, but too busy to pay much attention to the child. So we have a child (or as in this case children: Lucy and Jamie) who escape into a world of which the adult is oblivious, or cannot see. This goes back at least to “Peter Pan”, where adults lose the power of being able to see fairies.
Plus there is usually an Edwardian/Victorian setting for at least part of the tale, possibly through time travel. Moving house often comes into it, either as downsizing through lack of money, although here it is a bit different, as an offer comes from the mysterious Mr. Blunden. And finally there is a “quest” which only the child/children can do, but which is crucially important.
If we have been able to find a rare copy of “The Ghosts”, we are intrigued as to who these ghosts might be. The answer is fluid, and open to interpretation at different points. If however we are reading a later edition, then of course we want to know who Mr. Blunden is, and why he is deemed “amazing”.
We soon suspect we might know the answer to both questions. The story begins with an elderly man visiting a struggling family out of the blue one evening. Mrs. Allen has recently been widowed, and lives with her three children Lucy, Jamie and baby Benjamin, in Camden Town, London. We see things mostly from Lucy’s point of view to start with, and she notices how old-fashioned and preoccupied the old man looks. He does not explain how he has chosen Mrs. Allen, but offers her a job as caretaker of an old abandoned house. The house, he tells them, used to belong to the late Mr. Latimer, and “Blunden, Blunden and Claverton, solicitors” are trying to find the rightful owner. Mrs. Allen is relieved at this help and accepts the position, despite the solicitor’s warnings about rumours that ghosts haunt the old house.
(view spoiler)[It is not long before the ghosts make their appearance. One day, Lucy is exploring the garden and picking flowers, when she hears someone calling her name. She goes closer, only to discover the ghosts in person. They are dressed from far earlier times, and are a girl a little older than herself and her much younger brother. The ghosts’ names are Sara and Georgie Latimer, and Sara learns that to them, she and Jamie are the ghosts.
On the next day Lucy and Jamie both see the ghost children, and learn how frightened they are. Their uncle, who is now their guardian, is trying to get rid of them, and Sara is afraid that Mrs. Wickens the housekeeper is trying to kill them, either by starving them - or worse. Sara is desperate for help, as she fears there is not much time left. She has managed to discover an old book in the library, which has told her how to travel in time. She read a recipe which told her how to collect the leaves of certain herbs and make them into an infusion. By drinking a little of this mixture, she could now travel forwards in time in order to get help. Sara has to carefully control how much she and Jamie each drink so that she can coordinate how long they stay in the later time.
The story follows how Lucy and Jamie get to know more of the story from the past, as Sara seems to know much more than she is saying. Once they learn that the two ghosts died as children in a fire, they know that they must try to save them. Jamie seems to understand what Mr. Blunden has told them about the wheel of time, but neither child is sure that the past can be changed.
By drinking the same infusion of various leaves made from Sara’s information, Lucy and Jamie are able to go back in time with Sara and Georgie. They see for themselves the cruel plotting of Mrs. Wickens, the housekeeper. She is the mother of Bella, whom she wants to marry Sara and Georgie’s uncle. They also see Tom, the gardener’s boy, who would do anything for “Miss Sara”. Lucy is able to work out from graves in the chuchyard, and from what the vicar tells them, that Tom also died in the fire. Now Lucy and Jamie are convinced that whatever happens, they must try to change history.
The older Mr. Blunden, who had visited their mother, founded the firm of Blunden, Blunden and Claverton. Although Mrs. Allen had been to their offices to officially receive the job offer, she never realised that the old man who had come to see her in the first place must have been a ghost, but assumed he was an older partner. Mr. Blunden is also desperate to change time, because it was due to his intolerance that the children stayed with their uncaring and dissolute guardian. That was why he had tracked them down.
In the end Mr. Blunden helps Jamie to rescue Sara and Georgie from a fire, which may have either have been started by their wicked uncle, or by Mrs. Wickens whilst drunk. Tom bravely climbed up to rescue Sara and Georgie, who were deliberately locked in their bedroom by Mrs. Wickens, but he fell when Mr. Wickens rocked the base. Jamie runs into the blazing house to help Tom, despite Lucy’s cries. But it is Mr. Blunden who saves the day, sacrificing himself but making sure that everyone is safe. Jamie takes a long time to recover from his ordeal.
In a sort of explanatory coda, a lawyer named Mr. Smith returns to the household. Lucy and Jamie learn that Sara had eventually married Tom, and emigrated to America, but had been estranged from her brother Georgie, who disapproved and moved to Camden Town. According to a letter sent by Sara to Georgie, and disovered by the lawyer, her great-grandson is the late “Mr. Allen” who was Jamie and Lucy’s father. Thus Jamie is now considered heir to the house, as he is Sara Latimer’s great-great-grandson, and the family’s financial troubles are over. (hide spoiler)]
It is an engaging idea, but Antonia Barber had to twist the plot in a few ways to make it work. Also, the middle part of the book seemed to drag rather. Furthermore, the viewpoint character shifts from Lucy to Jamie, which is not a problem in itself except when their relative roles also seem to change. Perhaps this needs a little explanation …
As mentioned, The Amazing Mr. Blunden has now been republished, by Virago in 2022, and presumably on the back of the recent film. The cover of this latest edition of the book shows two children who we assume are Lucy and Jamie, but Lucy is clearly older than Jamie. When the book was published as “The Ghosts”, again, Lucy had been shown as the older child. Since Jamie behaved in a very young way to start with, for example drumming his heels on the chair, I assumed this to be correct.
In the early part of the book, the main focus is on Lucy, and she seems to be the more responsibe of the two. Jamie behaves much as an English boy of his class and time was taught to; for example in the classic words of A.A. Milne:
“James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Took great Care of his Mother, Though he was only three.“
Jamie is more than 3, of course, but their comparative ages are largely irrelevant. He is protective of his sister because as the male, he is expected to be, regardless of age. In fact the ages of Jamie and Lucy are never specified. The viewpoint switched to be more Jamie’s in the second half of the book, and Lucy (who had seemed sensible up to that point) was seen through his eyes as a little dithery. (view spoiler)[ This was essential for the ending, when she took no part in the action but waited outside the house in a useless sort of way. (hide spoiler)] Jamie was now the one who seemed to be taking more responsibility, and this came as a surprise. Had the illustrators (and possibly the filmmakers) got this wrong?
Girls are often taller than boys at the same age, and also develop intellectually faster until the age of about 12 (examinations take account of this) which further complicates the question. There is also the possibility that the children on the cover are not Lucy and Jamie, but Sara and Georgie, as the difference in their ages is much greater.
The answer comes right at the end of the book, (view spoiler)[ when we learn that Jamie is to inherit the house because he is the “oldest living heir” (hide spoiler)]. The fact that the reader does not get a consistent impression of the ages of the children is irritating, and a fault in the book, but there are worse ones.
There were quite a few excellent children’s fantasy books written around this time, by authors such as Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, but in my opinion this book is not in the same league. The descriptive passages are cursory, and it lacks atmosphere - specifically any real sense of threat - except at one point near the end (which I will quote). The supernatural element feels oddly flat and the time travel element has a gaping hole …
Whenever a fantasy novel includes time travel, all the disparate threads have to be carefully worked out so that it works. Even a fantasy novel has to be internally consistent and obey its own logic, once the parameters have been set.
Here though, at the end we are told that Lucy and Jamie (view spoiler)[ are both the great-great-grandchildren of Sara Latimer. This presupposes that Sara did not die in the fire, but was rescued, as we saw. However, most of the story follows the timeline where Sara and Georgie had died in the fire. Therefore when Mr. Blunden introduces himself at the start, Sara and Georgie had died in the fire. Thus Lucy and Jamie would never have existed, because Sara never grew up to have children. (hide spoiler)]
The only way this is acceptable is if you forget the idea of time travel and instead view this as a loose fantasy. Mr. Blunden would have to be some sort of (view spoiler)[ angel, trying to get his wings, so to speak. Certainly the idea of Christian redemption and sacrifice is very strong at the end of the book. (hide spoiler)], Also, we need to accept that there is a preset pattern to life which has somehow gone wrong, and so Mr. Blunden is trying to “mend the break in the wheel of time”. But given that this is Christian fiction, what about free will? And how on earth does Sara know about the (view spoiler)[fire (hide spoiler)], when she is a child? There are several serious mistakes.
I find it difficult to rate this as higher than a good 2 stars, which is a shame. I do have another book by this author though, so have high hopes for that one. I’ll end with a quotation of a part of the book which I did find exciting:
“And so it was that she did not see the dark figure of a horseman who came galloping up the drive, the broken carriage traces trailing behind him. The crunch of the children’s feet on the gravel, and the roaring fire drowned the sound of the horse’s hooves, and the man’s stifled cry of dismay. He slid to the ground and ran towards the burning building with the awkward gait of a man who is no longer young. In a moment he had passed into the house, and the heavy door slammed shut behind him. The horse panicked at the sight of the flames and cantered away into the windy darkness.”...more
The Boy and the Magic is an extraordinary book. Four world-famous names which do not seem to have any connection, are involved in the creation of thisThe Boy and the Magic is an extraordinary book. Four world-famous names which do not seem to have any connection, are involved in the creation of this book in 1964. They are the French author Colette, the French composer Maurice Ravel, the English-German composer, performer, illustrator, cartoonist and humorist Gerard Hoffnung, and the English poet, playwright and translator Christopher Fry. These astonishing names leapt out at me, and I knew I needed to read this extraordinary picture book:
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The story of how this came about starts during the First World War, when the Opéra de Paris director Jacques Rouché asked Colette to write a text for a fairy ballet. Colette then chose Ravel to set the text to music, but Ravel was serving during the First World War. She arranged for the script to be sent to him, but it was lost in the post for a long time.
Ravel decided to write an operetta, with ballet dance elements, and Colette revised her text and developed a libretto. Ravel’s second opera “L’enfant et les sortilèges” was first performed in 1925. The finished work had taken him eight years, although the libretto by Colette was written in eight days. It was not seen in the UK until 3rd December 1958, with a premiere, in the Town Hall in Oxford.
The roles in the operetta are intriguing: fire, the princess, nightingale, the little old man, frog, mother, china cup, dragonfly, the bergère, owl, female cat, squirrel, male cat, grandfather clock, armchair, tree. Coupled with the title, clearly this is a fantasy story.
Christopher Fry has simplified the story, but kept the magic in the text, to write The Boy and The Magic. It is about a rude child who hits out and destroys everything around him. After he has been told off, the child throws a tantrum, wrecking the room around him and harming the cats nearby. He is then surprised to find that the unhappy objects in his room come to life, and begin to reprimand him:
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The teapot and other objects, the furniture, and even the decorations begin to talk. The characters on the wallpaper he has stripped cry out in anguish, at now being separated and lonely:
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Even his homework becomes real, as it transforms into an old man and a chorus of numbers. Every single object cries out about the pain and misery that the child has inflicted on them:
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The boy does not even stop there. He goes out into the garden, to continues his destruction. Soon it is full of animals and plants which have been tortured by this savage child. Eventually, the boy begins to feel lonely, and wishes he had a friend:
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Now he attempts to make friends with the animals and plants, but they shun him because of the injuries he did to them earlier. They try to ignore the boy, but eventually the animals turn on him wanting to punish him. They all end up jostling amongst each other, and the child is tossed aside in the fracas.
(view spoiler)[ Eventually, a squirrel is hurt, and this makes the other animals stop fighting. The child bandages the squirrel’s wound and collapses exhausted. Seeing this act of kindness, the animals have a change of heart toward the child, and decide to try to help him home. One simple act of kindness has made up for all the harm he has done before (hide spoiler)].
Much of Hoffnung’s humour centred on the world of classical music, particularly the various instruments of the orchestra with which he was fascinated. You may know Gerard Hoffnung’s art work from his quirky cartoons about classical musicians and musical instruments. He published a series of books of cartoons poking gentle fun at conductors, and orchestral instrumentalists. One example is a drawing of a musician being devoured by the serpent (an archaic instrument) he is trying to play. I have included a few more in my review of one of his books LINK HERE.
If you know these, then his style of drawing, particularly in the faces, is instantly recognisable. But these watercolours are magical and impressionistic, delicately expressed in watercolours.
The Boy and The Magic is a large book in landscape format. Each page turns over to reveal another strange scene. Hard to describe, it is weird, wonderful and a little frightening, but it is a uniquely lovely book....more
Bionic Jean
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Books:
children-s-1960s
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