On Unearthing Some Buried Treasures On My Shelves

These days I spend half the week looking after my mother. There are still shelves and shelves of my old books, from when I was living at home, and I browse through them to see what is there to tempt me to reread and take them home. 

In the last week I have fond some treasures hidden in those shelves, no fewer than six books by Geoffrey Trease, three of them today. Also... one by Nicholas Stuart Gray, of which more in a future post.

So, who was Geoffrey Trease? He was a children’s and YA historical novelist, who wrote about periods ranging from Ancient Greece to the 19th century. I believe he also wrote for adults, but I’ve only read his books aimed at young readers. I know I have more, hidden away. For the moment, these six will do.

I have just finished rereading Popinjay Stairs, set in the London of Charles II, involving a hunt for some stolen papers of Samuel Pepys, who is working for the Navy at the time. There is a young naval officer and also a girl who is having to write her very good Restoration comedies under a male pen name. This book must have been the first time I came across the name Aphra Behn, about whom I was later to write in my children’s book Your Cat Could Be A Spy. She would have been around at the time this story is set, and gets a mention.

Here is the book I’m reading now, Follow My Black Plume, about an English boy in Italy at the time of Garibaldi. 

Here are the three I found today - the Middle Ages, Napoleonic era and Russia in the time of Nicholas I. 

The book waiting for me at home is his first, Bows Against The Barons, a left-wing interpretation of the story of Robin Hood. The young hero joins Robin’s band when Robin is already getting old. At this time in his life, Robin Hood is planning to lead the poor in a rebellion. As far as he is concerned, it’s not about Saxons versus Normans but about poor versus rich. I once attended a talk by someone who showed us one of the original illustrations from the book. Robin is making a speech to a huge crowd, who are carrying their tools, including...a crossed hammer and sickle! I was disappointed to flip through the pages of my copy of the Puffin edition and find that picture was missing. Oh, well, maybe too left wing for those publishers...

One of my favourites is Cue For Treason, which I managed to find in audiobook, read by Clive Mantle, who played Little John in Robin Of Sherwood, and has a delightful reading voice. That one is set in Elizabethan England. Two teenagers run away to London, where they get jobs in Shakespeare’s company, as boy actors. The thing is, one of them is a girl, disguised as a boy. Both she and the boy protagonist are on the run from the same person, the novel’s villain. Shakespeare picks up pretty quickly that one of the company’s new boy actors is female, but keeps quiet about it. There is a plot against the Queen which, of course, our two protagonists help stop.

Although Trease’s books are seen from the viewpoint of a male character, there is usually at least one strong female character. 

A wonderful writer! 

If you want to read someone who has, in recent years, begun writing children’s books which have a flavour of Geoffrey Trease, I recommend Aussie author Felice Arena. Felice Arena is best known for his series of novels about a young football player, Specky Magee, but has done three, so far, historical novels for children, The Boy And The Spy, Fearless Frederic and A Great Escape. They are all set in important eras of history, although, unlike Geoffrey Trease, Felice Arena’s characters are fictional ones affected by whatever big historical events are happening around them: World War II(in Sicily), Paris during a flood that happened early in the 20th century and the beginning of the Berlin Wall. And they all have a strong female character interacting with the hero.

This author is doing a huge variety of books, so who knows when he will write another historical novel?

I do hope he does; he is Australia’s answer to Geoffrey Trease, whom I miss.