Hey Blog! To start 2025, I’m going to give you another book review.
This post’s book is a bit older than most of the ones I have reviewed recently, and is by poet laureate and author John Masefield. Not only was he a brilliant poet (his poem Sea Fever is one of my favourites) he was also a good children’s author in the relatively young genre of fantasy. This was a rather new idea in fiction at the time – when it was written, Tolkien would not have changed the world of literature with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and while the Victorian era had had a trial with fantasy via Alice in Wonderland, it was not a well-established genre. Masefield wrote two children’s books, The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights, the former a tale of treasure hunting, witchcraft, the power of memory and the mysterious Midnight Folk; the latter a book of darker magic, kidnapping and a box of incredible and unexhausted powers. It is the latter that I will review, as it is set in the week before Christmas, and Christmas plays an important part in the plot. While this year that time is past, opening the Box can allow you to travel through the past (and possibly the future – see the last post!), so I don’t think it matters.
Another good story starts on a train. Well, don’t they all?! In this case, Kay Harker is traveling home for the holidays, and makes the acquaintance of both the wandering magician and performer, Cole Hawlings, and the two unsettling curates with mind-reading powers, surprisingly lucky card tricks and successful pocket-picking abilities. After producing a ticket when Kay has lost his, and then disembarking the train at the same station as Kay, Cole gives him a task – to warn the Lady with the Ring that the Wolves are Running once again (Note – this feels very much like the warning that the Dark, the Dark is Rising!). After passing the message on, and coming home, Kay invites Cole to do a short (but magnificent!) performance, after which the strange couple from the train arrive to find him, this time with a third man, Abner Brown, a dark wizard from The Midnight Folk who seeks Cole, power, and treasure. It seems Cole has broken through their ring and plans to escape “with the goods on him”, and is carrying something of great importance. Moreover, he is being assisted by the Lady and Herne the Hunter, the three of them all bearing rings with “the longways cross in gold and garnets”. No sooner have Abner and his cronies arrived than Cole pulls off a trick by which he can step into a painting, escaping them once again (wouldn’t I just love to be able to do things like that!). Then, that night, Cole summons Kay to King Arthur’s Camp hill to entrust him with the thing Abner wants: the Box of Delights, crafted by Master Arnold and in the guardianship of Cole to protect till Arnold comes back out of the old time. Kay is sent back home by the Box with the task to keep it safe from all, but above all from Abner’s gang. Can he keep it safe over Christmas?!
It is certainly a brilliant story. I got it in a stocking several years ago, devoured it, and loved it, and it still lives on the bookcase under my bed. I don’t think anything is quite like it; the idea of a group of people trying to smuggle a powerful magical object through a net of people looking for it has been used, as has the ability to shrink, fly, and see through time; but this goes further, building a world of Christmas, various folklore, friendly mice and rats, and through it all two rival powers seeking to gain a seemingly unremarkable but in fact wonderous box. Oh, and it also has a bunch of gangsters dressed as clergymen, all headed by a wizard; and a group consisting of an old showman, a half-stag-half-man, and an old woman who lives in an oak tree, who are aided by a boy unaware of all the box can do – I would love to know how Masefield came up with this! Besides the story in itself, it has been an inspiration for many, so its reach has spread through literature. One day I need to write a thesis on how children’s fiction literature is inspired by earlier novels and all goes back to some source, probably King Arthur. And then I’m trying to work out how all these books fit with one another, into one multi-faceted literatureverse. But however you respond to The Box of Delights, it is a very good Christmasy, magical, and cleverly written book, as relevant now as when it was written: although some of the more old-fashioned bits may not be present in the modern time, the thought of wolves remaining in hidden hills and an entire cathedral choir being scrobbled in a bus are just as interesting now!
The BBC made a series of the book some time in the 70s or 80s; we found it the other night and have been watching it. Although some of the lines from the book are rearranged, it is very good as it hasn’t left any of the plot out so far (we’re on the third episode) and I like the visual effects; more reachable than modern films and yet realistic. There are still several episodes to go so I will have to get round to watching them at some point.
While writing this post, I realised I had been interested by the gold and garnet rings when I first read the book, before I even started on The Hobbit. I even made some copies with the shiny paper. Interesting, because when I did get into Tolkien, I used real copper wire and coloured glass pebbles to make some of the rings of power. I generally make something from the stories I read, e.g. a carved staff, a clubhouse (the shed, even though I have had no club meetings there yet), a box of spy gear, and several wands, so it’s not surprising that The Box of Delights received the same respect. What could be next, I wonder?