This was the first full-length novel that I read on my own as a boy (much to the disappointment of my Mum) and I have read it periodically ever since. It is, to me, a truly timeless classic. Yes, they communicate with telegrams, spend pounds, shillings, and pence in the shops, and involves four your children sailing off to camp alone on an island for the summer holidays – but it reads just as much as the now as I think it ever did.

Probably because of her imaginative, story-writing side, Titty has always been my favourite character, and it is through her that most of the exotic place names and fantasical portrayals of actual events come about. They get lost on a desert island, fight pirates, discover buried treasure, and solve crimes, and all without needing to rely on the help of the ‘natives’.

With all it’s grog, eating shark meat, magical charcoal burners, seed cake, bun loaves, and pales of fresh milk, this is an adventure to savour, to enjoy, to remember, and to come back fondly.

Swallows and Amazons forever!

Gobbolino The Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams

This has been a childhood favourite of mine for years, but it is also years and years since I last read it. Michelle Harrison, the author of the 13 Treasures series, put the book to mind again when she got a new, special edition of it. I dug out my original Young Puffin edition…

I hadn’t remembered much about this book, other than the title: Gobbolino The Witch’s Cat, and that I loved it. After re-reading it now, I still love it. It’s a gloriously comforting read, and a true fable as Gobbolino, the cat with one white paw, sets out to discover who he really is as he really doesn’t want to be a witch’s cat, but how it seems, right up to the end that a witch’s cat is what he is meant to be.