I was not sure that I was going to like this book, the fourth in the sextet of Green Knowe books, because from the beginning – indeed for the first 50 or so pages – it is decidedly un-Green Knowe-ish.

The original Children of Green Knowe has been a firm favourite for most of my life, and is still the best of them all with it’s story of Tolly in the strange house by the river with the floods, the storms, and the ghosts. A Stranger at Green Knowe begins in Africa and is almost anthropological in its tale of how Hanno the gorilla comes to be in England. Even after we meet Ping again, re-entering the story from the Mrs Oldknowe-free River at Green Knowe, we are not sure how the story is going to get back to the old house in the Fens…

But the story does return to Green Knowe, and the pace of the story accelerates, building and building to an all too hasty, shocking, and believable end. Be prepared for a rollercoaster and tears.

Note: I first became properly aware of Witch-hazel flowers after reading The Children of Green Knowe, and at this time of year, in the dark days of the new year, when witch-hazel flowers bloom, I always seem to think of that Fenland manor house and the stories it can tell. 

Lucy Boston’s first and original book, The Children of Green Knowe has long been a favourite of mine – a ghost story with a hint of fantasy set in the quietly mysterious Fens. Six years ago I visited the actual Green Knowe house and had a tour of the Norman manor house in Hemingford Grey by Lucy’s daughter, Diana Boston.

The second book in the series, The Chimneys of Green Knowe is a similarly fantastical time-shift story, but this third installment lacks for most of the story any of the ghost or fantasy elements of the story.

The story concerns a new set of children who are visiting the house for the summer, but it is a story that is for the most part less about Green Knowe but the river that surrounds it and concerned with the adventures, discoveries, and the people that the children meet whilst messing about on the river. Mrs Oldknowe, the old lady of the earlier stories, is mentioned only once in passing is not until the last short section that the house takes on its old, mysterious persona.

For all this it is absolutely beautifully and sumptuously written, and a delight to read, and makes me want to go back and explore the real gardens with its strange topiary that really could come to life upon a moonlit evening.

It’s beautifully made, and filmed, and the interior shots of Athelhampton House (the Dorset house that stands in for Green Knowe in this version) are a fitting tribute to the real manor house that we have visited. The main Chimneys of Green Knowe story of Susan, Jacob and Sefton is faithful enough too. What I did find jarring is the relationship that Tolly has with his Grannie and his backstory in this adaptation.

I can see why they have changed it. For some reason they have leapt straight into the second book on this occasion and so Tolly (Toseland) loses everything he found out on his previous visit to the house. We see him ask about if Grannie believes in ghosts, or climbs the big, old oak tree without deference to Old Green Knowe, wonders about the St Christopher, or asks Boggis if there has always been a Boggis working here, when really he knows all these answers already. He knows about Alexander, Toby and Linnet (I still love the name Linet for a girl if we were ever to have a girl…), and he knows that Grannie has grown up with the ghosts of the house as much as he now is. Knowing all of this happened in the first book, and that it has Tolly recently in the second book, made it jarring for me in this film that all of that had changed.

All in all, a good film, well told, but an odd choice to have filmed the second book in preference to the first.

Originally uploaded by shepline on 28 Jan ’08, 9.00pm GMT PST.

Originally uploaded by shepline on 28 Jan ’08, 9.03pm GMT PST.

Formally a Tudor manor, it is the oldest, continually lived in, private house in the country. Moated, it is filled with history, including the three-foot gable wall still visible inside that was pulled down in order to build a new frontage along with an extension that later burned down leaving a rather curious arrangement of brickwork where the upper-floor windows would have been. This house, the actual setting for The Children of Green Knowe stories, it was not, in actual fact used in the stunning (and much under-repeated) BBC adaptation of 1986. Feste’s name plate though was ‘borrowed’ and actually hangs in the hall, and the ebony mouse is in the real attic bedroom where Tolly sleeps and sees the children.

Originally uploaded by shepline on 28 Jan ’08, 9.02pm GMT PST.

Originally uploaded by shepline on 28 Jan ’08, 9.04pm GMT PST.

One of the really special things about this visit is just how special it was for all of us. The series is one of my favourites, and one of Emma’s too, and we watched it again recently (on my ebay bought dvd – ripped from a Betamax recording complete with Andi Peters in the broom cupboard) and see the actual place is almost to be part of the story itself. Wonderful.