Round the List

1.     Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Lewis Carroll (1865) 2.     Little Women/ Louisa May Alcott (1868) 3.     Northern Lights/ Philip Pullman (1995) 4.     Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone/ JK Rowling (1997) 5.     The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe/ CS Lewis (1950) 6.     The Wind in the Willows/ Kenneth Grahame (1908) 7.     The Tale of Peter Rabbit/ Beatrix Potter (1902) 8.     Winnie the Pooh/ AA Milne (1926) 9.     Where the Wild Things Are/ Maurice Sendak (1963) 10.   Charlie and the Chocolate Factory/ Roald Dahl (1964) 11.   Peter Pan/ JM Barrie (1911) 12.   The Hobbit/ JRR Tolkien (1937) 13.   Charlotte's Web/ EB White (1952) 14.   The Secret Garden/ Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) 15.   Treasure Island/ Robert Loui...

Things Fall Apart/ Chinua Achebe (1958) Blood and Guts in High School/ Kathy Acker (1984) Hawksmoor/ Peter Ackroyd (1985) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy/ Douglas Adams (1979) Watership Down/ Richard Adams (1972) Half of a Yellow Sun/ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006) A Death in the Family/ James Agee (1957) Dark Entries/ Robert Aickman (1964) The Magnificent Meaulnes/ Alain-Fournier (1913) Hothouse/ Brian Aldiss (1962) The House of the Spirits/ Isabel Allende (1982) The Mask of Dimitrios/ Eric Ambler (1939) Lucky Jim/ Kingsley Amis (1954) Money/ Martin Amis (1984) Winesburg, Ohio/ Sherwood Anderson (1919) The Enchanted April/ Elizabeth von Arnim (1922) Foundation/ Isaac Asimov (1951) Life After Life/ Kate Atkinson (2013) The Handmaid’s Tale/ Margaret Atwood (1985) The New York Trilogy/ Paul Auster (1985-6) The Odessa Tales/ Isaac Babel (1931) The Bottle Factory Outing/ Beryl Bainbridge (1974) The Mezzanine/ Nicholson Baker (1988) Go T...

Whenever,   as happens periodically, some government wonk threatens to axe CBeebies there is an outpouring of emotion from exasperated parents the tenor of which can only be described as feral. As the wrangler of a four year old I watch more children's telly than anything else. Should you wish to know who got knocked out of Bake Off I couldn't tell you, but if you were wondering which of the toys was missing from the line-up on last Tuesday's Show Me Show Me I'm on it like a shot (is it just me or is it always Miss Mouse?) And maybe it's just Stockholm Syndrome but I've actually grown to love quite a lot of the channel's output. Not everything, by any means. There is a special place in hell reserved for the likes of Kazoops!, Kate and Mim Mim and Waffle the Wonder Dog (possibly the single worst thing to befall Western Civilization, ever). But, by and large, most of the shows have something about them, be they educational, heartwarming or just gloriously ...