"Delicately balanced on a razor edge of mutual toleration": Rowan Marlow, Saint or ?

Yes, why does Tim prefer Lawrie? There’s certainly a comment fairly early on from her POV that you couldn’t have one twin without the other, but of course that changes quite sharply, and she definitely chooses one and not the other. Does she prefer Lawrie before The Prince and the Pauper, or is whoever says she does ‘My Friend the Actress’ (Miranda?) right, and she only becomes Laurie’s friend after she’s established as an unusually good actress?

I mean, I enjoy Laurie’s babyish dithers and weird patches of ignorance as a change from the masterful Nick/Rowan/Giles end of the Marlows (and even, to an extent, Peter, Karen and Ann), but Tim is a spiky, combative character, popular, influential, managerial, rather cruel, intolerant of ‘rabbits’ wibbling — so why doesn’t she think Lawrie is just another slightly babyish dumbo, bar her membership of the Kingscote Royal Family, and her acting talent?

I have an eternal question about K M Peyton. Perhaps there are people here who can answer it.

Peyton was a friend of Antonia Forest's, and she admired Forest's work. I read, on Trennels I think, that she had said that her Peter (in the Ruth / Jonathan Meredith strand of her books) was in fact Peter Marlow, copied in a different setting.

I absolutely cannot see any resemblance beyond the name. Has anyone heard this? Can anyone tell me what I am missing?

Changeover is on Internet Archive, by the way!

There’s a very good bit in Peter’s Room where Patrick nearly jumps on Nicola during the hunt and Nicola realises that he has his ‘Rupert face’ on. This really scares her , as it should, because it shows how, particularly for Patrick, the fantasy has become more important than reality.

The description of when Cousin Jon died in Falconer’s Lure is also very good. It shows the suddenness of death very well.

It was a close race between Peter’s Room and The Ready Made Family for me. There are so many different strands to consider. My favourite DWJ is Fire and Hemlock for the same reasons others have mentioned. Witch Week is underrated - tinned tomatoes - but every Chrestomanci book is superb. I love that there are so many of us who enjoy these books. I haven’t ever been able to discuss them in real life!

@TarquinGyrfalcon me! Started with Pennington and went back into her other books including Flambards.

Is anyone a KM Peyton fan?

I love her books - again, beautifully portrayed characters. Not quite AF standard but superior to so many other children's authors

Found it

“Then what were you doing?”
“Nothing special. Just talking.” Talking like when we were properly friends, she thought: and a bubble of happiness seemed to break at the back of her throat.

I think Nicola feels Patrick's deflection to Ginty as a huge and hurtful betrayal.

Sprog's death is heartbreaking - there's a line that says '..putting out a finger for a last tickle of Sprog's breast feathers...' during the last time she takes him back to The Mews which is foreboding his death during the night but you don't realise it at the time.

The geese should have been Nicolas! In my mind they are on a par with the wild gallop back home from their day out and the night they sleep in the haystack

There's another great line that sums this up in Attic Term. It's the morning when Ginty has to go home because she hasn't packed so Nicola ends up spending a companionable morning with Patrick - when she goes home (after having to be phoned for and run home in the landcover) Ginty is furious and asks what they'd been doing - just talking, she says and thinks like when we were properly friends

@Benvenuto ( obviously also a great feline) I agree that we are much more sensitive to age -gap relationships now, but the Tom/Polly friendship just never struck me as inappropriate. There’s a podcast on DWJ called Eight Days of Diana Wynne Jones . Their discussion of FAH is interesting though I don’t agree with all their views. The Backlisted podcast also has a discussion of it. There’s just so much in that book.

Oh yes and Lawrie thinks it’s a bond between them because ‘Failure’ must mean her parents were also disappointed she wasn’t a boy. Lawrie being Lawrence because they had it all saved up and couldn’t bear to waste it. What a message to give a child. Couldn’t they have turned it into Florence, or Laura, or Laurel? Useless pair.

And poor Tim has dropped her full name, Thalia, as everyone mishears it as "failure"!

Throgmorton is gloriously vindictive & definitely a cat you would want on your side in a fight.

Less good as a companion cat though, as he smells, scratches viciously & caused Christopher to lose a life. Other DWJ cats are available…

I think the problem is that attitudes have really hardened re ages gaps & teenagers and whether or not there is a problem, the relationship feels as if it ought to be transgressive simply due to the age gap existing. It’s a long time since I read F&H but this was an issue that I thought about a lot when I last read it (& failed to resolve). It doesn’t help that F&H is one of her more challenging books to read & I spent a lot of time trying to calculate Tom’s actual age.

I also find Enchanted Glass a bit icky at the end, nor do I like Deep Secret very much but at least in those books it’s the minor characters.

Thanks to this thread, I’ve now added F&H to my wishlist along with other DWJ titles missing from my DC’s collection.

Re the original topic of the thread, I’m another person who gradually found AF books from the library / school etc. & gradually increased my appreciation of the series with every book that I found. I am very fond of the quote “My grief would be controllable”.

Throgmorten is wonderful but Benvenuto, from The Magicians of Caprona, runs him close and my favourite DWJ cat of all is Brindle from the short story What the Cat Told Me:

“I am a cat. I am a cat like anything. Keep stroking me. I came in here because you were good at stroking. But put your knees together so I can sit properly, front paws under. That’s better. Now keep stroking, don’t forget to rub my ears, and I will purr and tell.”

Polly’s trip to Bristol and the gradual realisation that Reg has no intention of telling his girlfriend that Polly is moving in with them, and his dumping her at the station without checking she has money, a return ticket or anywhere to go, culminating in her wandering haplessly to the Clifton Suspension Bridge to find Morton watching her is horrifying.

It’s the episode that has stuck in my mind most from Fire and Hemlock, and oh, the relief, when she spots the poster for Tom’s Quartet and realises there is help nearby.

It’s not a good novel for Nicola but I do enjoy Peter and Daks having fun clearing out and reclaiming The Shippen in Peter’s Room.

Then the chapter with The Sprog’s death is so deftly and lightly written, and very moving: “… it was misery beyond bearing when animals died.” And the side-swipe at Ann when she reflects that “that Charlotte” (Brontë) probably told Emily it was wrong to care too much for animals just like Ann would.

”The geese should have been hers,” I think is that Nicola would have loved to see and hear them against the background of a moonlit Twelfth Night for themselves, whereas Ginty is probably revelling in them as a romantic background for a tryst with Patrick.

Tim is a great character, despite her inexplicable (to me) preference for Lawrie. It is refreshing to have someone who wants all the privileges she can get because she’s the headmistress’s niece!

I think of Tim often when I see someone of whom I cannot decide if they are absolutely plain or pretty.

I just found it and the thread is definitely the best thing that has happened to me today. Thanks everyone.

Years ago a famous mumsnet poster kindly posted me copies of the books I hadn't read. It was amazing to fill in the gaps.

Tim and Miranda having a row about Laurie's being an ass, with Esther unexpectedly joining in, is my favourite scene ever.

I’m a fellow admirer of Antonia Forest and am lucky to own a full set of her books. I’m surprised no one has really mentioned Thalia Keith/Tim who is my favourite character. I like the moment where Nicola realises that ‘Tim likes Lawrie best’ and then later when we see Tim rather left out as a non-sporty person among rather sporty friends.

Sorry, it's not Laertes, it's Horatio Ginty tries to lean into when she's reading Hamlet with Patrick.

Well it's not too much of a stretch is it. 'Good night, sweet prince....'

I did Hamlet for A Level. We all agreed that Horatio was the only decent and likeable character in the entire play.

Lawrie would play Hamlet of course but Nicola I think would be good as Horatio.

And yes, Throgmorten is definitely the best cat in all literature. Wong!

I agree that Tom does use Polly in Fire and Hemlock, because he knows that eventually he will need someone to save him. However there is nothing sexual or creepy in their relationship and you have to bear in mind that he saves her, repeatedly, from her awful parents and from Laurel. The scene in Bristol where Morton Leroy appears at the end of Clifton suspension bridge is utterly chilling.

Just imagining Ginty trying to vamp as Ophelia in the Hawkyard at the Merricks', and then Kingscote deciding to do Hamlet as the school play and Ginty auditioning for Ophelia by way of Mae West, and Kempe losing her mind.

(Because it really bothers her when Patrick mentions Claudie, and the first thing she asks is what she looks like, and is unimpressed when Patrick says Mrs Merrick says she's a 'belle laide', and she's also bothered when the plain girl, Rachel Whatsit, gets cast as Miranda in The Tempest instead of her, and people are impressed and describe her as 'fascinating' etc)

Sorry, it's not Laertes, it's Horatio Ginty tries to lean into when she's reading Hamlet with Patrick.

My grandpa had a "shippen"! Sorry, as you were...