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

She seems alert to the possibilities of sexuality in male-male relationships, though -- she specifically thinks of Rupert and Crispian's relationship as being like David and Jonathan's (sometimes seen as homoerotic), and like that of Nisus and Euryalus, a pair of mutually devoted warriors from the Aeneid, whose relationship has often been read as sexual, and who die together.

And she wants Rupert to die in Crispian's arms, but acknowledges that won't be possible in the actual Gondal, though.

Doesn't she do something similar with Hamlet at the beginning of The Attic Term, when she's besotted and reading Hamlet with Patrick and inwardly complaining that it has no love scenes but doing what she can with Ophelia and Laertes?

I liked Fire and Hemlock as a child but find it uncomfortably groomy as an adult.

I’ve seen a few people say this but I don’t find it creepy at all. Nothing sexual/romantic happens between Tom and Polly until she is an adult, and the age gap isn’t actually as wide as it first appears. You can definitely argue Tom uses her, but I don’t think there’s anything sexually predatory about the relationship.

I agree with everything you say about the brilliant Witch Week. I liked Fire and Hemlock as a child but find it uncomfortably groomy as an adult. The Time of the Ghost is very dark, but brilliantly plotted.

My favourite, though, is Archer"s Goon. It is perfection. Hilarious, complex, and moving.

I'm never entirely sure why the geese are so important to Nicola here. She thinks 'Rosina was bad enough, but the geese should have been hers', and she's still glooming about it the next morning, when she thinks about 'Patrick's treachery over the geese' as well as being hungover, sick of Gondal and nervous about hunting (to the point where Rowan asking her if anything's the matter actually makes tears come into the famously dry-eyed Nicola's eyes!).

I mean, you could see the geese as symbolic of Patrick's new closeness to Ginty and his evident sexual attraction to her, but Nicola seems to set it above and beyond the Rosina thing.

I mean, I get that seeing geese go over against the moon would be wonderful, but it's not wildly unusual, is it, if you live in the country and are out and about paying attention to wildlife a great deal...?

There is definitely an undercurrent of sexuality in the Rupert/ Crispian relationship which then gets transferred to Rupert/ Rosina, though you sense that Ginty prefers the Crispian persona. DWJ is ( obviously) one of my absolute all time favourites. Difficult to pick my number one though Fire and Hemlock is up there , again obviously. But I love almost all her books . Such an original writer.

I literally don't think I've ever been described as 'wholesome' before.

I do read the Gondal bits, but they're pretty much filler for me.

I suppose I find how much of it represents Patrick and Peter testing their own and one another's masculinity a bit tiresome.

I'm a bit more sympathetic to Lawrie seeing it as improv acting and Ginty starting off by identifying with Emily Bronte, passing through a sort of hurt/comfort slash stage and ending up by sort of using it to test out her own sexuality via Rosina.

And one of the lines that has stuck with me ‘the geese should have been hers’.

Witch Week is fabulous - Nan's notes in her journal about the statuses of all her classmates are absolutely top notch. And I can never see a tinned tomato without thinking of her.

Yes - also Charles’s secret code in his journal to express how much he loathes the school. “I got up, I got up, I GOT UP!!”

I love Peter's Room, too. Not even for the Gondal fantasy whose macho 'Let's all pretend to be boys, even though more than half of us are girls' swords and torture stuff isn't that engaging for me, it's the farm stuff, the Shippen, the fallout from the twins swapping over for the match and the Play, the arrival of Catkin and Chocbar and the emergence of Pam Marlow as a spokesperson for hunting manners and a sidesaddle hunstwoman, the Bronte conversation between Karen, Ginty and Nicola, which reveals so much about all of them, Sprig's death, the fabulous setpiece where the family troop upstairs to see what everyone can wear to the Merrick's Twelfth Night party, the party itself, the hunt (which we get from Nicola, Peter and Lawrie's POVs) etc.

Another fan of both Forest and DWJ here. Hard to pick my favourite DWJ, but if I really had to I think it would be Fire & Hemlock. You could write a PhD thesis on that book, it has so many layers. Not sure 10 year old me grasped the references to TS Eliot etc, but you get different things from it at different ages. I also love Witch Week, which manages both to be really dark and horrifying and absolutely hilarious. Also the other Chrestomanci books, particularly Christopher Chant, which contains the best cat in all literature (Throgmorten). And last but not least The Ogre Downstairs, which is hysterically funny and should have been made into a kids’ film years ago.

I do like Harriet's redesign of the family hall in one of the Jill Paton Walsh ones, and the splendid Hope, and Harriet's hopeless attempts to write.

Ha! Imagine Kingscote’s reaction to the news one of its pupils had fallen head over heels for a German businessman and run away to Germany to be with him. What must the man’s wife have thought when Fiona showed up? It’s the stuff of AIBU.

And Reg and Ivy make the Commander and Pam sound like parents of the century.

If I had to pick between AF and DWJ to read for the rest of my days, it would be DWJ but it would be a very painful choice and I’m glad no-one’s asking me to make it. I love the Chrestomanci series, as you can guess, but I don’t think there’s a DWJ I don’t prize. Though I’ve never come across Changeover - I think that’s what it’s called - her first little-known adult novel.

It has just struck me you could make a very impressive and enjoyable reading list from the titles mentioned by AF in the Marlows novels and DWJ in Fire and Hemlock. What very literate writers they were.

I seem to have opened a can of worms with liking both Spring Term and Jill Paton Walsh’s Wimsey additions! But Sally Hayward, who is filed under H on my bookshelves, remembered AF loved Patrick O’Brian’ novels and sent Nicola off to re-read The Golden Ocean for comfort. And JPW turned Duke’s Denver into Hemingford Grey/Green Knowe.

I think my favourite non-school Marlow is Peter’s Room. I quite like Peter and share his hatred of heights. And I do feel sorry for him trying to live up to the naval Marlows. I don’t think I can pick between Autumn, End of and Cricket for the school stories.

I didn’t think her Harriet came across as silly either.

I actually really liked the Jill Paton Walsh DLS continuations. I thought she'd modernised the characters and the situations appropriately and I didn't think her Harriet was silly. I particularly liked her depiction of the grown up kids and their relationship. Economics! How modern!!

I really liked Spring Term and it felt more Antonia Forest than I thought anyone could achieve; however, I know where you are coming from. The letter was generic school story and when all is said and done, it isn’t Antonia Forest. I’d read other continuations if Sally Hayward wrote more though.

My favourites are End of Term (I love all the Christmas play details) and The Ready Made Family (from the home books).

The order in which to arrange my AFs was a matter to which I gave some thought - whether to put the historicals in publication order or chronological order. I opted for the latter. The Thursday Kidnapping is next to them on the non-Marlow side, so Spring Term can legitimately sit after Run Away Home as a quasi-AF but not fully assimilated.

My copy is on the same shelf as the others but you can tell I haven’t reread it because it’s still pristine whereas the genuine AFs are well-read to the point of falling apart. Though I have a complete set I fear none of them is worth a three figure sum.