It's December so that means the Missus and me browsing second hand bookshops and charity book shops to buy each other books for Christmas and my birthday.
Today we had a ball in the Saltaire charity bookstore and found lots we each liked and to wrap up for each other.
Trashy 1970's and 80's horror paperbacks for me and local history and children's illustrated vintage books for the Missus.
One book I was eyeing up as well was a large vintage hardback edition of Duncton Wood, the mole epic by William Horwood.
The first of a saga of Duncton tales, it's not a book I read as a teenager, which is odd as it would have sat well with the other similar animal novels I read at the time: The Plague Dogs, Watership Down and The Stonor Eagles.
These stories captured something of the folk wildlife and animal rights Zeitgeist during the late 1970's and early 1980's, which I really enjoyed.
I seem to recall the Watership Down film being a Christmas staple on TV for a while.
Have you read Duncton Wood readers? Is it a good read or was it just right at the time?
I own and have read the Wind in the Willows sequels by Horwood and they are very good capturing the essence of the characters. Never felt the need to read the Duncton Wood stories.
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