One of the icons of my childhood imagination, Diana Wynne Jones, has died. She was, in my opinion, the finest writer of fantastical fiction for children of any age – a creator of wise, funny, tender and occasionally scary books that expanded my consciousness and my perception of the world immeasurably.
Of all the books from my childhood, hers are the ones which have survived, which remain living, breathing books. Everything she wrote gave me pleasure and stood rereading regularly. The Chrestomanci series played relentlessly with moral perceptions and blurred the boundaries between hero and villain with wit and verve – I loved those as a child. Later, the Dalemark books caught my imagination – deep political intrigue, a family of troubadour poet/musicians, a dreamy young red-headed hero in Cart and Cwidder – what was there for the dreamy, red-headed son of a poet/troubadour not to like? I was heart-broken by the (perfect) ending to the series when it came out – moved to tears by the fate of the red-headed musician boy, despite the fact that I was 22 when it came out and a little more streetwise and thick-skinned.
The books that stick with me most are The Time of the Ghost, a haunting, semi-autobiographical novel that scared me silly as a child and Fire and Hemlock, a dreamlike retelling-of-sorts of the Tam Lin myth. She wore her learning lightly and thrilled me into learning more.
Diana Wynne Jones was my hero as a child, and I was lucky enough to meet her – her husband taught my father at Oxford, and she had come to the memorial reading for my mother in the Colston Hall in 1983 and readings I gave in Bristol with my father. At one, in 1992, she told me I had the makings of a lyric poet and commented in detail on a couple of the poems I’d read. Sadly, I forget exactly what was said, but I remember that I was thrilled to be given generous and useful feedback by my hero.
She was one of the few writers I’ve met who appeared, in person, just like the person who wrote the book, someone who would inhabit the worlds she wrote about with ease. She was kind, funny, sharp, interested and just a little scary. Not for nothing did Neil Gaiman dedicate his Books of Magic series to four witches, one of whom was Diana.
I treasure the few signed copies of her books that I have and the satirical postcard she sent me, gently berating me for my organisational skills. Needless to say, I only found that card recently, under a huge pile of papers.
I will miss the regular arrival of new books by her, which were as much an obsession and release day ritual for me as Harry Potter was more recently for millions of children. I’m also sorry that I never got the chance to send her my new book, due out later this year, with the letter I had been planning, thanking her for the help her writing gave in keeping a flame of magic alive in my head for the last 32 years.
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