I've just finished Masefield's 'Box of Delights'. It's actually the first time i've ever read it but even so, it looms large in my childhood memories thanks to the BBC t.v. production from (I think) the 1980's.
Come to think of it, I don't even think I saw the programme the whole way through but it was trailed heavily that year and the images of snow, the hauting bell-tingling theme tune and, of course, those wolves have stayed with me all those years. I can clearly rember that Christmas - I must have been 10 or 11 - and 'The Box of Delights' seemed to encapsulate everything that was magical and mysterious about that time of year.
Now I've actually gotten around to reading it I've got mixed feelings; I love the snowy-winter's evening atmosphere which was exactly what I was hoping for and Abner is a great villian, a Bond-villain before his time really, complete with cars that turn into planes and underground lair (accessed, as lairs of this kind have to be, by an elevator concealed behind the fireplace). But I can't get on with some of the secondary world stuff - I want more of Abner and the box, not pages of feasting on mixed berries with 'The Lady of the Oak'!
To my mind, a book which gives me the same kind of christmassy feeling and also creates a haunting, mysterious atmosphere but which integrates its secondary world more effectively is Susan Cooper's 'The Dark is Rising'. Paul Magrs has discussed these two books on his excellent blog, pointing out that 'TDIR' is, in many ways, a reworking of Masefield's earlier work; which was obvious while I was reading but i'd never thought of it before!
