A new way of seeing

In one of his more endearing flights of fancy, Eddie Izzard once speculated on what the Greeks did with themselves in the Wooden Horse while waiting for nightfall in Troy. It was clearly something that Homer had never got round to thinking through properly, but for Izzard, once a chap has got into his breastplate, helmet, greaves and short pleated skirt the answer is obvious — housework, and not just housework but hoovering the inside of his temporary home before he gets down to the real business of the warrior hero.

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The fall of Troy has never seemed quite the same after Izzard, and though she might not approve the comparison, Sara Maitland has a similarly surreal imagination, taking the familiar ground of classical myths, biblical stories and fairytales and making a reader look at them afresh.