The laying on of hands

If you want to read the kind of tribute properly owing to the great children’s author Diana Wynne Jones, who died on Saturday, you should probably go elsewhere. (You might start with Jenny Davidson, an American blogger, academic and children’s writer who has a Wynne-Jonesian sensibility and a gift for conveying enthusiasm in print; Neil Gaiman, who needs less introduction, has also written movingly.) I just want to point to one paragraph in her obituaries which puts her in unusually direct contact with some distinguished predecessors:

“When the second world war broke out Jones and her family were evacuated to the Lake District, eventually living in the house once inhabited by the Altounyan children, on whom Ransome had based his Swallows and Amazons series. The great children’s author was still around, one day complaining angrily that the children were making too much noise. On another occasion, Diana’s younger sister and a friend had their faces slapped by a second Lakeland author who hated children but who was rich and famous because of them: Beatrix Potter.