The winged rabbit who made me a Tory

His father’s dental cast, writes Graham Greene near the beginning of The Power and the Glory ‘had been [Trench’s] favourite toy: they tried to tempt him with Meccano, but fate had struck’. Trench is a dentist, trapped by his chosen profession in a godforsaken Central American hellhole. Greene ponders the way, when we are very young, that chance events, objects or people may become father to the man. ‘We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.’

Too true. Pookie made me a Tory.

My new copy of Pookie Puts the World Right has arrived. I’d lost the old one, but tracked down another on the internet. Though more than 60 years old, it’s in fine condition, only 24 pages, but big and bold and colourful, with lots of striking pictures. The Pookie series, by Ivy L. Wallace, was published by Collins at the end of the 1940s, and popular with children from about four to eight years old.