Unearthed arcana

Neil Gaiman was right to praise them in interviews. Punters on eBay can be forgiven for driving up the price of secondhand copies. And Fidra Books are eternal champions for reprinting both titles in the past year.

Victoria Walker's "The Winter Of Enchantment" (1969) and "The House Called Hadlows" (1972) are terrific all-ages fantasies in which magical objects allow the heroes to sidestep time, jump worlds and defy demigods.

While "T/H/C/H" is better structured, I don't believe it's the superior read - and I could have done without the vision of nuclear war. Also, "T/W/O/E" is charmingly illustrated by the author (who hasn't drawn since!).

Ms Walker's now Mrs Clayton and her prefaces to the new editions form a two-part autobiography of her fascinating adult life. They remind me of the afterwords in Piers Anthony's "Incarnations Of Immortality" series.