The Secret Garden {Foreword}

The Secret Garden is a book at whose root courses magic, and it is that magic which has kept it fresh and alive for the generations of readers who are lucky enough to stumble upon it. I discovered the book when I was nine, the same age as the heroine, Mary Lennox, when she is orphaned and sent from India to live with her shadowy uncle, Archibald Craven, in a house that nestles amidst the Yorkshire moors, a house
steeped in mystery.

Mary was not an immediately appealing character; and therein lay her charm. She was cross and sour, lonely and, like the garden she discovered, desperately in need of tending. One fateful day, a robin leads her to a rusted key, and there begins her true journey. She is accompanied by Dickon, a boy beloved by all, and Colin, whose cries rattle down the corridors in the night, like those of a ghost. As the children create a world exempt from prying adult eyes, they begin to blossom and unfurl like the garden they have brought to life. It is through this living abundant force that the sad grey corners of Misselthwaite Manor are given breath, fuelling the house and its occupants with hope and renewed life.

The prospect of such a place was bewitching and never quite lost its gleam. I relish secret places, even as I slink into boring grownuphood. When I was nine I had two such places: the airing cupboard in the laundry room, which was warm and smelled of lavender, on whose floor I would curl up and read till I fell into a cramped but comfortable sleep; and at the end of our garden there was another hidden place, by a compost heap, where my friends and I played pirates, and built camps and spaceships, which we truly believed would fly. Secret places can be found everywhere, in the city or in wide open spaces - you just have to look, as Mary did. In secret places we can think and imagine, we can feel angry or sad in peace. There is something to be said for just being, without worrying about offending anyone.

Even the most cynical reader would be hard pressed to remain unmoved by The Secret Garden. There is an old- fashioned tenderness and joy to it; the sense that magic happens if you are observant and quiet and know it will. As Colin says, 'Of course there must be lots of magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like, or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen.'

Be carried away by this magic, it will transport you . . .