There is so much to recommend here: a ghost story, a Christmas story, and elements of magic and the fantastic. So much of life is seemingly magical to children. Tolly's discovery of the "other" children and the mouse and so many remarkable things in the garden are appreciated as extraordinary but without a sense of incredulity. Her father was a passionate man with an appreciation of the aesthetic side of life, albeit channelled largely through his religious convictions, whereas her mother was devout and abstemious. Her mother had to perform duties as Mayoress for many years, at which Lucy says she must have been very bad. In particular, entertaining must have been a strain for her as "her idea of food was that it was a sad necessity. [After her husband’s death] she even began to think it was not even necessary and the boys raged with hunger."

Jasper Rose, Lucy Boston, a Bodley Head Monograph, 1965: discusses and analyses Lucy Boston as a children's writer. LCCN 66--11118 The Children of Green Knowe is a story where you thoroughly forget its being just a story. The narrator seems transparent, you get to experience things first hand. For me it was one of those books that reminded me how I felt when I was little and holidays came, what I wished and prayed for and seemed to forget after I grew up, but not entirely. Now The Children of Green Knowe begins with seven year old Toseland (Tolly), whose father and stepmother are living abroad in Burma (now known as Myanmar), being sent to live with his great-grandmother (Mrs. Oldknow) at Green Knowe and arriving there from his English boarding school just before Christmas. But to get to Green Knowe, Tolly must travel across a rain-drenched English countryside, with the train labouring through many flooded fields. And yes, whilst reading of Tolly's railway journey to reach his great-grandmother's house in The Children of Green Knowe, I cannot help but be wondering if Lucy M. Boston might not have been an influence for J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels (as indeed, Harry Potter travelling by train to Hogwarts certainly does remind me of Tolly's trip to Green Knowe, and that when Tolly finally arrives at Green Knowe, the marooned by floods manor house must be reached by boat, just like Harry and his fellow students are taken by boat across the lake to Hogwarts upon disembarking from the train, so that I for one do think Lucy M. Boston's Green Knowe novels likely have affected and impacted J.K. Rowling, and that this does certainly make me smile with very much and warm appreciation). The Chimneys was adapted for film as From Time to Time (2009), with Maggie Smith as Mrs. Oldknow, Hugh Bonneville as Captain Oldknowe, and Alex Etel as Tolly.

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Tolly is a young boy whose mom is dead and his father and stepmother live in Burma. He has been at boarding school where they have been very kind to him but he really longs to belong somewhere with his own family. Then suddenly he does! His great-grandmother OldKnow sends for him to come to live with her at the family home Green Knowe. He takes the train there and is a little excited and a little nervous.

Curfew", a short story which appeared in the anthology The House of the Nightmare: and other Eerie Tales (1967) Lucy M. Boston's 1954 middle grade story The Children of Green Knowe is the first of six novels set in and around the fictional Green Knowe, an ancient British manor house (based on and modelled after Boston's own home, on the Manor at Hemingford Grey, which was built in the 1130s and is supposed to be the oldest continually inhabited house in the United Kingdom). And while Green Knowe is of course a fictionalised Hemingford Grey Manor, the in the six novels by the author lovingly and evocatively depicted and described residence and surrounding gardens with their topiary animals actually do exist in their book-forms (and with the gardens also open to the public).Green Knowe is a series of six children's novels written by Lucy M. Boston, illustrated by her son Peter Boston, [1] and published from 1954 to 1976. [2] [3] It features a very old house, Green Knowe, based on Boston's home at the time, The Manor in Hemingford Grey, Huntingdonshire, England. [4] In the novels she brings to life the people she imagines might have lived there. [5] Boucher, Anthony (June 1956). "Recommended Reading". The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. p.102.

The children arrive and begin to explore the river and canals round Green Knowe by canoe. Unlike the previous two books, this book centres on the river which flows past the manor, and adjacent islands. The children's adventures here are based in their current time, though strongly fantasy-based; they meet a bus driver who's retreated from modern money-based society, see flying horses, meet a giant, and witness a Bronze Age moon ceremony. The subtext, of homeless children being protected and healed by the house and its enchantments, is particularly strong. It's a story from an earlier time, full of wonderful childish joys but also genuine fright. Just like childhood itself - when we're ready to believe in the tooth fairy, but far more ready to believe in the bogey-man. Remember when you were young and wished the universe you created around the dull things surrounding you weren't completely ignored by your parents? That you could pretend that even your appartment is a place where things might actually happen, as if in a castle. When I was little I was told that there used to be a graveyard before they made the flats we live in. I was convinced of it for a while because of a big white cross placed in the nearby and certainly because spooky is way better than boring when you're eight. I loved to fool around and fool other children as well. Even if I knew it wasn't real, I could still play that the house came alive while others were asleep, that I alone was confided in with such secret. I've always loved the dark because of that. Everythings seems different during the night. Boston went up to Somerville College, Oxford, to read English in Autumn 1914, the first months of World War I. During her second term, she decided to leave college after her first year and go to war as a volunteer nurse. Her ambition was to get to France, where, as she put it, "it was all going on". Her brothers were all serving in the armed forces but they were a close family, and spent any leaves or spare time together. Boston's youngest brother Philip was reported missing in 1917 when his plane was shot down.http://www.quilt.co.uk/?p=76 — article about Lucy Boston with illustrations of some of the patchworks Lucy Maria Boston (nee Wood; 10 December 1892 – 25 May 1990) was an English novelist who wrote for children and adults, publishing her work entirely after the age of 60. She is best known for her " Green Knowe" series: six low fantasy children's novels published by Faber between 1954 and 1976. The setting is Green Knowe, an old country manor house based on Boston's Cambridgeshire home at Hemingford Grey. For the fourth book in the series, A Stranger at Green Knowe (1961), she won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. [1] Find sources: "Lucy M. Boston"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Boston lived at The Manor for almost 50 years, in which time she created a romantic garden and wrote all her children’s books.