It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

The starting book this month is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. It’s written in such a seemingly simple style, but it captures so well the innocence and naivety of youth and hope for the future. It’s just, well, so English. I first read it as a teenager and it didn’t fail to live up to my memories of it when I reread it years later.

My first link is via castle to Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, and the fabulous Gormenghast Castle, another book I first read in my teens. The novel is poetic,  rich in imagination, description and characters. It all came alive as I reread it, and the same magic I felt the first time was still there.

My second link is via another castle – Corfe Castle, in Dorset, in The Gloriet Tower by Eileen Meyler. Another book I read as a child. It’s set in Corfe Castle a few years before the beginning of the Hundred Years War, but it is mainly fiction. As far as I remember I chose this book because of its historical setting in a castle – I loved castles (and still do).  

My third link is Corfe as it is also the setting in Enid Blyton’s Five on a Treasure Island, the first book in The Famous Five series, and possibly the first one I read as a child. Staying at Kirrin Cottage the five children visit Kirrin Island and explore the ruins of Kirrin Castle (Corfe Castle).

My fourth link is via Treasure to Silver: Return to Treasure Island by Andrew Motion, a sequel to Treasure Island. The children of Jim and Long John Silver return to the island. One of the crew is a certain Mr Stevenson – ‘a Scotsman and a wisp of a fellow, whose place was generally in the crow’s nest, where he acted as our lookout.’ (page 115)

My fifth link is via Stevenson, that is Robert Louis Stevenson and the first book of his I read A Child’s Garden of Verses. My Great Aunty Sally, who was my mother’s aunt, gave me this book for my birthday one year and I loved reciting the poems out loud.

My final link is via garden to The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read this several times as a child and the story has stayed with me ever since. For years my picture of the ideal garden has been a walled garden, just like the secret garden. Rereading it as an adult I realised it is full of symbolism using nature, the Bible and myths, that I never noticed as a child. 

Apart from the first one my links are all children’s fiction, which I didn’t set out to do – all my chains just grow of their own accord. I’ve read all six books.

Next month (November 4 , 2023), we’ll start with Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, a novella that is part of the read-along for Novella November 2023 (and it also made the Booker Prize 2023 shortlist!).