Philippa Pearce - Tom's Midnight Garden, etc.

[pete9012S]

Thanks for the update Eddie - I'm very tempted to buy this!

[Eddie Muir]

You’re very welcome, Pete. Go on, treat yourself.

[Rob Houghton]

As I usually buy mine from Amazon (I have Amazon Prime, so don't pay postage) - I'm waiting a while, hoping the price will drop...as sometimes the price goes up and down dramatically. Well, I live in hope!

[Eddie Muir]

Good luck with that, Rob.

[Eddie Muir]

My DVD has just arrived in the post. It looks great and Chick and I will enjoy watching this classic during the next few days.

I have just ordered the Moondial DVD for the same price from the same company, viz. Second Sight Films.

[Courtenay]

Glad you've got the DVD, Eddie. I really enjoyed revisiting it myself when I bought the harder-to-find earlier release a few years ago. It's a beautifully done series, very faithful to the book, and I enjoy both it and the book even more now that I live in England and have visited many huge gardens and grand old houses rather like those in the story. As a young Australian, my imagination had to stretch a fair bit to visualise the scenes when I first read the book, although the TV series helped!

I love the theme music for this TV version too, I should add — the wistful, mysterious horn call at the beginning and end, with a charming "country garden" kind of theme (mainly clarinet and flute with harp, if I'm hearing it correctly) in between. I've always felt it fits the story perfectly.

[floragord]

I kept nearly all of my non-Blyton childhood books (mainly Ladybird books, annuals and Puffin paperbacks) as well as the Blyton ones, of course. Even though some of them have pages which are loose and/or browning, they're still cherished. Besides Enid Blyton, I collected E. Nesbit, C. S. Lewis, Noel Streatfeild, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Nina Bawden, L. M. Montgomery and Antonia Forest. I also had just one or two titles by a wide range of other authors, Philippa Pearce being one of them. Other books that I read repeatedly as a child include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson, Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, A Candle in Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur, The Dolls' House by Rumer Godden and The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

We were enchanted to visit Manorowen Walled Garden, near Goodwick/Fishguard, yesterday. It was a hot sunny day and we had the place to ourselves. It is historic, dating back to medieval times, part of a nearby manor, and extremely other-wordly, no sound of traffic, just silence and birdsong, wonderful lush greenery and colourful flowers at their best. Naturally I'm inspired to re-read The Secret Garden!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I ordered the DVD from Second Sight Films last night and I look forward to receiving it.

[Courtenay]

Hope you enjoy watching it, Anita. I loved revisiting this version when I got it on DVD myself a couple of years ago — it was such a part of my childhood and very faithful to the book, and it was a delight to see it all again. The boy who plays Tom is a bit annoyingly whiney in some scenes, but you do at least get the impression he's genuinely struggling to comprehend how and why the garden appears every night and how Time itself works, and he's upset that his aunt and uncle are completely baffled by all his strange questions and speculations! (I didn't guess, when I first read the book, what the twist at the end would be, so it was very satisfying to find out — and I love the way the final scene is done in the TV version! )

[Eddie Muir]

I ordered the DVD from Second Sight Films last night and I look forward to receiving it.

That’s good to hear, Anita. Second Sight Films are very prompt with their deliveries and so the DVD should be with you very soon. My copies of both Tom’s Midnight Garden and Moondial arrived within a couple of days of my ordering them.

[Rob Houghton]

I ordered the DVD from Amazon on Friday and it arrived yesterday. The price had gone down slightly to £13.49 - and I don't pay postage - plus I was buying a couple of other things so I decided to order Tom's Midnight Garden while I was at it!

We watched two episodes tonight - very enjoyable indeed! Its really well done, period wise and the acting too, I think. Much better than the film version in my opinion.

[Eddie Muir]

I’m pleased to hear that you have a copy of the BBC DVD of Tom’s Midnight Garden, Rob.

I agree with you; it is much better than the more recent film version.

[Courtenay]

Glad you're enjoying it, Rob.

[Rob Houghton]

Very much so! We saw the last two episodes today - been seeing two each night - and it was very enjoyable - one of the best BBC TV adaptations, in my view. It was also really well filmed - with the garden being seen in spring, summer and winter, and all looked very realistic. Was the snow real snow? It certainly looked real.

Very pleased to have bought this - thanks for the heads up, Eddie - and now I'm planning on buying The Phoenix and the Carpet (with Gary Russel) - which was (probably) the first BBC TV adaptation of a children's book I ever watched. I was 5 when it came out in 1976!

[Courtenay]

Very much so! We saw the last two episodes today - been seeing two each night - and it was very enjoyable - one of the best BBC TV adaptations, in my view. It was also really well filmed - with the garden being seen in spring, summer and winter, and all looked very realistic. Was the snow real snow? It certainly looked real.

Dunno — it'd be jolly expensive for them to have to wait till there was real snow in the same location where they'd filmed the spring and summer scenes, surely, but it'd be interesting to know!

Does it say in the credits where it was filmed, by the way? I've watched it many times, but for some reason I've never picked that up! I'd love to know if it's a real garden somewhere that might be open to the public.