Back in Caracas, between the ages of nine and eleven, I plundered the shelves of the school library, dimly aware of my growing reputation as a nerdy bookworm, but unconcerned by it. I devoured Victor Appleton’s Tom Swift space travel stories, a host of English school stories and far too many formulaic Enid Blyton adventure books, all of the library’s Jennings stories by Anthony Buckeridge, Captain W.E. Johns’ Biggles books about an R.A.F. ace pilot, many of Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Boys stories, Richmal Crompton’s Just William stories, Hugh Lofting’s curiously compelling Dr. Dolittle stories about exotic places where peculiar animals like the fantastic two-headed ‘pushmi-pullyu’ lived, and James Ramsey Ullman’s Banner in the Sky, a novel by an American mountaineer about climbing the Matterhorn. I read with fascination the exploits of Jason’s Argonauts, Theseus’ triumph over the Minotaur, Odysseus’ over the Sirens, and Perseus’ victory over the fearsome Gorgons, in Charles Kingsley’s The Heroes, the author’s re-telling of Greek myths that I was given—and still have—“for excellent work in English,” the inscription by Miss Judge, reads, the teacher I was to meet once again, in her eighties, to thank her for her guidance and encouragement. As this was a British independent international school, much of the curriculum and library books were naturally British, although the headmistress herself was a Canadian from Vancouver. It is at the Escuela Britanica, in Altamira, Caracas, of all places, that I first acquired a love of history.
I had always loved the legends of Robin Hood that I read in an English children’s annual we had sent out for Christmas, but it was Rosemary Sutcliff who first made the past come alive for me in several of her historical novels. I recall being spellbound by her book Outcast, about the search for identity of Beric, a Roman orphan shipwrecked on the English coast, brought up by a childless couple there, who ultimately finds peace with himself at the end of a long series of adventures in England and on the Continent, including time spent as a galley slave. The same author’s Eagle of the Ninth, the account of the mysterious disappearance of a Roman legion in second century Britain, and the attempt by the boy Marcus to discover what had happened to it, and to his father, who had served in it and disappeared with it, similarly fascinated me: how could an entire army simply vanish? Rosemary Sutcliff was a prize-winning writer whose books induced reflection and thus took longer to read than the less thought-provoking serial adventure stories, each of which I could, and did, read overnight in a headlong rush whenever homework permitted, but her novels, based on meticulous research, were much more memorable, with greater imaginative power, more challenging vocabulary, more subtle characterization, and deeper human interest than mere plot-based fiction. Yet I continued to read both types for years to come. Among the more serious books were Cynthia Harnett’s The Wool-Pack, a story about the wool trade set in medieval England, and Henry Treece’s Viking’s Sunset. And here I quote from my own book report of the latter, beside me as I write, and penned in 1960 in my own appalling handwriting: “Harald Sigurdson and his brother the giant Grummoch put to sea to chase an enemy that burned down their village. Their trail led them to Greenland and Iceland before that. After another journey in their longship ‘Long Snake’ they land in Canada where, unfortunately, Harald dies. Poor Harald never saw his wife or children again and neither did Grummoch, because ‘Long Snake’ was destroyed by fire. The book is very good,” I concluded, “but it has a sad ending.”
