Joan Aiken wrote her first novel The Kingdom and the Cave when she was just 17 years-old, but the publishers made her cut the first chapter. As the book is republished, you can take an exclusive peek at this chapter – which has never been seen before!
Joan Aiken (famed for writing children’s classics including The Wolves of Willoughby Chase) wrote this story for her 10-year-old brother when she was 17, or in fact told it to him chapter by chapter and then wrote it down in an old exercise book. Her 17th birthday was in 1940 in the middle of the second world war, at the time when England was being bombed by German aircraft in what was known as the Blitz. As her brother David was a passionate plane spotter living near the coast in Sussex where her story is set, she naturally included the threat of airborne invaders just like those that he would have heard in the skies every night. And the hero is a boy just like him, defending his country with the help of a faithful and magical friend - Mickle the Court Cat.
Many years later Joan Aiken sent the book off to publishers, who asked her to take out some of the war details (too many aeroplanes!) and make the story a bit shorter – perhaps she had answered too many questions about what happened next, and why and where and how it all came about!
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