Beautifully reproduced in a pocket sized edition with a handsome Edward Ardizzone cover and a neat little book mark, this is a welcome reissue of the true source of the first Nanny McPhee film. Mr and Mrs Brown have a handful of unruly children – we’re talking old fashioned naughtiness here – whose pranks and scrapes lead to an endless succession of staff resignations until the redoubtable Nurse Matilda appears on the scene. Formidably ugly, she is also gifted with children helped now and then by a touch of magic. Driven by good humour and rarely preachy, Nurse Matilda nonetheless extols the value of adult control over children – at least some of the time.
The Brown children are terribly terribly naughty - unbelievably naughty. All the nannies and nursery-maids and governesses in the directory are called upon to implement some kind of order in the house but, inevitably, they are soon driven to distraction... This book is filled with mischief and humour.
Christianna Brand was born in 1907 in Malaya and spent her early years in India. She had a number of different occupations, including model, dancer, shop assistant and governess.
Her first novel, Death in High Heels, was published in 1941. A year later her best-loved series character, Inspector Cockrill of the Kent County Police, made his debut in Heads You Lose. He would feature in a total of seven of her detective novels. Green for Danger is Brand’s most famous novel and considered by many to be her masterpiece. H.R.F. Keating described the novel as ‘the last golden crown of the Golden Age detective story’. The novel was adapted for the big screen in 1946 starring Alastair Sim as the Inspector.
Christianna Brand’s most appealing characteristic as a writer was her ability to blend complex and intriguing plots with a lively sense of humour conveyed both through character and dialogue. Brand herself admitted: ‘I write for no reason more pretentious than simply to entertain.’
Christianna Brand was married to her husband Roland for nearly fifty years. She died in 1988.
