the gazette of fantasy
Old Things in New Clothes
The season turns, new things arrive, and many do so in unexpected forms. Here in Barrel Town, the days are growing colder. The lamps go on earlier, the rivers outside town are swollen with rainwater from the mountains,…
Warner Bros. has confirmed the sequel in one line of a letter to its shareholders and said almost nothing since. The rumours are thin. The inheritance is not: a Hogwarts built so that any window you can see from the grounds has a room behind it, and something in the room worth the climb.
Walt Disney hired a music critic in evening dress to explain his programme. Chuck Jones said he made his cartoons for nobody but himself. Both turned children into classical music listeners, and for the same reason: the composers had written sorcerers, trolls and dragons into the music long before anybody drew them.
Netflix's first trailer ends on a roar, but Meryl Streep's Aslan is still unheard. Giving the lion a woman's voice was a deliberate choice, and runs counter to what the most successful Christian children's author of the last century wrote in his own hand about his works. Will anybody care?
A spoilt prince must ask seven immortal sorcerers for the keys that keep them alive, and Geraldine Harris gives every one of them a good reason to refuse. More than forty years on, Seven Citadels is still the rare quest that makes you feel for the obstacle, and all four books are now on Audible.
