She lives in South Africa on a different kind of farm, and once in a way we get a Christmas card – which is quite useful as we keep the stamp.īrat (real name Brambling), her 12 year old sister Swallow and their 7 year old brother Merlin (who answers to the name of Poor Baby) all live with their father, Slim, on a farm in the south of England. She flew off some years ago with this character called Peregrine. I imagine our mother was keen on birds and flying, though I don’t know much about her. Of course, that isn’t my right name, nobody could be christened with a name like that.Īll our lousy first names are birds’ names. Our narrator is Brat, whose engagingly laconic attitude to life is brilliantly established in the very first paragraphs: The author chose to tell her story through the eyes of a child. Scripted by Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall with music by Malcolm Arnold – and filmed in and around the village of Downham, at the foot of Pendle Hill in Lancashire – it wasted very little time in becoming a classic. The book was already a best-seller when, in 1961, it was turned into a film by producer Richard Attenborough (now Lord Attenborough) and director Bryan Forbes. Meanwhile, out in the grown-ups’ world, an escaped killer is on the loose. They not unnaturally ask him who he is and when he, delirious and startled, replies “Jesus!”, they take him at his word. On the face of it, it’s a very simple story: a group of children find a stranger in a barn. Within a matter of days, the story had been written, bought by her publisher and was on its way to bookshops up and down the country.
Whistle Down the Wind by Mary Hayley BellĪccording to Mary Hayley Bell, Whistle Down the Wind arrived fully-formed in her brain – beginning, middle and end – one summer’s morning in 1957.
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