28 February 2012
Reading Daisy chapters from ‘Dr Dolittle’s Post Office’ at bedtime.
I loved these books when I was her age. I remember the thick, well-thumbed plastic covers of the big hardback copies I borrowed from the village library. Hugh Lofting volunteered for the Army and served in France from 1916, before being wounded and invalided out in 1918. He began writing the Dr Dolittle stories in letters to his children. Apparently, he was inspired by the fortitude of the many horses and mules he saw in France. Cf ‘War Horse’, the film of which is out now. And cf Elgar’s heartbreak at the killing of so many poor horses. A book about Elgar and the war takes a famous sentence from a letter of his as its title – Oh My Horses! Elgar, the Music of England and the Great War. It was a common theme at the time.
Books & Boots 