The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively

Read today, it is familiar to me, but also strange I couldn’t write like that now – indeed, writing for children left me long ago, to my regret. It is over 40 years since it was written – by some alter ego, or so it seems. The Ghost of Thomas Kempe was published in 1973. Many of the images are integrated with the text, whisking the reader along with James around the streets of Ledsham and the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside.Īn extract from the author’s new introduction to this edition: Characters such as Mrs Verity, Tim the dog and Bert – the builder-cum-exorcist – are brought vividly to life. Pam Smy has created over two dozen whimsical illustrations for this edition. Lively’s own interest in social history and memory, which suffuses much of her later adult fiction, informs James’s own adventure as he begins to realise his place in the passage of time, and that we can’t all be ten forever.

Uncovering dusty diaries and investigating local folklore, James delves deeper into the past and slowly comes to realise that there is an undiscovered world around him, one filled with the memories of lives lived before his own.

But, as Penelope Lively explains in her new introduction that there is ‘intriguing hidden ballast’ to James’s quest to rid Ledsham of its troublesome ghost. With a new introduction by the author, this brilliantly funny ghost story for children features integrated illustrations by artist Pam Smy.įirst published in 1973, and winner of the Carnegie Medal, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is a brilliantly funny ghost story for children, from one of the great writers of modern British fiction.

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe by Penelope Lively