If Swallows and Amazons was among the best children’s series of the twentieth century, the Casson family series has got to be up there for the twenty-first. Saffy’s Angel remains my favourite, mostly because Saffy herself is.
And the sequence where Caddy, having eventually and reluctantly passed her driving test, is prevailed upon by her younger siblings to drive to Wales to look for the eponymous angel, is hysterical.
I thought about taking the label off, but it seemed disingenuous to pretend either that I don’t buy books in charity shops, or that I always remember to take the price tag off things.
Kathleen Jowitt 