![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Roberson’s interest lies not so much in the band of merry men, or the greenwood tree, or the robberies on the road to Nottingham, but in the question of how a young lord (the sole surviving son of the Earl of Huntingdon) comes to associate with outlaws. Afterwards I read Ladybird’s Robin Hood and watched some of the numerous film and TV versions, among them Errol Flynn’s Adventures of Robin Hood, Maid Marian and her Merry Men, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (inescapable for a child of the ’80s and worth seeing if only for Alan Rickman), Robin Hood: Men in Tights and, most recently, the unsatisfactory film with Russell Crowe (don’t get me started on the Magna Carta). Of course, any writer dealing with the legend today faces the difficulty that his or her audience already knows the story and the characters: the challenge is to keep the traditional and well-loved elements of the tale, while interpreting them in a fresh new way. Now, Robin Hood and I go back a long way: I fell in love with the stories when I was very small: so small that, thanks to Disney, I had a confused impression that he was actually a fox. Elaine kindly suggested Lady of the Forest which, by complete chance, I found in my local charity shop last weekend (despite the fact it currently exists only in an out-of-print American edition). ![]() When I reread The Golden Key some months ago, and realised that Jennifer Roberson had written my favourite section of the novel, I asked for recommendations of her other books. ![]()
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