The publishers offer us nine vintage Bailey essays, all published previously (one in this journal) between 1977 and 1996, with an engaging new introduction which (like other recent Bailey products) embraces the turn to autobiographical reflexivity and, in this case, represents the author to himself and to his readers as that classic English Victorian construct (a favourite term of abuse in the Billy Bunter stories), the 'cad'.

After all, Wild Things, Cats-in-Hats, and bunnies in blue jackets have served to publicize some of the happiest reading for the young, nor is Miss Blyton the nation's most voluminous author--that record goes, I think, to a chap who wrote as "Frank Richards" with various other pseudonyms, and whose total output, centered on the character of the famous Billy Bunter, is reckoned at about seventy-two million words.