Backwards to go forward?

4/05/2012 by David Maybury · No Comments

Celia Keenan's review of David Benedictus' Return to the Hundred Acre Wood raises one interesting question... why? Why replicate the work of writers of a century ago?

"Such replication is fashionable now for both children and adults. Think of J M Barrie,  Arthur Conan Doyle, Jane Austen etc. When Milne wrote his stories they reflected the life of middle-class English children of his time, when little boys learned to construct Latin verbs and to play cricket, when half the countries in the Atlas were pink and when it was important to know whether to sing ‘God Save the King’ or ‘God Save the Queen’ (all referenced in the Benedictus book). If a modern writer wishes to retell Milne stories would it not make more sense to remake them in a modern idiom?" 

As we're facing a year of nostalgic releases (Jacqueline Wilson approcahing Nesbit's Four Children and It, Emma Thompson's The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit and Anthony McGowan's reminaging of Willard Price's Leopard Adventure)

Have we gone nostalgia mad? Is there a classic Irish story you'd like to see given new life?