I do so agree with your comments on the new film supposedly of The Little White Horse – it is truly dreadful as a representation of the book. Like you I got no further than the trailer and excerpts on the film’s website, but this was enough to get me really angry.

Apart from using the names of a few characters it has little else to do with the book. If they had given the characters different names I do not think I would ever have realised that it was supposed to be TLWH!

TLWH has been my favourite comfort read since I first read it at the age of 8; I pick it up every few years and am still entranced by it. I am not normally someone who bears grudges – life is too short – but I could very easily do so over this. Why spoil the gentle magic of the book; why turn the characters into caricatures? And never, never will I forgive them for what they have done to Robin.

I am so pleased that the book is now better known (when I was younger I hardly ever met anyone else who knew it) and I can only hope that seeing the film may bring other readers to it – at least that will go a little way towards redeeming the tragedy.

I shall now reread it as reassurance that at least the book itself is still there!

Best wishes, Doreen.

Dear Doreen,

A kindred spirit! I’d begun to think I had been a little harsh. In fact my husband says that I really ought to go and see it if only to be able to talk about it first hand. I had in fact almost made up my mind to do so when a fellow worker told me she had read an interview given by Dakota Blue (Maria) and she had said that Maria was “such a good strong character” that she could see the possibility of a sequel!

I suppose it is a generational problem, and the younger one is the more likely you would be to emphasise with the updated story. But you are right, the only real similarity are in the names, and I think even here they have changed Black Heart to Night/dark/black. J.K. Rowlings bless her hasn’t helped matters with that remark about her favourite book

I agree about Robin, but also deeply regret the fun poked at Miss Heliotrope, noble woman of gentle strength, who wins back her lover and her health before the book ends

Did you go on to read any of Elizabeth’s other books? The book that speaks deeply to me is Scent Of Water. There is the rightness of a great painting about it, and it will be one of the next of her works that I’ll review. I just keep putting it off because I want to get it right

Thank you so much for contacting the site, I would like to use your email in next month’s Goudge Talk to hopefully spark a debate

Deborah – many thanks for the reply Whether of not it would be a good thing to see the whole film – I am not so sure; it could scar you for life

I have read only a few of EG’s books. My sister was given a copy if The Little White Horse in 1948 and she also loves it and rereads it. I read it myself shortly afterwards – it was the first book I read for myself and at the time it seemed very long, but it enchanted me and still does. Although I am usually a very practical and down-to-earth person I can always lose myself in its magic. Maybe we all need to have something to retreat into on occasions.

My comment about Robin came from my early and continuing love of the character – what more could you want from a man? I think I have spent my life looking for Robin – and never found him! The image of him in a face mask and with a strange array of feathers round his neck is rather disturbing.

The other book by EG that I love is The Dean’s Watch Again the gentle magic works, and I love the references to the Fen country – my father’s family come from that part of England.

I shall, on your recommendation, try Scent of Water. But only after I have reread The Little White Horse, just to reassure myself that it is still there!

Best wishes, Doreen.