We were just chatting about children’s fiction in the office, particularly the difference between older fiction, of the era of something like the nonpareil Winnie-the-Pooh stories, and modern stuff like Potter. Part of the conclusion we came to is that the strength of something like Milne’s work is in it’s pure charm, while with something like Rowling, you’ve got a more constructed product, with influences and elements visible from all sorts of childrens fiction and fantasy. One of the names that came up was Thomas Huges “Tom Brown’s school days”, that bastion of English boarding-school fiction.

Which, of course, lead to the thought of Flashman. And thus to images of Draco Malfoy as a bully and coward in the Victorian era, shagging hundreds of women and inadvertantly becoming a massively decorated hero of the British empire.

Just thought I’d share.