Mr Toppit turns up (From Oxford Mail)

Mr Toppit turns up

4:33pm Wednesday 11th February 2009

• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

Great news! Mr Toppit has been found!

I have been reading the new novel by Charles Elton and managed to have a brief chat with him over the phone this week before his talk later this month at the Woodstock Bookshop.

Mr Elton took about 15 years to write the novel, which was then the subject of a bidding war, leaving him with a hefty sum after the book was bought by Penguin.

I was enjoying the novel, but did not quite manage to finish it, and all of a sudden it vanished.

It's a long time since I last mislaid a hardback, and I was beginning to think the novel had gone for good when my wife found it down the back of a toybox.

The premise for the novel is based on the true-life story of Christopher Robin, AA Milne's son, who didn't always take too kindly to being identified as the inspiration for the best-selling Winnie the Pooh stories.

In the absence of Mr Toppit, I walked past Arcadia in St Michael's Street in search of some fictional inspiration, and it didn't take me long to find it.

Felix in the Underworld by John Mortimer was displayed outside the store and I snapped it up for £2, but I regret that I was too busy to stop and chat to the friendly shop owner.

I have also been enjoying Turl Tales, short stories composed by a group of writers who used to meet in the QI Club and now meet in the King's Arms.

The collection of stories has been produced to raise money for the Maggie's Centre at the Churchill Hospital, which supports cancer sufferers and their relatives. The book is being officially launched at Blackwell's in Broad Street next month, but copies could be on sale already, and I would recommend anyone to buy a copy.

Other interesting books that have landed on my desk include Curious Oxfordshire by Roger Long, and Solace of the Road, the last published story of Siobhan Dowd, who died from cancer in 2007.

Ms Dowd won lots of acclaim for her books for young readers before she died, and set up a trust so that young readers would benefit from the royalties of her books.

Oxford-based publisher David Fickling says the books are "highly readable", and although I have looked through them before I intend to go back and have another read.

Another local author who has a new novel out is Abingdon-based Julie Hearn, whose children's book Rowan the Strange is published by Oxford University Press in April.

I loved Julie's debut novel, Follow Me Down, so I'm looking forward to having a read of the proof copy I have been sent of Rowan the Strange. The novel is not published until April.