How Did Long John Silver Lose His Leg?

Perhaps it is just something that comes with age or perhaps with reading the same stories over and over and over again to younger ears, but one starts to notice little things that grow to bother you. Be it unresolved subplots, inexplicable escapes or apparent glaring oversights. This is a book for anyone who has questioned the problem of Time in Tom's Midnight Garden, the physics involved in stopping the train in The Railway Children, or just how old Great Aunt Maria Turner in Swallows and Amazons really was.Rather than being a cynical inquisition of our best loved stories, this book answers to the childish curiosity that can grow within the enquiring adult mind. Did Beatrix Potter really have the 'Flu? is not Peter Rabbit on trial but an adventure through the looking-glass of literary trivia, history and criticism.