So today brought a package from Amazon.co.uk, containing copies of Masefield's The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights , a copy of The Best of Alice Joanou (which Amazon.co.uk had while it was long out of print in the US, but I think I must have had their last copy) and the Faber Reissue of the Land of Green Ginger. And I was wrong. It's not the 1966 edition, with the cool bits, and twelve and a half chapters, and Nosi Parka the Egghead who can See the Future, and all the Magnificently Capitalised Words. Nope. It's the 1977 edition, which has only 12 chapters, and is a lot more normal. And, well, really dull.

I mean, it's 70 pages shorter than the 1966 edition (which is only 190 pages long). I was going to type out some sample passages to compare them but it got too depressing.

Why would anyone turn a wonderful book into something inspid and dull? And why would anyone republish the dull version?

I should go to bed. I have to be up at 5.30ish to start being interviewed. Argh. Then a couple of hours to shave and shower and it's into a plane to the UK.