Every summer the four Gareth children and their parents had a caravanning holiday. But this particular summer it was not to be: father had to go to the Far East for a whole year and mother followed shortly afterwards as he had become suddenly ill. And so the children flew to Ireland to stay with their Great Aunt Dymphna.

Their home in London was in an ordered suburban street where everybody had a refrigerator and nearly everybody a washing machine. But at Aunt Dymphna's it was quite different: the house was enormous with vast bedrooms and a gloomy kitchen with a huge black range. And Aunt Dymphna herself was like nobody they had seen before. She quoted great lengths of poetry at them and flitted like a bat from room to room while the children were left to fend for themselves entirely.

Noel Streatfeild's new novel for boys and girls, set in the south of Ireland where she has spent so many holidays, is as full of life and enchantment as the Irish people themselves. And in Great Aunt Dymphna she has created a character who will surely be one of those classic figures of children's literature.

The illustrations of Edward Ardizzone give this book a rare distinction.

From the dust jacket