Ann Scott Moncrieff

Firkin and the Grey Gangsters is a collection of four tales in which animals are the heroes. Firkin and the Grey Gangsters was in 1936 a metaphor for the fear of takeover by corporate America – Firkin is a young red squirrel who leads his people in a battle against a horde of grey squirrel invaders from America. Firkin speaks in Scots. The Sheep who wasn’t a Sheep is about the thoughts going through the head of a sheep, swimming between one Outer Isle and the other. The White Drake is a farmyard drake in Perthshire learning about flying.

Five children escape from a Children’s Home, run away and steal a boat, which they sail around the Outer Hebrides. The book had a huge print run from London Methuen, but their warehouses were bombed in 1940 in Paternoster Row; 5 million books were lost in the fires caused by tens of thousands of incendiary bombs. Consequently, there were very few copies in circulation. This is the resurrection of a successful children’s adventure story.

Hector is an 11-year-old boy living near Edinburgh with his great auntie Robbo who is in her eighties. A woman calling herself his step-mother arrives from England and Hector and Auntie Robbo realise that they have to run away. The chase leads all over the north of Scotland, narrowly escaping police and the authorities, adopting three homeless children on the way. Originally refused publication in London because it was deemed critical of the English, Auntie Robbo was first published in the U.S. in 1940. After success in print it was taken on by Constable in 1959 and later was published in India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Germany.