A brief (ish) introduction on the hunt for THE BOOK

In the lush green Lake District, within a stone's throw of a north west city, you'll find quaint close-knit village. Of note, it has one main road, a friendly village pub, a tiny primary school, a large textile factory and a semi-official village mascot in the form of a wandering Peacock. In the village lives my Gran, and if you were to pop by for a hot drink and chat in her beautiful, airey living room, you'd see a collection of memories on the wall. If you looked carefully at the photos, you'd quickly realise that, amongst them, you watched two little girls rapidly becoming teenagers, then married women.

One photo in particular might catch your eye - a framed candid family snap of those two little girls comparing (relative to their size) two very large illustrated story books. One of those two little girls grew up to be me, and it was as I was enjoying a 'grown-up' coffee (french press) with Gran about 15 years ago that I got to wondering whatever happened to the books.

As is the way of a good, meandering conversation, the chat moved on and I didn't actually ask Gran, but about two weeks later during a phone call with my Mum, I brought them up;

"Hmmm, I'm not sure - I'll ask. It's possible she still has them but I doubt it..."

Gran is generous in nature, a born helper, and absolutely always has at least one specific project on the go. She's currently knitting stars for post-natal depression and putting together toiletry kits for a woman's shelter. Anyway, it turned out that most of the huge number of children's books (that were kept at her house specifically for visiting Grandchildren) had been donated many years back, to either a charity bookshop or a young family in need, and were long gone.

By this point, I was INVESTED. Although I knew immediately which book my Sister was holding [1], I could only remember a few scant but vivid details about the book I was holding. And whilst it is an incredibly sweet photo, rather unhelpfully, it shows a distorted angle of the inside of our books and nothing helpful like, say, a cover.

Here's what I knew / remembered / thought I remembered about it:

* It was a large hardback

* It included at least some Hans Christian Andersen and the versions of the stories weren't the "nice" sanitised ones

* It could have been other authors as well but I'm fairly sure it wasn't

* It was likely very late 1960s / 1970s / 1980s, but certainly pre 1983 (given the photo)

* It was full colour illustrated and contained, I thought, The Tinder Box, The Little Match Girl, The Little Mermaid, and others - but those ones in particular were gorgeously illustrated

* The illustrations were sometimes full page, and other pages the text was around the illustrations

* Some of the pictures were a teensy bit trippy, in the way lots of 70s illustrations were (I thought some might be Harry Clarke / a bit Beardsley in style, but I didn't think the entire book was, and they were all colour)

* Because of the varying styles of illustration, it might have been multiple different illustrators, but I wasn't sure

* It might have had a sugary pink lining, but I could have been making that up

* Logically it would have been mass produced and reasonably easy to get in the UK

Things I could not remember:

* Anything about the cover, beyond the fact that it didn't really match the illustrations inside, but I was reasonably sure I'd remember it if I saw it

* The title

* The name of the illustrator(s)

After some bemused chats, it turned out that my Mum has zero recollection of it, and my Sister couldn't add anything I haven't included above, so this was everything I had to go on.

Subsequently, it has taken me approximately 15 years of on-off-on hunting to find... THE BOOK.

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[1] The Child's Book of Verse, 1951, illustrated by Margaret W. Tarrant - it was one of my Mum's favourite books as she was little and if you ever get the chance to own it, don't hesitate. I've included the cover and some of the stunning book plates here.

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