ABSTRACT
Speaking about his collaboration with Leon Garfield when they were reframing some of the ancient Greek myths as The God Beneath the Sea Edward Blishen said, ‘It was like working with a sort of radium of story’. (Blishen 1979:33). It is this ‘original tremendous concentrate of story’ (33) embedded in myth and legend that, as Sir Philip Sidney expressed it, ‘holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner’. The very impulse that gave birth to myth and legend makes them the right and proper fare for all children, especially for those growing up in a technological and rational society.
