A girl falls down a rabbit hole. Another finds a snowy forest at the back of her wardrobe. An orphan flies out of his bedroom window. Another finds a key to a secret garden..

The stories written for and about children are a window into our deepest hopes, joys and anxieties. They reveal our past - collective and individual, remembered and reimagined - and invite us to dream up a different future. More vivid, more real than books we encountered mere months ago, our childhood reading stays with us forever.

In a pioneering new history of the genre, The Haunted Wood explores children s literature at its best, from Aesop to Julia Donaldson. Providing startling insight into how authors might reflect a nation s psyche - be it through the imperial fantasies of Rudyard Kipling, the pastoral adventures of Beatrix Potter or the anarchic post-war heroes of Roald Dahl - Sam Leith offers an exquisite account of British childhood, as told through our most beloved stories.