Things have changed in the world of children’s books since the late Sixties, when this series started to appear. So it’s a particular pleasure to see new editions with Victor Ambrus’s beautiful illustrations as evocative as ever.

These books have every-thing: horses, houses, flying machines, war, love, clothes, countryside, and a gallery of subsidiary characters who wouldn’t be out of place in Dickens. They tell the story of Christina’s life from her 12th year into adulthood, framed by the First World War.

They are books about grown-up problems (love, jealousy, marriage, ambition, sexual desire, class divisions) and teenagers will love them.