In the darkness of his basement, Norman has assembled a horde of supplies; canned beans, rice, vegetables, oil, and even medical supplies. It travels to the same dark and anti-pastoral territory as David Rudkin/Alan Clarke’s Penda’s Fen and the Nigel Kneale scripted Murrain. Nessie thinks everything her father is doing is wrong, she finds is abhorrent that her father thought ahead and hoarded food for his family when other people are doing without. An early 80s kids show set in the not too distant future, starring the late, great Mike Reid of EastEnders fame.

Norman is viewed relatively dispassionately as a person of limited mental resources using the reductive moralism that has been inculcated into him. Like many creative endeavors of the time, both the novel and TV adaptation of Noah’s Castle seem to express fears about the end of the post-war consensus, the seething rage beneath the mustn’t-grumble-ness of British life, and a need to process the traumatic events of the past through the lens of contemporary worries.The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. The tv series aired in Australia on ABCtv along with many of the other children’s serials of the time. He bribes someone with a promise of swiss francs if they reveal where one of the other main characters is hoarding their supplies. Repeatedly, I found myself asking how I would react in the all too real situations presented by the author.

Although the author has set up an ethical dilemma, he presents several sides of the issue, and doesn't push a final conclusion, which was refreshing. Many of the above series were intended as children’s/younger persons entertainment; their oddness and possibly advanced or unsettling themes for their target audience is now part of their appeal. Broadcast on ITV over seven weeks between 2 April and 14 May 1980, it was a rare excursion into the realms of dystopian fiction for Southern Television, a prolific provider of children’s television but whose typical programming was the likes of the science fiction inflected action series Freewheelers (1968-1973), Enid Blyton adaptation The Famous Five (1978-1979), long-running science programme How (1966-1981) and the comic misadventures of the lovable eponymous scarecrow in Worzel Gummidge (1979-1981). It's as relevant now as it was back then, because I think we're all only a few steps away from having our whole world come crashing down. While readers will identify with him, his sister Agnes, and some other characters that come along, the real star of the novel is Barry's father, Norman.The main character in the book is a fairly well-developed character, who grows and changes as the book evolves. If this was a Robert Heinlein story or from any number of more conservative authors, the message would be something like, “Oh, Father seemed crazy, but he was so clever to keep us all safe during these hard times.

In this sense, Noah’s Castle could be seen as the lower budget, more youth-orientated flipside to the final series of Quatermass (1979) and its consideration of societal collapse and norms. Eventually assorted ne’er-do-wells converge on the house with something altogether darker than pools coupon collection in mind. If we look at world news, there are example of just how much at the mercy of these thugs the average person is. I'm not entirely sure of the reason for the second edition, except that there's a rise in dystopian YA literature, and the publishers saw a chance to market this book to that audience.A story about life during an economic disaster that feels very contemporary, even if it was written 30-40 years ago. By the end of the book, the father is in a fugue state feeling sorry for himself because he couldn't take care of his family. The family begins to be under stress, and as they see friends suffering and without, they struggle with what their father has done and is doing. Anticipating the worst, Norman moves his family from their lovely home to an old drafty castle looking home, a fortress really.