'' Men will never forget us, my comrades'.They lived in the present it was unwise to do anything else.' (C 16) ' They were as contented as warriors could be.' I speak in a hurry, like a man with a she-bear scratching his backside.' (C 15).' This was the place of the long silence, where the most important of the People of the Hill went, to lie in their rows,back into the womb of Earth Mother, painted with bright red ochre to represent the blood of birth.' (C 1).I was a fan! I never knew about his adult novels. I also read his book about the arrival of the Roamns to Britain, Legions of the Eagle, and his book about the Children's Crusade, The Children's Crusade. When I was a kid I read Henry Treece's Viking books: Horned Helmet and the trilogy Viking Dawn, the Road to Miklagard, and Viking Sunset. This is sword and sorcery but told with vivid detail and sadomasochistic relish. There are wolf hunts and cattle raids fisherfolk, hunters, pastoralists and farmers, there are jealous women and aggressive men. There are slaves and magic and sacrifices to the gods because the Earth Mother needs blood for the barley to grow. Not so much a historical novel as a prehistorical novel, The Golden Strangers are Bronze Age men arriving in England to take the land from the Stone Age black haired men.

The Road to Miklagard by Henry Treece