Of course I saw the film in England not long after it was released in 1961. Each time I see it, as an adult, I 'see' more. Was the Man, Arthur Alan Blakey (Alan Bates) contemplating suicide I wondered later. The film is set in bleak wintertime Lancaster and shot on location there. The scant descriptions in the book place it in the Home Counties (Kent?). The children's names and nick-names in the book are quite whimsical; the story is told from the middle child's perspective but in the film the focus is the eldest child Kathy (Hayley Mills), Swallow in the book. I'm still reading . . . the writing is quite quirky and sprinkled with what, in 1958, would have been called Americanisms; but whether that was editorial oversight or deliberate.

The basic story is well known both from the musical, and the older film starring Alan Bates and Hayley Mills (whose mother wrote it) ; the book is a bit different. The children are from the South of England, not Lancashire, and their names are a bit more whimsical. The kids' innocence and readiness to believe contrasts with the grownups' suspicious world weary outlook, yet even the children are not quite sure, though they remain loyal to the man in the barn. Nothing is overstated, all is implied. The children's late Fifties slang gives it period charm, as do the scratchy illustrations of kids in ponytails and turned-up jeans. I felt as if I was living it as Brat experienced it, and as she tells it in the first person.
A wonderful story with a unique atmosphere, no matter what....