History as told before the world wars happened, as stories to children told by Puck himself. The great sense of place comes from Kipling's own house. There is conquest and questing and empires and fairies, and a sense of much we have lost. ( )

Puck, «ese duende maligno y despabilado» de El Sueño de una noche de verano de Shakespeare, un espíritu tan travieso como buen chico, vuelve a la tierra para contarnos la historia real de Inglaterra y de los ingleses. Puck, convertido en apropiadísimo introductor de embajadores históricos, presentará ante los ojos asombrados de dos niños unas realidades y acontecimientos que sucedieron en tiempos antiguos, cuando los seres humanos eran muy distintos. Esta atmósfera de real irrealidad es uno de los rasgos más bellos de este libro, que combina admirablemente la filosofía occidental de la acción con el sentido oriental de lo fantástico, lo mágico, lo maravilloso.

Full of fancies an quirks, this exploration of 1500 years of Sussex history guided by Puck, the oldest spirit in England, is probably at the foundation of my fascination for history. Clearly written for children it is not childish in it's presentation of past milieu, though certainly of its time. The Guttenberg text did not include illustrations, but Wikipedia came to the rescue. ( )

Kipling at his finest. ( )

A huge disappointment after a promising start. The beginning reminded me of E. Nesbit, with a couple of very English kids accidentally conjuring up an otherworldly being (in this case, Puck). Unlike Nesbit's books, in which this generally leads to the children being transported to other worlds or times, or magic in some way affecting them, in this case all it leads to is characters out of the past telling them long and boring stories. The kids just sit there and listen. I think the only reason they keep going back is that Puck magicks them into forgetting what happened the last time.