AF Run Away Home by Antonia Forest

Marlows No 10

GGBP first published Run Away Home in July 2003 – it was the first Marlows title we published, chosen then because it was so difficult to find secondhand. That still applies now, whether in the original hardback or the GGBP edition.
Here is what we are doing about our extra material. In 2008, we published Celebrating Antonia Forest which was a celebration of the Bournemouth Conference 2006. In this book, we included over 50 pages of text which Antonia Forest originally wrote for Run Away Home  but which were  not included in the published book. CAF has been out of print for years, and so we are including these 50 pages here, which seems absolutely the right place!
In Run Away Home, the Marlow siblings (Dad is away in the Navy and conveniently Mum has to go to Paris for Christmas in this book) decide to assist a runaway ‘tug-of-love’ boy reunite with his Swiss father; at first they shelter him in one of their outbuildings, then, when he’s recaptured by Authority, concoct a very elaborate plot to spirit him away from the local panto performance and sail him across to the Isle of Wight, where he’s supposed to be collected by his father’s friend… Of course, the plan goes awry and almost ends in catastrophe. There are wonderful moments – Christmas dinner in a cave at the beach; Patrick’s midnight vigil; Lawrie impersonating the runaway boy in a monkey costume – and the interactions between the family.
Run Away Home was published on 26 April 2023.