ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (1918–87) became interested in myths and legends at an early age. His boyhood schooling was interrupted by bouts of illness, which kept him at home in Poulton Hall, Cheshire, where he browsed continually in the magnificent Queen Anne library. Andrew Lang's fairytales, H. Rider Haggard's adventure stories, traditional legends from around the – world these were his early influences.
A passion for myths and legends flowered while he was at Oxford University, and became combined with an abiding love for Greece, which he first visited on a cruise in 1937, and returned to every year he could after that, until just before his death. He was especially knowledgeable about Greek theatres and claimed to have visited almost every existing site; the Greek plays also fascinated him, with their retelling of the ancient myths.
With this blend of interests, it was inevitable that he would retell the Greek stories in his own way. Not that writing was his first or only job; he had been a stage actor (especially as Noodler the pirate in Peter Pan) and a schoolmaster as well as Deputy Librarian of his old college at Oxford. From 1946 onwards, a large number of books appeared – biographies of his favourite authors, original children's fiction, and some fifteen volumes of his own retellings of traditional stories.
What Roger Lancelyn Green brings to the Greek myths and legends is not just learning and a sense of his own enthusiasm; it is a certain clarity. From an early age he possessed a huge chart, like a family tree, which displayed and made sense of the complex relationships between all the Greek gods and heroes. This chart, together with his gift as a story-teller, allowed him to write the best introduction to that mysterious and astonishing world of the Greek heroes, which has radically shaped our modern ideas about ourselves.
Some other Puffin Classics to enjoy
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD
KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
THE LUCK OF TROY
MYTHS OF THE NORSEMEN
TALES OF ANCIENT EGYPT
TALES OF THE GREEK HEROES
Roger Lancelyn Green
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
Alexandre Dumas
KING SOLOMON'S MINES
H Rider Haggard