The Tale of Lal: A Fantasy

Two children wander into fog-bound Trafalgar Square and discover that Nelson's Column hides a gateway to somewhere impossible. The Pleasant-Faced Lion waits for them, a creature of impossible politeness and hidden depths, ready to unveil a London transformed by pure imagination: tournaments where Saint George duels Griffins, parties in impossible gardens, the mundane architecture of the city reshaped into wonder. Raymond Paton's 1914 gem operates on a simple, devastating premise: what if childhood could actually enter the magic it glimpses? The novel hums with the particular joy of defamiliarization, of seeing the familiar world crack open to reveal its secret magnificent self. For readers who have ever stood in a city square after dark and felt, just for a moment, that anything might happen.