Peter Dickinson Summary

"The only thing we may predict about Peter Dickinson is that his next book will always be unpredictable," concluded a Junior Bookshelf reviewer. Although the reviewer referred to Dickinson's books for... Read more

"I have a function, like the village cobbler, and that is to tell stories. Everything else is subservient to that." Although he makes no lofty claims for himself in the note he writes for John Rowe To... Read more

Critical Essay by N. Danischewsky [The] first chapter [of The Weathermonger jolts the reader] out of present time and space into a marvellously unpredictable, incredible story; and since he knows no ... Read more

Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar Any book in which James Pibble appears is, ipso facto, going to be a good book, and so it is in Peter Dickinson's "The Lizard in the Cup."... Read more

Critical Essay by Paul Heins A boy, a bear, and a holy man are the three chief characters in [The Dancing Bear], a historical novel set in sixth-century Byzantium…. The author has successfully... Read more

Critical Essay by Mary M. Burns Davy Price [of The Gift] had the unique ability to see other people's thoughts in his own mind…. Past and present, legend and fact are woven into an intr... Read more

Critical Essay by Richard E. Geis [The Poison Oracle is] a bit of Strange, rather bizarre. Set in Now, in the real world, in which an English psycholinguist is working with a "genius" c... Read more

Critical Essay by Joanna Hutchison Peter Dickinson's first three children's books, The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil's Children, form a trilogy. They are all set in a B... Read more

Critical Essay by Margery Fisher The distinction between the three concepts in the title of this fascinating compendium [Chance, Luck and Destiny] is enforced by the story of Oedipus, told in section... Read more

Critical Essay by David Churchill Virtually unreviewable is Peter Dickinson's unusual and absorbing book [Chance, Luck and Destiny]. Its four sections, 'Magic and Witchcraft' bei... Read more

Critical Essay by T. J. Binyon One of the main differences between the thriller and the detective story proper is that the former demands an open, the latter a closed environment. The classic example... Read more

Critical Essay by Anatole Broyard In "King and Joker," Peter Dickinson paints an oxzymoronic picture … of an imaginary British royal family…. On a social level, the mem... Read more

Critical Essay by T. J. Binyon As his other books show, Peter Dickinson has a liking for outré societies; the one portrayed in Walking Dead seems a less artificial construction than has someti... Read more

Critical Essay by L. E. Salway In ["Heartsease"], Mr. Dickinson has returned to the situation which he used so effectively in ["The Weathermonger"]: England in the grip of... Read more

Critical Essay by Margery Fisher The classic journey-adventures of the past, from [Frederick] Marryat and [Walter] Scott downwards, have most of them been journeys of body and spirit together: the mo... Read more

Critical Essay by Allen J. Hubin If Peter Dickinson's "The Sinful Stones" … had been a first novel, I would have praised it as a rewarding debut of unusual character; but ... Read more

Critical Essay by A. L. Rosenzweig [The Sinful Stones] has the great virtue of being different, just like Peter Dickinson's two earlier stories featuring Inspector Pibble of New Scotland Yard.... Read more

Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar In recent years, Peter Dickinson has been attracting attention for a series of low-keyed mysteries written with extraordinary concentration. It is not so much that... Read more