Leon Garfield's "Apprentice" stories are not for a young reading age, despite the somewhat misleading format and plentiful illustration. In these terse, ironic tales there is a concentration of imagery, an elusive technique of characterisation and a breadth of social comment which demand an alert reader (I suggest, ten and over) ready to accept an idiosyncratic but authentic view of the past. Like their predecessors in the series, the present books, numbered 5 to 8, contain several linking devices. The London scene shifts from one street to another within the City, from St. Martin's Churchyard in The Valentine to a dingy yard off Old 'Change in Labour in Vain, from a Jewish clockmaker's in Carter Lane in The Fool to Drury Lane and its alleyways in Rosy Starling. Each tale is marked by a festival…. Beyond the links of place and circumstance there are deeper links in theme, for each of these caustic, sharply documented tales turns on imposture, self-deception, change and—in a sense—growing up. When the sequence is complete I am sure it will stand out as one of the most notable individual commentaries of our time on the vanity of human wishes, a lesson anyone could learn willingly through this unique combination of historical detail and universal feeling. (pp. 3199-200)
Margery Fisher, in her Growing Point, November, 1977.
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