A living connection to a vanished past

That One Book is a fortnightly column that does exactly what it says — it takes up one great classic and tells you why it is (still) great.

The most passionate fans of Philippa Pearce’s 1958 novel, Tom’s Midnight Garden, tend to be those who discover it as children. It is a fantasy novel written for children after all — but the themes explored in the story it is telling are so profound that even adults would appreciate it. This probably explains why those fans who discover it as children keep returning to it as they grow older. I was one of those who were hooked by Tom’s Midnight Garden as a child — I was little more than 10 years old when I read it for the first time, borrowing it from my primary school’s library. I remember reading it over two days, engrossed by the idea of a magical garden that appears only at midnight when a grandfather clock strikes 13.

The story begins with Tom being sent away to live with his childless aunt and uncle as his brother recovers from a bout of measles. Tom is essentially in quarantine, confined to a flat located in a former manor house. There used to be acres of land that belonged to the family that owned the house but over time, most of the property has been sold off and the building itself converted to flats. The flat on top is occupied by old Mrs Bartholomew. Tom is bored and listless in his aunt and uncle’s flat. Then one night, the old grandfather clock strikes 13 and Tom finds himself in a different world — there’s a garden he can access through a back door and a river and open spaces. The people in this world seem to be from another era and the only one who can interact with Tom is a girl named Hatty.

As the nights pass, Tom returns again and again to this midnight garden and he sees, along with us, Hatty grow up. Time is passing — the world Tom has stepped into and the people he’s been observing are changing. On a final visit, Tom realises the truth of what he’s been seeing and at the end of the book, back in his world of crowded cities built over gardens and meadows, he finds a living connection to a vanished past.

Tom’s Midnight Garden was Philippa Pearce’s second book — it was published in 1958 and would go on to win the Carnegie Medal that year. In the decades to follow, its popularity has only increased and it is now considered a classic of children’s literature.

Like most works of fantasy that use the time slip device, Tom’s Midnight Garden is at its most evocative when it shows us that we live with the actions of our forebears and their consequences.

The reason writers use the device is to let us, at least in our imaginations, move back and forth on the timeline and learn some indelible truths. Chief among these is that the past never remains in the past and history, though many in contemporary times would prefer to belittle it as a subject for study, cannot be ignored. So it’s no wonder that when you read Tom’s Midnight Garden as an adult, the richness of its storytelling and the depth of the emotions it portrays affect you even more than it did when you read it as a child.

The author is a writer and communications professional. When she’s not reading, writing or watching cat videos, she can be found on Instagram @saudha_k where she posts about reading, writing, and cats.