Yet another "Book of the Month" was Mistress Masham's Repose  by T.H. White, a delightful book about another Maria, a ten- year-old orphan who lives in a huge, but dilapidated mansion, at the mercy of her unscrupulous guardian, the vicar,  and her cruel governess. But one day, on an island in a lake somewhere on the vast, run-down estate, Maria discovers a colony of Lilliputians and when the vicar and the governess plot to steal Maria's inheritance, it is her tiny friends who come to her rescue.

Then again, there was Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong, the autobiographical account of a Chinese-American girl growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown in the nineteen-thirties, and Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and John Masefield's The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights.

But not all of the books that came my way as a child were the result of bribery. The All-of-a-Kind Family by Sydney Taylor, about a Jewish family consisting of five daughters, living on New York's Lower East Side, in the early years of the 20th century, was a birthday present (though I can't remember which birthday). Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle, about the charmingly eccentric Mortmain family, as narrated by the younger daughter, Cassandra, was another birthday present. Captain F. Marryat's Children of the New Forest, with its Cavaliers and Roundheads, was a school prize for English which I won when I was ten and I discovered Tolkien's inimitable Bilbo Baggins on holiday in a country house in Essex a year later. That was the first time we had ever gone on holiday anywhere but the seaside. We were staying in a large house, in its own grounds, in a village called Stock. It had a terrace, on which we had delightful, al fresco meals. It had a lovely garden, beyond whose fence were four acres of overgrown grass which also belonged to the house, but where I scarcely dared venture, for fear of the many bumble bees and other insects which swarmed there. For the first time in my life, I had a room of my own and didn't have to share with my sister. And in that room, there were books. Lots of books. Books I had never read before or even heard of. One of them was The Hobbit. Another was Fanny Hill, which I read because it was said to be scandalous, but which I am by no means recommending here as a children's book!

Among my favourites at that time were the books of E. Nesbit - The Treasure Seekers, which gave me the idea of digging for gold coins in the garden (if we had only had one!), the Psammead trilogy (Five Children and It, The Phoenix and the Carpet and The Story of the Amulet) and The Enchanted Castle (at which I arrived via a BBC television serial). But best of all, and beloved to this very day, was The Railway Children. This last still ranks high on my list of best children's books and is, in fact - like The Wind in the Willows - on my list of favourite books of all time. Oh, yes, and the film version with Jenny Agutter wasn't bad either!

Then there was Miss Mary Contrary - Mary Lennox, the unloveable heroine of The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  I have always loved gardens and the idea of having a secret, walled garden, hidden from everyone else, continues to enchant me. When I think about this book, I remember a fenced-off garden in the Inner Circle of Regent's Park, not the famous Rose Garden, but some other place. I have the clearest memory of picnicking there with my parents, of playing there with my brother and sister. And yet, when I visited London again after many years of living in Jerusalem, I could no longer find it. Was it real, or did I dream it? Was it simply the  distilled ideal of all my younger self believed a secret garden should be?

There were many, many other books - too many to list here. Not all of them were, strictly speaking, children's books. In fact, I shall draw a veil over my reading of Lady Chatterley's Lover when I was about ten or twelve. Did I understand it? Well, actually, yes, I did. However, it gave me a distaste for D.H. Lawrence which has lasted to this day, because I think I recognised, even then, that its author's main purpose was to shock the reader. To shock, simply for the sake of shocking.

As I write this, my eye wanders over my bookshelves, where not a few of the books I read all those years ago still reside, many of them battered and worn, for although I take good care of books, time - and the claws of cats - are inexorable. I will mention just one more book, one of several that I inherited from my mother. Cocky and Co. by popular wartime children's author Violet M. Methley is about a couple of fourteen-year-old Australian orphans, sailing back "home" to live with relatives in England. Cocky of the title, is the boy's white cockatoo and the book is full of their adventures, as their ship makes ports of call in various Pacific islands, South America and Africa, before finally colliding with another ship and sinking, a few miles off Southampton! The story doesn't end there, but I won't spoil things by telling you any more. Go and read it yourself - if it's still in print. I mention this particular book, because when I opened it just now, I found a label inside which informs me that the book was presented to my mother as a prize at the Religion and Hebrew Classes of the Central Synagogue, Great Portland Street, London - the same Religion and Hebrew Classes where, many years later, I myself was a pupil. I won't say how long ago.

The wheel has come full circle...