Guardian obituary of William Mayne

An obituary of William Mayne was posted on the Guardian website earlier this evening and will appear in tomorrow's paper.

Written by Julia Eccleshare, it passes briefly over his conviction for abusing girls and gives a full but intermittently unethusiastic account of his writing career:

A recurrent theme of Mayne's stories was how children could see and accept magic and magical explanations, while the adults around them create rational stories to explain the same outcome.

There was no sentimentality around Mayne's sense of children's belief. Instead he simply posited that children are as at home with unreality as reality, while adults take a different view.

I wrote about William Mayne myself a few days ago. There is quite a debate going on in the comments there.