Persian Gold

 

I couldn't find an image of Persian Gold, or any information about the series that it came from, Long Ago Children Books, which has titles (in the back of the book) from a stellar list of authors, including Kevin Crossley-Holland, Penelope Farmer, Leon Garfield, Penelope Lively, Geoffrey Trease, Elfrida Vipont and many others, including several more by Jill Paton Walsh. I would kill to have a complete series of these books, which were published by Heinemann in the 1970s (but perhaps not released in Australia?)

I found this very slim little book during a very successful excursion to City Basement Books in Flinders St a week ago, which also netted FOUR Elizabeth Goudge paperbacks (I audibly gasped when I saw them!) and some other treasures. Persian Gold is very short, not more than a short story really (I polished it off on the tram ride home), but it's a vivid, moving adventure set in ancient Greece which would definitely have captured my imagination if I'd read it as a seven or eight year old. The other titles seem to range randomly over recorded history so I guess the authors were given fairly free rein to choose their favourite period. The illustrations by David Smee are great, too.

I'm curious if anyone has ever come across other titles from this series and if so, what they thought of them?