Whatever happened to Uncle? “The British are not noted for their warmth towards children. Britain is the country that invented the boarding school for seven-year-olds and the maxim that “children should be seen and not heard”. How odd then, that it should also have been the source of so many of the classics of children’s literature. From Winnie the Pooh to Alice in Wonderland and from J.R.Tolkien to J.K.Rowling, British authors and storytellers have stuffed the children’s sections of the western world’s bookstores and provided Hollywood with a stream of material.

Yet not all the gems of Britain’s children’s literature have enjoyed endless reprints and the Hollywood treatment. The “Uncle” stories of J.P. Martin, which focus on the doings of the eponymous hero, an elephant and benevolent dictator, were first published in the 1960s, and still enjoy a cult following. But they are now out of print. Indeed much of the “Uncle” canon is virtually unobtainable. Second-hand copies are snapped up by fanatical devotees and first editions go for hundreds of pounds.&rdquo (The Economist )