The Intruder

by John Rowe Townsend

There was something weird about the stranger, something that Arnold didn't like. He made him feel uneasy and suspicious. Always poking his nose in where it wasn't wanted and winding Arnold up. All Arnold wanted was for him to go away and leave him alone but there was only one way he could stop
him...

This exciting story was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal and was the winner of the Silver P.E.N. Award (Children's Section).

Genres: Fiction, Young Adult

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

John Rowe Townsend (born 1922) is a British children's author and academic. His best-known children's novel is The Intruder, which won a 1971 Edgar Award, and his best-known academic work is Written for Children: An Outline of English Language Children's Literature (1965), the definitive work of its time on the subject.

He was born in Leeds, and studied at Leeds Grammar School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Among his popular works are Gumble's Yard (his debut novel, published in 1961), Widdershins Crescent (1965), and The Intruder (1969), which won a 1971 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Juvenile Mystery. In Britain, The Intruder was made into a children's TV series starring Milton Johns as the stranger. Noah's Castle was filmed by Southern television and transmitted in seven 25-minute episodes in 1980.

Reviews

[Keith Currie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I watched this as boy in a Sunday afternoon TV series in the early 1970s. Its sinister, melancholic atmosphere has always remained with me. Reading the novel now at last, after so many years, I found it gripping, creepy and not at all typical of children's literature of the time. As much as anything the rundown village-that-time-forgot with its silted up harbour and its contrary tides conjured up a miasmic foreboding, borne out by the plot.

[Bikerpaul68 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The protagonist, Arnold Haithwaite, is the lonely 16-year-old boy, who lives in a tiny seaside village called Skirlston with Ernest Haithwaite, a man he calls his father but who is old enough to be, and perhaps is, his grandfather. Ernest was made redundant after the local railway line closed. They live in a shabby old house, and one of the cramped rooms serves as the village shop, while two more are used for bed and breakfast; Arnold helps out in the shop and also works as an assistant to the Sand Pilot, guiding tourists across the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay. A couple of pages into the book, a mysterious man, The Intruder, appears on the beach and asks Arnold to guide him across the sands to Skirlston, saying that he has secured a room for the night at the shop. To Arnold's amazement, the stranger claims that he is Arnold Haithwaite, and then tries to drown the boy while they are crossing the river mouth. Later, when talking to Ernest, the stranger claims to be Ernest's nephew.

At the same time, the well-off Ellison family move in to the local "big house", where an elderly spinster, Miss Hendry, occupies a separate wing. Mrs Ellison is an unpleasant snob with an absent husband and two children: Jane is a hysterical-masochistic adolescent flirt who goes to a posh boarding school, while brother Peter is the only likeable character in the whole story. Peter and Arnold become friends and Peter quickly realizes the danger posed by The Intruder, who turns out to use two other unlikely names, Sonny Smith and Sonny Jones. They find this out when Sonny moves in to the shop with his "fiancée", Miss Binns, and turns out to be a violent psychopath who takes advantage of Ernest's advanced age and weakness.

The novel was published in 1969. Six years previously, the Beeching Report on Britain's railways had caused uproar because it suggested many line closures, and Harold Macmillan - the Prime Minister who famously told Britain's citizens, "You've never had it so good" - was forced to resign in the wake of the Profumo scandal. When the novel appeared, the social class system was as rigid as ever, reinforced by fee-paying schools to train the elite. Villages like Skirlston were doomed, fatally wounded by the railway line closures and the arrival of supermarkets that made small shops uneconomic. At the end of the book, Arnold has been officially confirmed as Sand Pilot. It's probably the best he can hope for.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zipped through this book in two sittings, so I can catch up with the Blu-Ray release from the sadly defunct Network label. I was lucky enough to find a 1971 reprint of the hardback for £4.50, and even luckier to have dropped on the TV series at a reduced price. I’m now looking forward to finally watching the creepy TV adaptation, having enjoyed this book immensely.

[Sheena · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book of a TV series I loved as a child

[Annemarie · Rating 1 out of 5]

a Very boring book.

[KimmGr]

'Sea, sand, stone, slate, sky.'

The stark opening sentence of the book never left me, despite forgetting the title, the author and the plot. A friend helped me relocate it, and now I'm reading it again. My kind of book.