"Curiouser and curiouser!" cries Alice as she expands "like the largest telescope that ever was" and stares down at her distant feet.

That is among the first strange occurrences after she follows a White Rabbit down a rabbit-hole, and things are about to get even more bizarre.

Alice enters a magical subterranean world and encounters an extraordinary cast of characters, including the Cheshire Cat, March Hare and Mock Turtle.

She attends a very strange tea party and is invited by the Queen of Hearts - a monarch quick to suggest decapitation for anyone who displeases her - to play a game of croquet where flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls.

Alice also witnesses a Lobster Quadrille and attends a trial in which the Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts.

Lewis Carroll's fantastical dreamscape, described by one early reviewer as `an excellent piece of nonsense', is a blissfully surreal anthropomorphic treasure that has enchanted readers of all ages since it first appeared in 1865.