Through the looking glass

I had sent my heroine straight down a rabbit-hole ...without the least idea what was to happen afterwards,' wrote Charles Dodgson, describing how Alice was conjured up one 'golden afternoon' in 1862 to entertain his child-friend Alice Liddell.

His dream worlds of nonsensical Wonderland and the back-to-front Looking-Glass kingdom depict order turned upside-down: a baby turns into a pig; time is abandoned at a disordered tea-party; and a chaotic game of chess makes a seven-year-old girl a Queen.

But amongst the anarchic humour and sparkling word play, puzzles, paradoxes and riddles, are poignant moments of elegiac nostalgia for lost childhood.

Startlingly original and experimental, the Alice books provide readers with a double window on both child and adult worlds.