I think Susanna Clarke is the most interesting writer writing today. Her work prefigures and encapsulates the struggle to re-enchant a world drained of enchantment, and how that struggle starts in myth and folklore and ends, well, in a rediscovery of ancient, half-forgotten stories. But because of that journey, Clarke imbues the new old stories with some of the cold, star glitter of the tales of faerie and wizards that she first wrote about in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

This is a Christmas story, a slight tale in itself but one written with an exquisite command of language and turns of phrase that demand the reader pause and ponder before moving on. It’s the sort of story that bears reading and reading again, like Piranesi, her masterpiece. It combines some of the poignancy of Wilde’s fairy tales with the deep mysticism of place and nature that constitutes a deep aquifer of the whole idea of England and Englishness.

From what I have read, Clarke struggles with health problems. We are fortunate to have had the stories she has written but I hope very much that her health will allow her to write more in future. I, for one, am eager to see where she wanders.