The pace of the plot of William Mayne's latest tour de force [The Battlefield] is slow and measured, country style…. The climax is conceivable only because by the time it comes the girls have woven themselves into the readers' consciousness by the quaint acuteness of their speech, their 'cleverness' in the northern sense. The author exploits the way they experiment with language before reality encroaches on metaphor. The result is an exploration in depth of sense experience, almost Keatsian in its richness, laced with good humour and memorable characters. I smell that shepherd yet. (p. 111)

Margaret Meek, in The School Librarian and School Library Review, March, 1968.

The plot of The Battlefield is slight: two children with the help of a local tractor-driver unearth an old cannon and spend a night in a tower which is transplanted from the battlefield to the village green. The characteristic touch of Mayne...