Introduction

As a child in the 60s I was introduced to short fiction via Listen With Mother. Many of the books I went on to read – the Milly Molly Mandy stories, the William books by Richmal Crompton were essentially short story collections. But as an adult I thought it was time to put away childish things. Grown-ups read novels. 

Yet short stories have always caught my imagination in a way that longer fiction can’t do. There’s something dreamlike and haunting about this genre. Here I’ve chosen some examples that may not necessarily be ‘the best’. They are simply the ones which have never gone away.