Michael Morpurgo's Spring is a delight, just as the season is. It's the voice of a good man talking about things he loves, and in focusing on the spring he doesn't neglect the presence in the past and in the future of the other seasons, and their inevitability, and he's probably done more than anyone to foster these qualities in generations of children, through his books as well as his charity 'Farms for City Children'. But one of his greatest qualities is that he sees things clearly and writes about them well; like Thomas Hardy, "He was a man who used to notice such things." We are all the richer for what he sees.