Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Little Grey Rabbit's Party by Alison Uttley Little Grey Rabbit. – 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. – Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? Alison Uttley and Little Grey Rabbit. Alison Uttley published her first Little Grey Rabbit book in 1929. Based on a brilliantly imagined community of animals with homely, sensible Little Grey Rabbit, vain and selfish Squirrel and the boastful and adventurous Hare at their centre, these square little books, beautifully and sensitively illustrated by Margaret Tempest, were soon selling in their hundreds of thousands, making their author,Alison Uttley, a household name. With a varied and supporting cast of characters, including Moldy Warp the mole, Fuzzypeg the little hedgehog, Wise Owl, Water Rat, the Speckledy Hen, and many more, the thirty or so tales describe the everyday life and the adventures, trials and dilemmas of their woodland characters, upon whom the occasional swooping danger descends and is contained by a mixture of good sense, togetherness and courage. Alison Uttley was convinced that children loved the Little Grey Rabbit characters ‘because I believe in them. Mine aren’t made up, they’re real…I was born in a place of beauty…I talked to all the animals’. Brought up as the unusually gifted daughter of a tenant farmer and his wife in the hilly Derbyshire countryside, Alison was indeed surrounded by animals on her beloved and remote Castle Top Farm and those in the surrounding woods and fields. She felt that animals ‘have such a raw deal, and I think they are very faithful and very, very patient.’ She wrote: ‘In these little books I always try to give some specially English touch of country life, which might [otherwise] be forgotten.’ More than this, Alison was a passionate observer of the changing seasons and of the swirling constellations in the night skies. She made a point of bowing to the new moon to bring her luck. She greeted the month of her birth, December, ‘the new month, the month I love with a kiss.’ She thought of herself as ‘a snow-baby, a lucky baby, they said, born just before Christmas, in the great storm.’ We learn from her diaries that the month of April was also a favourite to be welcomed like a lost child or lover: ‘Lovely darling April has come. I ran down to open the door to let her in yesterday.’ It is small wonder, then, that in the Little Grey Rabbit books the seasons, the stars, the moon and the sun, the contours and the flora and fauna of the traditional English countryside are celebrated with such tenderness and with so keen an eye. Denis Judd London 2015. The latest edition of Professor Denis Judd’s authorised biography, Alison Uttley: Spinner of Tales was published in 2010; he is also editor of her Diaries, The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley, 1932–1971, paperback 2011. 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. This little book was published in 1963 and the first edition carried a dedication to Longwick Church of England Combined School in Buckinghamshire, the county where Alison Uttley lived the latter part of her life. She was delighted to hear that the children there celebrated May Day, very much as she remembered it as a child in her native Derbyshire, with May Pole dancing and floral decorations. May Day has long been celebrated in the village of Longwick and the village school plays a key role in keeping the tradition alive. All the children and members of the local community are involved in making the sceptres and garlands that are paraded around the village on the day of the fete. As well as a well-trained group of maypole dancers who perform several dances at the fete on the village green. Alison wrote: “The procession of children wnet from the school to the village green, and sang the May Day Carol.” The following photographs have kindly been granted for publication with the permission of Longwick School and the parents of the children involved. Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? I grew up with the Little Grey Rabbit books. When I had children myself, I suddenly realised that Alison Uttley must be a real person. This was before Professor Denis Judd’s wonderful authorised biography. I discovered that she had lived at Castle Top Farm, and persuaded my family to find it with me. We climbed the hill and stood at the gate for so long that Mrs Clay took pity on us and invited us in. She said she often spoke to admirers of Alison Uttley. She mentioned seeing a grey rabbit on the lawn. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment to consider why Alison Uttley had chosen a grey rabbit. I said: ‘I’m excited to hear about the grey rabbit, Mrs Clay. I think you should write and publish that you have really seen one.’ But I noticed that she then sounded a little vague, as if she wasn’t quite sure that she had. Back home, I looked at the first paragraph of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit . I have an old Xerox copy of the handwritten manuscript from the John Rylands University Library. I saw that the phrases about Hare and Squirrel were full of corrections. But Little Grey Rabbit seemed to emerge effortlessly without any need for editing. In the rest of the series is a group of brown rabbits, and also a black rabbit. They are given a few characteristics, but not a distinct unforgettable character like Little Grey Rabbit. Grey rabbits in the wild seem to be rare in Derbyshire. I have not yet met anyone except Mrs Clay who claims to have seen one. When Professor Judd edited and published The Private Diaries , I thought this might contain an entry about the origin of Little Grey Rabbit, but it didn’t. I wrote to him, not very hopefully, because I was sure he would have published something so significant. Sure enough, he replied: ‘I am not sure about the choice of colour, except that the rabbits that the child Alison would have seen at Castle Top Farm would have been grey’. Later, he wrote: ‘I have suddenly remembered the answer: it is because she wears a GREY dress!’ On the front cover of The Private Diaries , the picture of Little Grey Rabbit looks brownish, the same colour as Hare. So I checked with the first editions of the series. Surely Alison Uttley must have given her approval to the beautiful Margaret Tempest illustrations? The first picture opposite the first page of the 1929 publication of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit shows Grey Rabbit raking, in a grey dress and distinctly grey fur. Clearly, she has always been a grey rabbit. So I am curious to know whether Alison Uttley had seen a real grey rabbit, perhaps in Lea Woods during those long walks to and from school, as Professor Judd has suggested. Or did she invent her? Little Grey Rabbit. – 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. – Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? Alison Uttley and Little Grey Rabbit. Alison Uttley published her first Little Grey Rabbit book in 1929. Based on a brilliantly imagined community of animals with homely, sensible Little Grey Rabbit, vain and selfish Squirrel and the boastful and adventurous Hare at their centre, these square little books, beautifully and sensitively illustrated by Margaret Tempest, were soon selling in their hundreds of thousands, making their author,Alison Uttley, a household name. With a varied and supporting cast of characters, including Moldy Warp the mole, Fuzzypeg the little hedgehog, Wise Owl, Water Rat, the Speckledy Hen, and many more, the thirty or so tales describe the everyday life and the adventures, trials and dilemmas of their woodland characters, upon whom the occasional swooping danger descends and is contained by a mixture of good sense, togetherness and courage. Alison Uttley was convinced that children loved the Little Grey Rabbit characters ‘because I believe in them. Mine aren’t made up, they’re real…I was born in a place of beauty…I talked to all the animals’. Brought up as the unusually gifted daughter of a tenant farmer and his wife in the hilly Derbyshire countryside, Alison was indeed surrounded by animals on her beloved and remote Castle Top Farm and those in the surrounding woods and fields. She felt that animals ‘have such a raw deal, and I think they are very faithful and very, very patient.’ She wrote: ‘In these little books I always try to give some specially English touch of country life, which might [otherwise] be forgotten.’ More than this, Alison was a passionate observer of the changing seasons and of the swirling constellations in the night skies. She made a point of bowing to the new moon to bring her luck. She greeted the month of her birth, December, ‘the new month, the month I love with a kiss.’ She thought of herself as ‘a snow-baby, a lucky baby, they said, born just before Christmas, in the great storm.’ We learn from her diaries that the month of April was also a favourite to be welcomed like a lost child or lover: ‘Lovely darling April has come. I ran down to open the door to let her in yesterday.’ It is small wonder, then, that in the Little Grey Rabbit books the seasons, the stars, the moon and the sun, the contours and the flora and fauna of the traditional English countryside are celebrated with such tenderness and with so keen an eye. Denis Judd London 2015. The latest edition of Professor Denis Judd’s authorised biography, Alison Uttley: Spinner of Tales was published in 2010; he is also editor of her Diaries, The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley, 1932–1971, paperback 2011. 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. This little book was published in 1963 and the first edition carried a dedication to Longwick Church of England Combined School in Buckinghamshire, the county where Alison Uttley lived the latter part of her life. She was delighted to hear that the children there celebrated May Day, very much as she remembered it as a child in her native Derbyshire, with May Pole dancing and floral decorations. May Day has long been celebrated in the village of Longwick and the village school plays a key role in keeping the tradition alive. All the children and members of the local community are involved in making the sceptres and garlands that are paraded around the village on the day of the fete. As well as a well-trained group of maypole dancers who perform several dances at the fete on the village green. Alison wrote: “The procession of children wnet from the school to the village green, and sang the May Day Carol.” The following photographs have kindly been granted for publication with the permission of Longwick School and the parents of the children involved. Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? I grew up with the Little Grey Rabbit books. When I had children myself, I suddenly realised that Alison Uttley must be a real person. This was before Professor Denis Judd’s wonderful authorised biography. I discovered that she had lived at Castle Top Farm, and persuaded my family to find it with me. We climbed the hill and stood at the gate for so long that Mrs Clay took pity on us and invited us in. She said she often spoke to admirers of Alison Uttley. She mentioned seeing a grey rabbit on the lawn. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment to consider why Alison Uttley had chosen a grey rabbit. I said: ‘I’m excited to hear about the grey rabbit, Mrs Clay. I think you should write and publish that you have really seen one.’ But I noticed that she then sounded a little vague, as if she wasn’t quite sure that she had. Back home, I looked at the first paragraph of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit . I have an old Xerox copy of the handwritten manuscript from the John Rylands University Library. I saw that the phrases about Hare and Squirrel were full of corrections. But Little Grey Rabbit seemed to emerge effortlessly without any need for editing. In the rest of the series is a group of brown rabbits, and also a black rabbit. They are given a few characteristics, but not a distinct unforgettable character like Little Grey Rabbit. Grey rabbits in the wild seem to be rare in Derbyshire. I have not yet met anyone except Mrs Clay who claims to have seen one. When Professor Judd edited and published The Private Diaries , I thought this might contain an entry about the origin of Little Grey Rabbit, but it didn’t. I wrote to him, not very hopefully, because I was sure he would have published something so significant. Sure enough, he replied: ‘I am not sure about the choice of colour, except that the rabbits that the child Alison would have seen at Castle Top Farm would have been grey’. Later, he wrote: ‘I have suddenly remembered the answer: it is because she wears a GREY dress!’ On the front cover of The Private Diaries , the picture of Little Grey Rabbit looks brownish, the same colour as Hare. So I checked with the first editions of the series. Surely Alison Uttley must have given her approval to the beautiful Margaret Tempest illustrations? The first picture opposite the first page of the 1929 publication of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit shows Grey Rabbit raking, in a grey dress and distinctly grey fur. Clearly, she has always been a grey rabbit. So I am curious to know whether Alison Uttley had seen a real grey rabbit, perhaps in Lea Woods during those long walks to and from school, as Professor Judd has suggested. Or did she invent her? Diaries reveal dark side to Little Grey Rabbit's creator. She created the enduringly charming children's characters Little Grey Rabbit and Fuzzypeg the Hedgehog but the private diaries of Alison Uttley reveal the author to have been a controlling, difficult woman who despised many people, including her near neighbour Enid Blyton whom she called a "vulgar, curled woman". Uttley, who grew up in rural Derbyshire, moved to Blyton's home town of Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire as an adult. Bitterly jealous of Blyton's success, despite being the author of more than 100 books herself, Uttley wrote in her diaries of their one and only meeting: "'I was watching a woman ogling [the fishmonger], her false teeth, her red lips, her head on one side as she gazed up close – suddenly he turned to me and introduced her, Enid Blyton! The Blyton photographed and boastful!" she wrote. "When I asked her which books she wrote, she replied 'Look in Smith's window' and turned away, and never spoke again.'" She hated comparisons with Beatrix Potter, whom she felt was an illustrator who wrote words around pictures, whereas she herself was a great storyteller; her gravestone reads "a spinner of tales". She also loathed her illustrator Margaret Tempest, calling her "absolutely awful". "She is a humourless bore, seldom does a smile come, her eyes cold and hard," Uttley wrote. The diaries, which were edited down from 39 volumes by Uttley's biographer, Professor Denis Judd, are published this month by Pen and Sword, spanning the years between 1932 and 1971. They show the reality of the author who, despite becoming the second woman ever to graduate from Manchester University – and in physics – believed in fairies all her life. "It's an amazing paradox," said Judd. "She believed in fairies and in time travel – that people can move in between different worlds. She was both a completely practical, scientific person, and would also talk about ghosts." "I lay awake thinking of scientific work, the urge and thrill of it. The bliss when we calculated the number of atoms in space … yet I might have found it sterile and my life is human now," Uttley wrote. She also struggled with a difficult personal life – her husband James committed suicide in 1930, forcing her into her writing career to support her only child John. "I do find life difficult at times … and I behave childishly too, do foolish things, unworthy … I don't think one can have great imagination and great wisdom. Can one?" she mused. Her books, from her semi-autobiographical account of her childhood on Castle Top Farm in Derbyshire, A Country Child, to the time-slip story for older children A Traveller in Time, and her stories of Little Grey Rabbit, Brock the Badger, Sam Pig and Tim Rabbit, are full of her love for the countryside, and capture it in exquisite detail. Children loved her characters, she felt, because she believed in them. "Mine aren't made up. They are real … I don't sit down to write a story, they come," she wrote. She might have dismissed "the Blyton" but she admired Walter de la Mare – a fellow believer in time travel, said Judd – writing of him that "he was smiling and very charming, so that I quite loved him". Uttley died aged 91 in 1976. Her beloved son John killed himself two years later, driving his car off a cliff. "I think Alison was a singularly controlling and dominating person, and probably difficult to live with," said Judd. "Her competitive and passionate nature often clouded her judgment and drastically affected her private and professional life. Though she ended her life as a grande dame of literature, she was acclaimed but never entirely content." Little Grey Rabbit. – 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. – Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? Alison Uttley and Little Grey Rabbit. Alison Uttley published her first Little Grey Rabbit book in 1929. Based on a brilliantly imagined community of animals with homely, sensible Little Grey Rabbit, vain and selfish Squirrel and the boastful and adventurous Hare at their centre, these square little books, beautifully and sensitively illustrated by Margaret Tempest, were soon selling in their hundreds of thousands, making their author,Alison Uttley, a household name. With a varied and supporting cast of characters, including Moldy Warp the mole, Fuzzypeg the little hedgehog, Wise Owl, Water Rat, the Speckledy Hen, and many more, the thirty or so tales describe the everyday life and the adventures, trials and dilemmas of their woodland characters, upon whom the occasional swooping danger descends and is contained by a mixture of good sense, togetherness and courage. Alison Uttley was convinced that children loved the Little Grey Rabbit characters ‘because I believe in them. Mine aren’t made up, they’re real…I was born in a place of beauty…I talked to all the animals’. Brought up as the unusually gifted daughter of a tenant farmer and his wife in the hilly Derbyshire countryside, Alison was indeed surrounded by animals on her beloved and remote Castle Top Farm and those in the surrounding woods and fields. She felt that animals ‘have such a raw deal, and I think they are very faithful and very, very patient.’ She wrote: ‘In these little books I always try to give some specially English touch of country life, which might [otherwise] be forgotten.’ More than this, Alison was a passionate observer of the changing seasons and of the swirling constellations in the night skies. She made a point of bowing to the new moon to bring her luck. She greeted the month of her birth, December, ‘the new month, the month I love with a kiss.’ She thought of herself as ‘a snow-baby, a lucky baby, they said, born just before Christmas, in the great storm.’ We learn from her diaries that the month of April was also a favourite to be welcomed like a lost child or lover: ‘Lovely darling April has come. I ran down to open the door to let her in yesterday.’ It is small wonder, then, that in the Little Grey Rabbit books the seasons, the stars, the moon and the sun, the contours and the flora and fauna of the traditional English countryside are celebrated with such tenderness and with so keen an eye. Denis Judd London 2015. The latest edition of Professor Denis Judd’s authorised biography, Alison Uttley: Spinner of Tales was published in 2010; he is also editor of her Diaries, The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley, 1932–1971, paperback 2011. 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. This little book was published in 1963 and the first edition carried a dedication to Longwick Church of England Combined School in Buckinghamshire, the county where Alison Uttley lived the latter part of her life. She was delighted to hear that the children there celebrated May Day, very much as she remembered it as a child in her native Derbyshire, with May Pole dancing and floral decorations. May Day has long been celebrated in the village of Longwick and the village school plays a key role in keeping the tradition alive. All the children and members of the local community are involved in making the sceptres and garlands that are paraded around the village on the day of the fete. As well as a well-trained group of maypole dancers who perform several dances at the fete on the village green. Alison wrote: “The procession of children wnet from the school to the village green, and sang the May Day Carol.” The following photographs have kindly been granted for publication with the permission of Longwick School and the parents of the children involved. Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? I grew up with the Little Grey Rabbit books. When I had children myself, I suddenly realised that Alison Uttley must be a real person. This was before Professor Denis Judd’s wonderful authorised biography. I discovered that she had lived at Castle Top Farm, and persuaded my family to find it with me. We climbed the hill and stood at the gate for so long that Mrs Clay took pity on us and invited us in. She said she often spoke to admirers of Alison Uttley. She mentioned seeing a grey rabbit on the lawn. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment to consider why Alison Uttley had chosen a grey rabbit. I said: ‘I’m excited to hear about the grey rabbit, Mrs Clay. I think you should write and publish that you have really seen one.’ But I noticed that she then sounded a little vague, as if she wasn’t quite sure that she had. Back home, I looked at the first paragraph of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit . I have an old Xerox copy of the handwritten manuscript from the John Rylands University Library. I saw that the phrases about Hare and Squirrel were full of corrections. But Little Grey Rabbit seemed to emerge effortlessly without any need for editing. In the rest of the series is a group of brown rabbits, and also a black rabbit. They are given a few characteristics, but not a distinct unforgettable character like Little Grey Rabbit. Grey rabbits in the wild seem to be rare in Derbyshire. I have not yet met anyone except Mrs Clay who claims to have seen one. When Professor Judd edited and published The Private Diaries , I thought this might contain an entry about the origin of Little Grey Rabbit, but it didn’t. I wrote to him, not very hopefully, because I was sure he would have published something so significant. Sure enough, he replied: ‘I am not sure about the choice of colour, except that the rabbits that the child Alison would have seen at Castle Top Farm would have been grey’. Later, he wrote: ‘I have suddenly remembered the answer: it is because she wears a GREY dress!’ On the front cover of The Private Diaries , the picture of Little Grey Rabbit looks brownish, the same colour as Hare. So I checked with the first editions of the series. Surely Alison Uttley must have given her approval to the beautiful Margaret Tempest illustrations? The first picture opposite the first page of the 1929 publication of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit shows Grey Rabbit raking, in a grey dress and distinctly grey fur. Clearly, she has always been a grey rabbit. So I am curious to know whether Alison Uttley had seen a real grey rabbit, perhaps in Lea Woods during those long walks to and from school, as Professor Judd has suggested. Or did she invent her? Little Grey Rabbit. – 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. – Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? Alison Uttley and Little Grey Rabbit. Alison Uttley published her first Little Grey Rabbit book in 1929. Based on a brilliantly imagined community of animals with homely, sensible Little Grey Rabbit, vain and selfish Squirrel and the boastful and adventurous Hare at their centre, these square little books, beautifully and sensitively illustrated by Margaret Tempest, were soon selling in their hundreds of thousands, making their author,Alison Uttley, a household name. With a varied and supporting cast of characters, including Moldy Warp the mole, Fuzzypeg the little hedgehog, Wise Owl, Water Rat, the Speckledy Hen, and many more, the thirty or so tales describe the everyday life and the adventures, trials and dilemmas of their woodland characters, upon whom the occasional swooping danger descends and is contained by a mixture of good sense, togetherness and courage. Alison Uttley was convinced that children loved the Little Grey Rabbit characters ‘because I believe in them. Mine aren’t made up, they’re real…I was born in a place of beauty…I talked to all the animals’. Brought up as the unusually gifted daughter of a tenant farmer and his wife in the hilly Derbyshire countryside, Alison was indeed surrounded by animals on her beloved and remote Castle Top Farm and those in the surrounding woods and fields. She felt that animals ‘have such a raw deal, and I think they are very faithful and very, very patient.’ She wrote: ‘In these little books I always try to give some specially English touch of country life, which might [otherwise] be forgotten.’ More than this, Alison was a passionate observer of the changing seasons and of the swirling constellations in the night skies. She made a point of bowing to the new moon to bring her luck. She greeted the month of her birth, December, ‘the new month, the month I love with a kiss.’ She thought of herself as ‘a snow-baby, a lucky baby, they said, born just before Christmas, in the great storm.’ We learn from her diaries that the month of April was also a favourite to be welcomed like a lost child or lover: ‘Lovely darling April has come. I ran down to open the door to let her in yesterday.’ It is small wonder, then, that in the Little Grey Rabbit books the seasons, the stars, the moon and the sun, the contours and the flora and fauna of the traditional English countryside are celebrated with such tenderness and with so keen an eye. Denis Judd London 2015. The latest edition of Professor Denis Judd’s authorised biography, Alison Uttley: Spinner of Tales was published in 2010; he is also editor of her Diaries, The Private Diaries of Alison Uttley, 1932–1971, paperback 2011. 50th Anniversary of Grey Rabbit’s May Day. This little book was published in 1963 and the first edition carried a dedication to Longwick Church of England Combined School in Buckinghamshire, the county where Alison Uttley lived the latter part of her life. She was delighted to hear that the children there celebrated May Day, very much as she remembered it as a child in her native Derbyshire, with May Pole dancing and floral decorations. May Day has long been celebrated in the village of Longwick and the village school plays a key role in keeping the tradition alive. All the children and members of the local community are involved in making the sceptres and garlands that are paraded around the village on the day of the fete. As well as a well-trained group of maypole dancers who perform several dances at the fete on the village green. Alison wrote: “The procession of children wnet from the school to the village green, and sang the May Day Carol.” The following photographs have kindly been granted for publication with the permission of Longwick School and the parents of the children involved. Does anyone know why Little Grey Rabbit was a Grey Rabbit? I grew up with the Little Grey Rabbit books. When I had children myself, I suddenly realised that Alison Uttley must be a real person. This was before Professor Denis Judd’s wonderful authorised biography. I discovered that she had lived at Castle Top Farm, and persuaded my family to find it with me. We climbed the hill and stood at the gate for so long that Mrs Clay took pity on us and invited us in. She said she often spoke to admirers of Alison Uttley. She mentioned seeing a grey rabbit on the lawn. It hadn’t occurred to me before that moment to consider why Alison Uttley had chosen a grey rabbit. I said: ‘I’m excited to hear about the grey rabbit, Mrs Clay. I think you should write and publish that you have really seen one.’ But I noticed that she then sounded a little vague, as if she wasn’t quite sure that she had. Back home, I looked at the first paragraph of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit . I have an old Xerox copy of the handwritten manuscript from the John Rylands University Library. I saw that the phrases about Hare and Squirrel were full of corrections. But Little Grey Rabbit seemed to emerge effortlessly without any need for editing. In the rest of the series is a group of brown rabbits, and also a black rabbit. They are given a few characteristics, but not a distinct unforgettable character like Little Grey Rabbit. Grey rabbits in the wild seem to be rare in Derbyshire. I have not yet met anyone except Mrs Clay who claims to have seen one. When Professor Judd edited and published The Private Diaries , I thought this might contain an entry about the origin of Little Grey Rabbit, but it didn’t. I wrote to him, not very hopefully, because I was sure he would have published something so significant. Sure enough, he replied: ‘I am not sure about the choice of colour, except that the rabbits that the child Alison would have seen at Castle Top Farm would have been grey’. Later, he wrote: ‘I have suddenly remembered the answer: it is because she wears a GREY dress!’ On the front cover of The Private Diaries , the picture of Little Grey Rabbit looks brownish, the same colour as Hare. So I checked with the first editions of the series. Surely Alison Uttley must have given her approval to the beautiful Margaret Tempest illustrations? The first picture opposite the first page of the 1929 publication of The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit shows Grey Rabbit raking, in a grey dress and distinctly grey fur. Clearly, she has always been a grey rabbit. So I am curious to know whether Alison Uttley had seen a real grey rabbit, perhaps in Lea Woods during those long walks to and from school, as Professor Judd has suggested. Or did she invent her?