Posted by Peter Hyland on December 07, 2014 at 01:14:22 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Grandparents posted by Mike Jones on December 06, 2014 at 13:40:01:
I very much agree with Mike Jones. Missing parents certainly are part of AR's plots, but not obvious ones, in the sense that when I read the books as a child (and as an adult for that matter) I did not notice this very much. It is only years later that I have become curious about it. I was at school not long after the 1939-45 war, so boys without a living father were not that unusual. I wonder if young readers today assume that the missing parents are the result of separation or divorce, which is probably the likeliest cause nowadays?