The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. ‘Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?’ he asked.
‘Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’
Tumbling headlong down a rabbit-hole, Alice enters the magical underground kingdom of Wonderland. Here, apart from changing size at inconvenient moments, she plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts before stumbling upon the Mad Hatter’s tea-party. In her second adventure, through the looking-glass, she finds that life is a game of chess, in which she is the pawn. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) was in born in Cheshire, England. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published in 1865 (written to entertain Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church) and Through the Looking-Glass appeared in 1872.