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'''Longlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal 2013'''
When Francesca Simon was invited to write about anything she liked, she decided to put the Lewis chessmen at the centre of an adventure. They have long fascinated her, and she has always wondered why they look so glum and worried. Add to this the fact (which she admitted in a recent interview for the Guardian) that if she were left alone in the British Museum she would want to touch everything, pick up everything and generally run amok (rather like that naughty Loki the Trickster, not to mention an equally horrid young boy called Henry . . .) and the seeds of her story were sown.