members of his family, who "could not cope with me, and I could not cope with" them. Looking back, he remarked, "I soon learned that it was not a good idea to come home excited over irregular verbs". In 1955, he joined the university theatrical society, playing the role of Mark Antony in a performance of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra where he co-starred alongside Dudley Moore and where Kenneth Baker was the stage manager. In August 1956, he decided that he wished to devote himself to novel writing, and decided to abandon his university education without taking a degree; he left Oxford in late 1956. He nevertheless felt that the academic rigour which he learned during his university studies has remained "a permanent strength through all my life". The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath: 1957–64 Aged 22, Garner was out cycling when he came across a hand-painted sign announcing that an agricultural cottage in Toad Hall – a late medieval building situated in Blackden, seven miles from Alderley Edge – was on sale for £510. Although he personally could not afford it, he was lent the money by the local Oddfellow lodge, enabling him to purchase and move into the cottage in June 1957. In the late nineteenth century the Hall had been divided into two agricultural labourers' cottages, but Garner was able to purchase the second for £150 about a year later; he proceeded to knock down the dividing walls and convert both halves back into a single home. Garner had begun writing his first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: A Tale of Alderley, in September 1956. However it was while at Toad Hall that he finished the book. Set in Alderley Edge, it revolves around two children, Susan and Colin, who are sent to live in the area with their mother's old nursemaid, Bess, and her husband, Gowther Mossock. While exploring the Edge, they encounter a race of malevolent creatures, the svart alfar, who dwell in the Edge's abandoned mines and who seem intent on capturing them. They are rescued by the wizard Cadellin, who reveals that the forces of darkness are massing at the Edge in search of a powerful magical talisman, the eponymous "weirdstone of Brisingamen". Whilst writing in his spare time Garner attempted to gain employment as a teacher, but soon gave that up, believing that "I couldn't write and teach;