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Beginning of article

WHEN MRS Liddell finally realised in 1863 that her daughter Alice was more than a family friend to the Reverend Charles Dodgson, she tore up every scrap of his correspondence that she could find. Many were messages, written backwards or as puns for the clever Alice to solve; a means of cementing the other hidden, deeply coded bond she innocently shared with Dodgson.

Although the Liddell family continued to live next door to Dodgson, then a mathematical lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, they severed all contact. Yet the ambiguous and disturbing relationship between Alice and Dodgson was immortalised like a dreamy puzzle in his classic, Alice in Wonderland.

This …