Oscar Wilde’s story The Selfish Giant begins with the sentence: “Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the giant’s garden.” In that enclosure of flowers beautiful as stars, with trees bearing delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, the children were happy – until the owner returned with his foul temper, to build an excluding wall with a “no trespassers” sign. When he banished the children, the beauty faded from his garden. Arbor and Swifty, young boys from the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford, do not always attend school; the garden that fascinates them is a scrapyard, which bears only car carcasses and rusting appliances, but they can bring more, selling to the cantankerous dealer ­copper wiring and o