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Re-reading Narnia: 'The Horse and His Boy'
I've been down with an 'orrible cough for the past month (so unfair in summer!) and once again the blog has been neglected. Now I'm back, I realise I forgot to repost my essay on 'The Horse and His...
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Fairy- and folk-tales at the BBC Proms
I promised I would be writing more on this blog this summer, instead of which I'm in the middle of writing another book. And there have been other very pleasant interruptions, such as being asked to...
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The Night She Dreamed of Being a Dental Assistant
I won't even go into what else has been happening in the past week, but two notable things occurred in the world of science. Firstly a Cern physicist, Alessandro Strumia – who really looks young enough...
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Alan Garner at Jodrell Bank
A post from the archives: Alan Garner's lecture, "Powsells and Thrums", February 2015The Lovell Telescope, Jodrell BankThe lecture ‘Powsells and Thrums’, delivered by Alan Garner at Jodrell Bank on...
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"Where the Monsters Lurk"- a guest post by Garth Nix
While on tour a couple of years ago to promote his Old Kingdom novel "Goldenhand", Garth Nix generously took time out to write Steel Thistles a wonderful piece about where his monsters come from. I'd...
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Imagined Afterlives: Death in Classic Fantasy
One from the archives (October 2016) What – if anything – happens after death? A fantasy world, no matter how beautifully constructed, lacks something if there’s no thought given to what happens when...
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Re-reading Narnia: The Last Battle
When I was a child, of all the Narnia books The Last Battle was the one I liked least. I read it perhaps only two or three times compared with countless re-readings of the others; this was because I...
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Faerie Cities
This wonderful little city stands, as if sprung from the soil, in a neighbour's garden. It reminds me of the medieval French city of Carcassonne, whose name was used by Lord Dunsany for a faerie city...
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Reimer the Ferryman’s Aerial Voyage
[A Christmas Eve tale from Scandinavian Folklore, William Craigie, 1896]At Ottesund Ferry on Limfjord there was a ferryman whose name was Reimer. He had gone all the way to Copenhagen to get a licence...
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In Search of Janet, Queen of the Fairies
The village of Malham in the Yorkshire Dales is set in a landscape of remarkable natural beauty which includes the great curved cliff of Malham Cove and the dramatic narrow gorge of Gordale Scar....
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House Spirits - Brownies, Nisse, Boggarts...
Talking with a group of Girl Guides a while ago, we fell (as you do) into a discussion about house spirits.The best known example, annoyingly enough, is Dobby the house-elf from J.K. Rowling’s Harry...
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Haunted by Heads
On a brief trip to visit friends and relations in Yorkshire and Manchester last October, I began encountering an unsettling number of severed heads. Not real ones of course. Stone heads, with an...
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The Silver Cup from Dagberg Daas
Here is a version of an old tale I used in my first book, Troll Fell’. I love the practical but horrific way this 'berg-woman' deals with her long, drooping breasts. A berg-man or berg-woman is a mound...
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Sisters with Swords
I have a very old book of Scandinavian ballads, ‘Ballad Stories of the Affections’, edited and translated by Robert Buchanan. There’s no date of publication, but in Christmas 1887 (or 1881?) the...
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Maid Maleen: a fairytale study of trauma?
This essay was originally published nearly two years ago in the 12th issue of Gramarye, Winter 2017(It will take you a while to read! 😊 ) Maid Maleen (Kinder- und Hausmärchen, tale 198) isn’t...
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Tales of Kismet, Fate and Doom
Originally published as 'Inevitable Tales in 'Unsettling Wonder' Issue 6, September 2017 Nothing, they say, is sure but death and taxes. By creating a comic equivalence between two such different but...
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Women Leaders of the Wild Hunt
As we head towards Hallowe'en - are there any female leaders of the Wild Hunt? The answer is yes, which shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s ever heard of a Valkyrie.Njal’s Saga tells of a man in Caithness...
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Folklore snippets: The Gwyllion
From ‘British Goblins’ by Wirt Sikes, 1880The Gwyllion are female fairies of frightful characteristics, who haunt lonely roads in the Welsh mountains and lead night-wanderers astray. The Welsh word...
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The 'man in the oke' and other bugaboos
I do love lists. Especially lists of mysterious creatures, like the well-known one by Reginald Scot in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), a book in which he takes the robustly sceptical line that...
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OUT IN THE NIGHT WIND: a winter ghost story
This is a short ‘gaslamp fantasy' set in Victorian London, in Wapping, circa 1870. With the single exception of ‘Mr Eden’s’ house, all the streets, pubs, factories and other buildings named in it...
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