Artist, author, sound poet, and inventor Brion Gysin was born to British Canadian parents on 19th January 1916 in Taplow, Buckinghamshire. A member of the Paris Surrealist group in the 1930s, part owner of a restaurant in Tangiers through the 1950s where he hired the Master Musicians of Jajouka as the house band, and resident of the 'Beat Hotel' in Paris through the 1960s, he is now perhaps best remembered as the creator of the 'Cut-up technique' that he further deveoped with his close friend William S. Burroughs, who described Gysin as "...the only man I've ever respected."
It is, of course, an utter shame that this astonishing artist's work should be so reduced, but his story is perhaps all too common of those wishing to push boundaries. His Souk inspired calligraphic art is often sublime, as is his grid work created in Paris using a carved out paint roller at the same time as he was developing a whole new language of sonic poetry with his 'Permutation Poems'.
Here though we are focussing on another key invention of the Paris years, that of 'The Dreamachine', a spinning, stroboscopic, flickering light machine that, when stared at through closed eyes, produces vivid eidetic images. Developed with the assistance of fellow Beat Hotel residents, Ian Sommerville, Gysin's plans for 'The Dreamachine' were bold and many but ultimately doomed to failure.
The documetary below by Canadian film-maker Nik Sheehan, tells the story of the machine, and by extension of it's creator and his cohort of friends, and features along the way archive and new footage of the likes of Genesis P-Orridge, Lee Ranaldo, Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull, Ira Cohen, Richard Metzger, John Giorno, DJ Spooky and Kenneth Anger. It's an entrely fascinating story of an entirely fascinating man who for many is, at best, a peripheral figure in the life of his much more famous writer friend but who is deserving of being apprecited entirely on his own merits.
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Based on the novel 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr, which had previously been adapted into the fabulous 'Escape Into Night', 'Paperhouse' is the story of 'Anna' (Charlotte Burke) who, while suffering from glandular fever discovers herself slipping into the dreamworld of her own drawings where she meets Marc (Elliott Spears), another of her Doctor's patients, who's unable to walk due to his muscular dystrophy. Very much subjected to the whims of the bad tempered Anna, who veers wildly between kindness and petulance, the pair find themselves trapped in the lonely house held seige by a warped and angry caricature of her absent father (Ben Cross).
The kid actors are kid actors and the dubbing of American actress Glennne Headly is massively distracting but director Bernard Rose's interpretation of the story is an intriguing one with some bold visuals but it pales in comparison to it's predecessor. His idea to replace the terror of the watching stones with the hammer wielding father is the most 1980s of ideas which, with mention of his drinking, gives the whole thing a whiff of psychodrama that robs the story of some of it's supernatural menace but it isn't without it's charms.
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Published by Nodens Books. “This much-needed first reprint offers connoisseurs of the dark fantastic a rare minor masterpiece, too long overlooked. Ferelith should now take its place as one of the strange great visions in the library of the Gothic.” —From the “Introduction” by Mark Valentine.
'Ferelith' was the only book written by Victor Alexander Sereld Hay, son of the 20th Earl of Erroll - a title he would later assume - and diplomat of some apparent repute. His small novel, published in 1903, tells a story of an affair between an unhappy and maligned trophy wife, Ferelith, and her ghostly lover, and, of the resulting child.
Set, for the most part, in a wild and lonely Scottish castle where the wife and our narrator - her sister-in-law, Anne - are victim to the whims of the boarish and brutish husband. Cut off from both London society and from their more common neighbours by his manner and behaviour they live a solitary life, especially when he's called abroad. During this time Anne finds solace in books while Ferelith finds hers in the spectral embrace of the former, dissolute, lord of the castle and it's the issue of this dalliance that's the focus of the book's latter half.
It's a strange and engrossing read that takes it's gothic trappings and gives them a welcome twist. Written in a measured, almost staid, style that perfectly suits it's narrator and one which keeps the more potentally prurient aspects of the story under well-mannered wraps. I can't help but feel that along the way the author envisioned a longer novel with a wider cast - one of the more interesting characters appears for two brief moments across the book and another, with a fairly major role, has no back story whatsoever - the end product however is a taut little supernatural gothic thriller that is deserving of wider recognition.
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For '3 Wyrd Things' I ask various creative people whose work I admire to tell us about three oddly, wonderfully, weirdly British things that have been an influence on them and their work: - a book or author, - a film or TV show, - a song / album or musician / group.
This month: Rebecca Gransden
I read Rebecca's post-apocalyptic novella, 'Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group', in July of 2025 after being intrigued by the synopsis and enticed by the accompanying blurb from Iain Sinclair. I was entirely blown away by the poetic nature of her prose and the ease of her storytelling and it was easily one of the best things I read all year.
In December 2025 she announced her next book, 'The Undead Shepherdess and Further Cavities', a “collaborative collection of woodcarvings paired with odd and mischievous poetry, illuminating a path to antiquity”, written in collaboration with Sean Kilpatrick and available from Pig Roast Publishing,
She is published at X-R-A-Y, Burning House Press, Expat Press, Bruiser, and BULL, among others. A new edition of the novella 'Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group' is released at Tangerine Press.
In 1951 Ealing Studios released The Man in the White Suit, starring Alec Guinness. In the film Guinness plays a scientist who discovers the formula for a type of everlasting cloth. The titular white suit is made from this material, lightly glowing with radioactive qualities, and Guinness spends the rest of the film dressed in it as he tries to convince the world that his discovery should be taken on board. Directed by Alexander Mackendrick, the film is a satirical look at the absurdities of capitalism, and an unusual addition to the ‘one man against the system’ genre.
Nik Kershaw’s “Wouldn’t It Be Good” was released in 1984, and Mackendrick’s film reveals its connection to the track when it comes to the music video. From the start, the video creates an disquieting atmosphere, with two characters whispering to each other on a nighttime street corner, both attired straight out of an old film noir. Kershaw makes his entrance in his own white suit, his with a distinctly 1980s cut, carrying a leather suitcase. The similarities with Guinness’s character continue, as in his room Kershaw makes use of his own laboratory, albeit on a makeshift scale. Here, the video takes a turn further into the strange, and the suit becomes a very 1980s jumpsuit, with extraordinary qualities, where black and white images are projected over the entirety of its surface. Now, Kershaw becomes an alien visitor, akin to Bowie’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, here to observe humanity, for what purpose we don’t know.
The video is one that for a long time I recalled in fragments, with a half remembered main picture of Kershaw in the jumpsuit, defined by the uncanny flatness of the black and white moving image on its surface. In my memory the suit was covered only by white noise static, not the various footage that includes waves, people, and radio telescope dishes that actually appear in the video. For a long time the video existed to me entirely as an impression of Kershaw perpetually running down dingy corridors, trapped in his own version of the hallways in Polanski’s Repulsion.
“Wouldn’t It Be Good” hit media rotation at the height of Cold War tensions, with superpowers engaged in an arms race and nuclear anxiety at its peak. Kershaw’s lyrics reflect a longing for escape and the melancholy tone is accompanied by a sinister aura, suggesting resignation and a feeling of powerlessness. While the song implies a personal meaning, it does take its place as an example of unease at work in the zeitgeist, a quality common to synth pop from this era. The video reinforces this wider application, with the human race under scrutiny from alien eyes, and the overriding atmosphere is that of a reality dominated by mysterious forces with unknown agendas. By the end, Kershaw’s alien is the one under surveillance, with a group of people homing in on him like a scene from a 1950s communist paranoia b-movie.
The final scene has the alien make his escape via radio telescope, apparently beamed away into the cosmos. Shot at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, which is situated on the outskirts of Cambridge in the UK, the footage shows Kershaw fading to invisibility as he nears the giant discs, a brilliant white shaft of light emitting from them into the sky. The image of the radio telescope is synonymous with UFO lore, and alongside the much-appreciated pylon, these structures have cemented their place as icons of eerie landscapes.
The video itself was directed by Storm Thorgerson, the much lauded graphic designer and music video director, and his surreal sensibility is a key component. On the surface, the concept is a simple one, but Thorgerson’s vision adds layers that seep into the unconscious. Similarly, the track presents itself as a pop song but is deceptively sophisticated in its structure, and the lyrics curious in their angst.
Film / TV Knightmare
“Where am I?”
Broadcast on UK television from the late 1980s until mid 1990s, ITV’s Knightmare has since gathered a sizeable cult following. The show appeared as British television’s response to the rise in popularity of role-playing games and early dungeon based video games. Where Knightmare singles itself out is its innovative use of computer graphics and green screen technology.
A team of school age contestants are tasked with beating the challenges of the dungeon, with one player given an oversized helmet to wear which renders them blind. The helmeted contestant is then sent into the dungeon to be guided remotely by the rest of their team, who watch their teammate on a monitor from a medievally ornamented chamber. Overseeing proceedings is the commanding presence of Knightmare’s dungeon master, Treguard, played memorably by Hugo Myatt.
Knightmare’s cast is made up of trained actors with theatre experience, and the performances are as good as anything else in children’s television of the era. For the sake of fairness, due to the show being a legitimate competition, there could be no retakes, so the actors’ expertise is essential, and their familiarity with live performance a great asset.
Of most significance to me is Knightmare’s ability to incorporate multiple mediums yet forge its own identity. As every new team journeys through the dungeon they do so by travelling from area to area, each part providing a fresh challenge or clue. By taking the video game format of using an avatar to navigate a map, Knightmare inserts a player into the place of the avatar, inside a projection that can only be viewed by the teammates. It is this slipperiness of form that I find most interesting, as well as the show’s exploration of video game narrative. For years I assumed Knightmare’s environments were created using computer graphics, but the earliest backgrounds used in the series are hand-drawn by the renowned artist David Rowe, whose work has featured on many iconic video game boxes. The programmes’s visual style has been hugely influential on fantasy gaming, and it is this cross-pollination that remains one of Knightmare’s enduring strengths.
In addition to being highly imaginative Knightmare is also wonderfully morbid. Few teams conquered the dungeon, meaning for most episodes the experience for the viewer is a wait to find out by which method the blind contestant will die horribly. A powerful memory of the show is that of the game’s health meter, a large knight’s face that gradually decays as the player’s life-force diminishes, until stripping layers of flesh away to reveal a deathly skull and elimination from the competition.
Book / Author Ghost That Haunt You, compiled by Aidan Chambers
Ghosts That Haunt You is an anthology of ghost stories, and features tales that focus on ghosts that haunt young people. First published by Kestrel in 1980, it is Puffin’s later release that found its way into my hands.
Compiled by Aidan Chambers, the collection proved to be my introduction to several authors. Chambers’ own contribution comes last in the anthology and is of a darkly humorous tone, where a man finds himself dead after falling into a cement mixer, with his body being poured into the structure of an insurance building under construction. The setting is that of car parks and lay-bys, and an earlier example of the type of liminal environment that populates the modern imagination. Chambers recounts his own ghost story in the anthology’s foreword, where three figures haunted him over a period of months in his younger years.
While the book includes many chilling stories it is the Puffin edition’s cover image that marks it out as a true treasure of the weird. A disembodied eye graces the cover, staring out in unearthly blue. Surrounding the eye is a geometric pattern, and it is only on closer inspection that this is revealed to be a series of amorphous figures linking hands. The illustration is by Bert Kitchen, who has contributed drawings of animals and the wilderness to many children’s books on nature. Kitchen’s cover illustration has more in common with the side of his work that embraces stranger, more surreal imagery. Many of his artworks feature natural forms bent into uniform patterns, with his paintings creating a still, uncanny quality. Horror covers of the '80s and ‘90s frequently possessed a face staring straight out at the potential reader, and have lingered in the mind of many for this reason. While Kitchen’s blue eye retains that confronting pose, it does so in a more subtle, ethereal manner. An eye out of place is a classic image of disconcertion, used by filmmakers also, most notably to me in Pan’s Labyrinth and The Gate. Ghosts That Haunt You’s eye doesn’t follow you around the room, it waits in a drawer or on a shelf, for a time when you choose to meet its gaze. On the back cover the image is repeated, but now the eye is closed, and the figures changed from ghostly white to shadowy black. ..........................................................................................
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The Definitive series of the Nemesis the Warlock saga continues as
Torquemada’s crusade to destroy all alien life reaches the planet of the
Goths, a species of alien which has modelled their culture on early
twentieth-century Britain. Nemesis must team up with the Goth leader,
the Ion Duke, to stop them being eradicated by Torquemada's army of
Terminators. Collecting the entire series in order, with the
colour centre-spread pages reproduced in their original form, the
Definitive collection of Nemesis the Warlock is the ultimate way to read
one of the most important sci-fi sagas published in the pages of 2000
AD. Written by Pat Mills (Marshal Law) and drawn by Kevin O'Neill
(League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Bryan Talbot (Sandman, The
Adventures of Luther Arkwright), this definitive series is a collection
of the complete storyline in order.
As I said in my write-up of Volume 1, I was never a Nemesis reader as a young lad. Being an irregular reader of 2000AD meant I rarely got to maintain a rhythm on any strips, so I always preferred the one-off stories. These definitive editions are allowing me the opportunity to rectify that and finally get to appreciate a cornerstone 2000AD series.
Young me was always far more interested in story than art, which was always a distant second, but the one major thing I've noticed on my journey back into these older series is that while the stories have often aged poorly the artwork remains sublime.
Mills, as I wished for in my earlier review, has here got a firmer grip on his strip, and the stories are tighter with a more deeply developed lore and are far more entertaining. They don't all work as well as they could, the final arc of the Torquemada story was a jarring shift that also contains a 'joke' that I would have thought well below Mills' personal standards.
The art is wonderful, two of my favourites at the top of their games and complementing each other perfectly. Talbot was made to draw the goth empire storyline and his art, and the setting brought me right back to the worlds of 'Luther Awkright' and of the anthropomorphic steampunk series, 'Grandville'.
O'Neill was simply born to draw. I adore his work and pour over every panel at every twistedly beautiful line.
Previously, I'd hoped that Volume 2 was going to be a more cohesive and developed read, and it absolutely was, and so I'm genuinely excited to pull Volume 3 off the shelf.
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The follow up to Ray's 'Fifty Forgotten Books' from a few years back is a musical memoir of a life spent immersed in music. Through it's pages Ray takes us on a journey of discovery that takes in his early finds amongst his parent's record collections - sappy love songs (Ricky Valance) and stirring military epics (The Dam Busters soundtrack) - through the incidental music of TV faves - the BBC Radiophonic Workshop wibbling of 'The Tomorrow People' and the suave soundtracking of the James Bond movies. He wanders through teenage obsessions - The Fall, The Television Personalities, Kate Bush, and a host of wonderfully obscure Peel show 7 inchers - and eventually into an adulthood of continuous musical exploration - Stars of the Lid, Labradford, Current 93, Antony (now ANOHNI) and the Johnsons - as well as his own musical endeavours.
Personally, growing up I was never much of an indie rock lover - it was music or the posh kids - but like Ray my tastes were ever for the obscure and I chuckled several times as he gently discounted some of my favourite bands and albums and cringed occasionally as he praised those that I, in turn, have discounted. A number of his choices were distinctly personal and those were the most interesting to me, but in combination with his reflections the entire book made for an affectionate read that revealed the crucial role that music has played in his life and the ways in which it has interwoven with his work with Tartarus Press, and one that both introduced me to some new artists and gave me pause to reconsider some others.
Addendum: in the interest of full disclosure I should note that I - in my musical guise - am mentioned twice in the book, and Ray is entirely correct on both occasions.
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This is Wyrd Britain's 11th year and I'd like to thank everyone who has supported the blog; the publishers, the authors, the labels, the musicians and most of all the readers.
I always intended Wyrd Britain to be a celebration of the strange, the dark, the eccentric, the unique, the experimental and the weird and I'm always humbled that so many people want to celebrate it with me.
So here's wishing you all a peaceful, joyous, creative and, most crucially, a wyrd and wonderful 2026.
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