Shadows Over Cymru: Uncanny Stories of the Welsh Weird

Aaron Worth (editor)
British Library 

From the peaks of Eryri to hidden valleys and haunted mines, the storied landscapes of Wales have inspired centuries of myth and folklore. Over time, these tales of the unexplained and the Otherworld have formed a unique strain of weird fiction. 

Continuing the British Library's 'Gilded Nightmares' series of lavish hardbacks is this rather fabulous collection of stories exploring the darker side of Wales.  

One only needs to glance at the Welsh flag to understand the importance of the mythic in Wales; the "land of my fathers" is a place of stories, a land steeped in mysteries old and new.  This collection utilises the geography, the mythology and the character of the country to explore it's very nature.  The book revels in a country awash with story; a country of hidden places, creatures, people, and gods.  Stories by authors steeped in the heritage - Arthur Machen, Dylan Thomas, Richard Hughes - and by those finding inspiration in it - Algernon Blackwood, L.T.C. Rolt, A.C Benson, John Wyndham, Marjorie Bowen - travel the Welsh hinterlands unveiling secrets and mysteries in all the dark, neglected and forgotten corners.

In the hands of these writers, many amongst the crème of the golden age of weird fiction, Wales is a land of uncanny mystery as unforgiving as it is inviting. A place where the fantastical finds itself at odds with the mundane; a land where the supernatural lurks, poised beneath the surface, watchful for the unwary.

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NEWS: The Lost Occult Books of Victor Neuburg

'We will leave the silver moon-flowers of old thought for the gold sun-flowers of our true Apollonian theme ... It is before Dionysus, the maddening one, the disturber, came rudely in the twilight to make the fair, even world, odd and fantastic; the horns thrusting apart the twin thighs of duality.  Out of that odd, wild, Bacchic art came Unity, for the order of the old tie was as a chaos to the goat-god...' 

- from 'Dionysus and Diana'

Coming soon - with your help - from the resurrected Vine Press is a fascinating sounding collection of 'lost' occult poems from Victor B. Neuburg.  Languishing, mostly unread, for over  a century this first publication is being marshalled into being by Justin Hopper (author of 'Old Weird Albion'), designer Stefan Musgrove and Neuburg's granddaughter Caroline who dedicated her life to preserving and promoting her grandfather's work.

 

Justin contacted me recently to help promote the Kickstarter they've set up to fund the publication -

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oldweirdalbion/lost-occult-books-of-the-1920s-relaunching-vine-press

 

- and kindly provided the information below...

Victor Neuburg (almost certainly), Rites of Eleusis,
London, 1910. (From The Bystander, 1910)

In 1924 the poet, publisher and occultist Victor Neuburg was visited by unidentifiable spirits in his cottage in a small Sussex town. As he later put it, these voices ‘dictated’ poems to him – streams-of-consciousness pieces of prose steeped in esoteric symbolism. He wrote them down, nearly 100 pieces of writing, into the form of a book he called The Water Bearer. 

 

And no one would touch it. None less than Ralph Shirley, the editor of The Occult Review, told Victor that these were unique, wholly original, works, but ‘what publisher would risk it?’ 

For the next 100 years these poems sat, mostly unread, in a family chest. Until now. 

 

Victor Neuburg is best known as the magical (and sexual) partner of Aleister Crowley; as the man who discovered the poet Dylan Thomas; as a funny name that comes up when mentioning just about any aspect of early-20th century British counterculture. (An anarchist who advocated for gay rights and prison reform; the living connection between the Decadents and the Surrealists; friend to Austin Osman Spare and inspiration to Peter Warlock; early champion of nudists and yoga; the list continues.) 

 

‘Stan’, Dion Byngham, Victor Neuburg, ‘Frank’, 
late-1920s likely The Sanctuary, West Sussex. 
Photo copyright Justin Hopper. 

His published poetry books now sell for hundreds or even thousands, but perhaps his greatest-ever works – those which best espoused his bizarre hodge-podge of occult and spiritual beliefs – have been read by almost no one alive. 

 

We’re publishing these works as one of the last wishes of Caroline Neuburg, the poet’s granddaughter, who dove deeply into them – her copious notes on the symbolism in the works will act as introduction to the book The Water Bearer and Other Lost Works of Victor Neuburg. 

 

You can pre-order, and help make it all happen – a century in the making – through the 30th of October at www.vinepress.co.uk

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Oliver's Ghost

'Worlds Beyond' was an ITV series that somehow managed to run for 2 entire years - September 1986 to December 1988 - despite only consisting of 12 half hour episodes.   Each of those dozen episodes is purportedly based on stories from the archives of the Society for Psychical Research.

We've featured a few episodes from the series on Wyrd Britain over the years despite them being, on the whole, pretty woeful because I have a bit of a soft spot for them.  This, the series' final episode is perhaps the most fun but you probably shouldn't take that as any sort of indicator of quality.

Denholm Elliott is Sir Oliver Beresford reduced to turning his ancestral home into a hotel.  His, I assume, first bunch of guests - three American couples - have arrived and he, his wife and the maid are struggling to cope, hindered in no small part by the presence of the ghost of a little girl who keeps making one of the guests sleepwalk into other rooms - and into cupboard doors.

Writer Tony Williamson, who wrote the majority of the series - as well as many scripts for ITC shows including 'The Avengers', 'Department S', 'Jason King' - has thrown all ideas of spooky out of the window and gone for more of a bedroom farce sort of vibe and there're some fun one liners from the harassed Elliott but don't go looking for any chills.  I know most don't think of this series at all but, if you do, then think of it as more of a curio than anything else, a curio that was already horrendously dated when it was originally broadcast and one that pretty much deserves it's obscurity but, that said, I'll definitely feature it here again,

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Stephen Thrower's Coil Playlist

From 1986 to 1992 Stephen Thrower made several albums as a member of Coil which are crurrently being remastered and reissued by The Grey Area of Mute - pre-orders are available now for 'Gold is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders)'. 

To mark the occasion he was invited to assemble a playlist for the Freak Zone of the music that was being listened to by the three members at that time.  The playlist he's curated is delightfully obtuse but sonically cohesive including the likes of Faust, Can, The Fall, The Butthole Surfers, The Residents and others.

Available (at the time of writing) for only another 29 days this is a fun glimpse behind the curtain of a fiercely creative time for the band.  

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m003227c

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Come Sing For The Harrowing

Dan Coxon
Clash Books

I have a confession for you, I don't buy many books by modern authors.  My reading material is mostly provided by authors long departed from this world - Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, etc - and beyond a few favourites - Mark Valentine (and the wider circle orbiting Tartarus Press), Alan Moore, Michael Andrew Hurley - I read very few but I am aware of others ... well, some ... one or two.

A name I have been aware of for a while now but mostly in his guise as an editor of anthologies such as the 'Mythago Wood' collection, 'Heartwood', that's been staring indignantly at me from my shelf for about 18 months now, is Dan Coxon, but I have to admit that what caught my eye more than his name was that fabulous artwork because as you all know one should always judge a book by it's cover and I judged this one to be right up my street.

It'll come as no surprise that inside the cover is a collection of folk horror tales, albeit ones infused with a touch of the DNA of "strange story" maestros like Robert Aickman, Joel Lane and some of the folks mentioned earlier.  In these stories old gods are conjured, entire lives are erased, sacrifices are made and harsh truths are learned.

Not all the stories work as well as you'd hope, which is ever the case with collections / anthologies, but they all offer a frisson of the weird and made for an enthralling read.

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Nurse Will Make It Better

We've sung the praises of Brian Clemens here before as the mastermind behind a veritable host of Wyrd Britain classics such as Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde', 'Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter', 'And Soon the Darkness' as well as writing and producing for TV shows like 'Danger Man', 'The Avengers', 'The Professionals' for the likes of Hammer and ITC but the mid 1970s ITV series 'Thriller' was his baby, outlining every episode and scripting 38 of them including this one from the fourth series.

'Nurse Will Make It Better' has diplomat's daughter 'Charley' (Linda Liles) breaking her back in a horse riding accident and being 'cared' for by warty, devil-worshipping nurse 'Bessy Morne' (Diana Dors) who indoctrinates her, and her younger sister, into the cackling, coke drinking world of eeeevillll.  Ranged against them are elder sister 'Ruth' (Andrea Marcovicci), boyfriend 'Simon' (Michael Culver), bodyguard 'Carson' (Ed Bishop - UFO) and Patrick Troughton as the demon hunter 'Lyall'.

Dors is at her late career best here wailing, cackling, shrieking and taunting for all she's worth consumed in her role as the frumpy, malevolently satanic witch, whilst the under-utilised Troughton is previewing his role of 'Father Brennan' from the following years' 'The Omen', but this is very much an ensemble piece and the cast all rise to the occasion to make this a fun slice of Hammery pulp horror brought to the screen by 'Sapphire and Steel' director Shaun O'Riordan.

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The End of Everything

M. John Harrison
Serpent's Tail 

Phillip Tennent makes his living at the tideline, collecting artefacts that wash up from the Channel. It's been years since the crisis changed everything, but its exact nature remains obscured. Government barely functions, the seas are full of new creatures, Europe has been mislaid. It feels like the end. 
Now Phillip has fished out of the water an object he can't keep. A creature that keeps changing. An artefact he must take inland, before it destroys everything he thinks he knows.

I've only ever read a couple of things by Harrison but have been equal parts bemused and besotted by them and this newest Booker Prize shortlisted novel continues that noble tradition.

On the beach, in a post breakdown Britain, Phillip fishes an 'artefact' from the sea, unwilling to dispose of it he embarks on a journey through a disjointed land that feels achingly familiar but entirely lost and unlikely.  Meanwhile, on her own journey is his aunt, the fabulously callous, Marnie, in equal parts searching and escaping, moving in parallel and then tandem with Philip and the artefact as it slowly assimilates itself.

It's a brilliantly befuddling read which, perhaps, offers a commentary on contemporary fears over immigration and loss of cultural identity.  It holds a kinship with the likes of J.G. Ballard at his apocalyptic best and with contemporary books such as Rebecca Gransden's stunning 'Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group'.

It is, I think, a book that will polarise utterly and I imagine few who read it will be tepid in their opinions.  Personally, I thought it to be bonkers and brilliant but equally I was pleased to leave that broken world behind. 

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The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor

Bryan Talbot
Jonathan Cape

With top-hat and cane in hand, Scotland Yard's DI Stamford Hawksmoor shadows the murky backstreets of London on the hunt for a sadistic serial killer.
In the dying days of the French occupation of Britain, through gaslit, cobbled streets and squalid alleyways, stalks the great eagle Detective Stamford Hawksmoor in search of the homicidal manic whose killing spree claims dozens of seemingly unconnected victims, from random murders to targeted political assassinations.
The deeper he delves, the more he puts himself in mortal danger, pitting himself against unknown antagonists whilst under the scrutiny of the feared anti-terrorist squad, and the more he is forced to resort to working outside the law.
A prequel to Talbot's pioneering Grandville series, The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor is also an intriguing, labyrinthine stand-alone mystery graphic novel set in a world of hansom cabs and pea-souper fogs, where explosive violence can erupt at any second - and does!

An unexpected but very welcome return to the steampunk world of 'Grandville'.  I thought we were done with Bryan Talbot's animorphic playground after the culmination of Inspector le Brock's tale but here we are, drawn back in, with a story taken from the files of his mentor, the eagle detective, Stamford Hawksmoor.

After years of violent struggle, Britain is on the verge of separating from the French Empire.  Tensions are still high with anti-French sentiment at the fore.  In this simmering tinderbox, Hawksmoor is set to investigating both the suicide of his estranged brother and a series of grisly murders.

The book generally feels a lot more insular than the 'Grandville' volumes and, as stated in the preface, it wears it's influence from the Sherlock Holmes stories on it's sleeve but is in no way a slavish homage; it's tightly plotted, elegantly told and beautifully realised but none of that should be of any surprise to anyone familiar with Talbot's work.  It's an accomplished, self-contained story, and I'd be unsurprised if it remains so, but I must say I’d also be a little disappointed.

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Ghost Signals: The Shadowlands of British Analogue Television 1968 - 1995

Stephen Prince
A Year in the Country

Before the ubiquity of streaming, British television was a landscape with room for strange experiments, folk-horror nightmares, and “wyrd” transmissions. Today, many of these programmes have vanished from official channels, leaving behind only “ghost signals“: a shadowland of terrestrial TV hidden in plain sight across the unmediated and unmarketed corners of the internet.
Ghost Signals maps this territory from 1968 – the foundational “wyrd” year of acid folk and iconic folk horror – to 1995, the dawn of the digital revolution. The book delves into a unique era where public funding met social experimentation, creating a “broad diet” of television that was often as challenging as it was chilling. 

This, the latest collection of writings from Stephen Prince, the man behind the always excellent 'A Year in the Country' blog, takes us on a tour of various obscure televisual gems from '68 to '95.  For Stephen these 'Ghost Signals' provide an insight into the maybe more ephemeral of what we refer to here as Wyrd TV; programmes such as 'The Great Albert', 'Jack B Nimble', 'Lost Property', 'The Moon Stallion', programmes that have avoided the limelight, that have maintained a sense of anonymity but still provide a reflection of the concerns and the focus of their times.

Obviously, Stephen and I share a hobby / interest / obsession (delete as applicable) and so I'm familiar with many of his subjects but he always manages to tease out a morsel or two that raise an eyebrow and he's a digger extraordinaire so alongside those old favourites there are a couple of tantalising treats of programmes I had no idea existed - 'A Pattern of Roses', 'Shades', 'The Plant' - and his analysis are ever cogent, and insightful, mining details from his subjects that make for fascinating reading.

I'm a pretty sparse user of the internet, for music and movies mostly, and I'm not a great fan of reading from a screen - yes, I do appreciate the irony - but, of the few blogs I do follow, AYitC is a perennial favourite, and his books are always a welcome addition to the Wyrd Britain bookshelves.

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Featherfall

Jerry Ibbotson

There's an angel living in suburban York. He's turned his back on his old life to become a husband and father. But darkness threatens, and his old boss wants him back in the fold. Angry, jealous Gods are after him to fulfil a prophecy that would unstitch creation. There's another on his trail: an ancient guardian of this land who's hunting an angel for reasons of his own. Who will reach him first, and at what cost? The answer will come at Midsummer, in the shadow of the mighty Minster. Featherfall is coming; the future of humanity hangs in the balance. 

Jerry contacted me a little while ago about giving his book a read and I happily agreed but with the caveat that I'd probably be very slow getting around to it - my TBR pile has its own postcode - and that proved to be the case, which is a shame because it turned out to be fabulous.

Urban fantasy is a genre I dabble in on occasion, more in the past than now, as my preference is for a deep dark wood or ye olde settings of yore - which, now I think on it, does perhaps include the likes of York - but when it's done well, I'll happily go along for the ride and I settled into my seat quite quickly here.

There's an angel living in York; he's renounced his wings, gotten married, and started a family.  He still dabbles in an occasional miracle or two, but its the quiet life for him - spoiler, it's not.  Things are afoot and forces, both malign and benign, are converging on the city including an ancient, demon hunting Celt who's feeling a tad ticked off with his lot in life and wants a quiet word with this angel.

Jerry has an engaging style and he teases out his story beautifully, populating it with characters whose actions are honest and real.  There's nothing here I would change. The story has room to breathe, and the finale is expansive, consequential, and most importantly satisfying.

For a debut novel, it's a stunning achievement, and his next one will go straight to the top of the TBR mountain. 

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Stephen Thrower - Soundtracks 1970-2014

Klanggalerie

Stephen Thrower has had a storied career on the bleeding edge of the art world, having made music with, most notably, Coil (from 1984-1992), Cyclobe (with Ossian Brown) and UnicaZürn (with David Knight); appeared in several Derek Jarman films ('Caravaggio', 'The Last of England' & 'Imagining October'); wrote for the horror magazine 'Shock Xpress', as well as publishing his own magazine 'Eyeball'; has written several books of film history / criticism ('Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci', 'Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents' & 'Murderous Passions: The Delirious Cinema of Jesús Franco' Vols 1&2); provided commentaries, introductions and interviews for numerous special edition DVD and Blu-ray releases; and now we discover that in the surely no more than 10 minutes of spare time that he had left between all that he was also composing soundtracks.

This fabulous new collection from the good folks at Klanggalerie features music from a Pakistani horror ('Hell's Ground'), a Ben Wheatley gangster movie ('Down Terrace') three Super-8 gay erotica shorts ('Fire Island Kids', 'Encounter' & 'Brown Study') and a documentary about their director ('Peter De Rome: Grandfather of Gay Porn').  In the music he's created, you can, unsurprisingly, hear elements of each of his core musical identities, although perhaps slightly less apocalyptic than his Coil recordings and a tad less earthy than Cyclobe and with just a pinch of John Carpenter thrown in early on ('Psilo-Plutonian') and some sinuous sleaze on 'Fire Island Kids'. It's a mesmerising collection, deliriously psychedelic, delicately melodic and deliciously strange, and it's left me craving more.

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Witch!

Made by the current affairs programme, 'Wales Today', and originally shown on 23rd June 1964 this is an engaging, ultimately quite superficial, but surprisingly even-handed look at the practice of witchcraft in Wales.  

Essentially consisting of a number of talking heads - a vicar with an interest in the subject, a coy hedge witch and a coven high priestess - it explores both anthropological manifestations of folk magic and the then more tabloid foddery form of Gardnerian Wicca, all knives and nudity.

Truthfully, you're not going to learn much from this and I'd have loved it if the film-makers had managed to find some rural practitioners to interview, but as a historical artefact it's fascinating.

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I Hear A New World

Alan Moore
Bloomsbury

The second 'Long London' novel kicks of 10 years after the first with our hapless protagonist 'Dennis Knuckleyard' now a purveyor of improbable pornographic escapades, and free - he hopes - of any and all obligations towards that terrifying other place, 'The Great When', that other London hidden beyond, behind and within the one he inhabits, except, well, there is that key that 'Slenderhorse' gave him but he's palmed that off on some sucker at a party and unless she asks for it back he's now free of all that scary bollocks.  Unfortunately, his best laid plans fall apart entirely when someone Dennis cares deeply about is drawn in in his stead and so he's soon pulled back into the middle of everything strange and weird and terrifying, and guess who wants her key back.

The stakes are a lot higher this time round but our, and indeed Dennis', familiarity with the vagaries of 'The Great When' means the strange feels a lot more commonplace.  The various oddballs Moore populates his / our London with are as fun as before but pop producer Joe Meek, as eccentric as he was, is always going to be a poor substitute for Austin Osman Spare whose absence leaves a bit of a gap at the heart of the story.

It is though an enthusiastic romp through the streets, both physical and meta, of the capital and it's great fun but I'm hoping volume three has a personality at it's centre that can fill the AOS shaped hole.

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It's Too Late Now

This terrific little one(ish)-hander stars Rachel Kempson as 'Sarah', a neglected, long-suffering wife who, on a whim, locks her author husband (Kenneth Keeling) in his windowless study with the intention of teaching him a lesson, a long, long lesson.

Written for the short lived ITV series 'Tales of Unease' by Andrea Newman ('Bouquet of Barbed Wire') it's a perfect encapsulation of the series' aim to present stories that unsettle rather than scare.  Kempson is fantastic initially blooming in her new found sense of freedom and power but slowly degenerating as her husband rants, begs pleads and cajoles from behind his locked door.  

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The Island

'Captain Simmonds' (John Hurt), on leave from the battlefields of France, arrives on the island home of 'Mrs Santander' (Jenny Runacre), with whom he's been conducting an affair, where he encounters the butler (Graham Crowden) and, unexpectedly, 'Mr Santander' (Charles Grey). 

'The Island' is an adaptation of the 1924 L.P. Hartley short story of the same name made for the TV series 'Classics Dark and Dangerous' and soon after combined with two other episodes, 'Mrs Amworth' and 'The Mannikin', into the movie, 'Three Dangerous Ladies'.  Hartley had a penchant for the supernatural but this is perhaps more in the field of the macabre, of the type that Roald Dahl would later popularise with his 'Tales of the Unexpected'.  

Adapted and directed by Robert Fuest, the man behind such Wyrd Britain gems as the two 'Dr. Phibes' movies, the Michael Moorcock 'Jerry Cornelius' adaptation 'The Final Programme' - also starring Runacre - and the Brian Clemens, Terry Nation thriller 'And Soon The Darkness', 'The Island' is a minor entry in his canon that he's tried to make the best of by bulking out the runtime with lots of tension building silence, but there's not much there there and the final payoff is underwhelming and a tad obvious but it's great to see the three leads playing off each other.

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