Originally published in 2018, by Zagava 'The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things' is a collection of short stories by Wyrd Britain favourite, Mark Valentine. On December 1st, Tartarus Press are re-publishing this long out of print collection with the addition of nine stories or vignettes written at the same time but omitting the selection of journal entries.
From the Tartarus Press release notes...
All the stories were originally selected for anthologies or journals. ‘Vain Shadows Flee’ was included in Best British Short Stories 2016 edited by Nicholas Royle (Salt Publishing), and ‘Yes, I Knew the Venusian Commodore’ was translated into Spanish by María Pilar San Roman in an award-winning anthology.
The artwork depicts the mysterious Three Headed King motif from the ancient church at Sancreed in the far west of Cornwall, which appears in the title story. Other stories are about the ancient mysteries of Palmyra and Jerusalem, the music of Stonehenge and of the fabulously rare record Goat Songs, the uncanny in performances of Milton’s Comus and Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and the wondrous influences of a toy cockatrice.
I was privileged to receive a copy of the original edition about which I wrote that this book finds Mark "exploring ephemeral landscapes of the unknowable and the inimitable. He tells stories of the borderlands, of the thin places where glimpses are caught of the otherwheres, where the truly (un)lucky get to tread on soil unused to human feet. Stories of those liminal places where a travellers only map would be the tales told of them."
And, that he takes us on, "journeys both sinister and beautiful (often simultaneously) to places terrifying and beguiling (often simultaneously) in the company of the lost, the curious, the brave and the foolish and in each we can see ourselves as they react to the outrageous in deeply human ways."
This new edition of 'The Uncertainty of All Earthly Things' is available as a 350 copy limited edition hardback and is sure to sell out fast. Order now at...
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Lennard Pearce (Grandad in Only Fool and Horses) stars as "Edward Langdon' an MP who, after the ritual murder of his wife, comes up with the novel idea of raising a mediaeval heretic (David Allister) from the dead, directing it to blow up a school, and therefore gaining support for his attempt to bring back the death penalty.
Pulled into his plan are Eileen' (Gwyneth Powell - Grange Hill's 'Mrs McClusky'), mother of one of the murdered children, a fish porter (Roger Bizley) and a psychiatrist (John Bennett) all of whom have a previous connection with the revenant.
Written, directed and produced by Ian F.H. Lloyd, it's a slow and strange little film with an almost lysergic atmosphere. With it's lethargic pacing, odd camera angles - so very many close-ups - and arthouse sensibilities it's not going to be for everyone, but revolving around a suitably eldritch performance from Allister as the undead heathen it's an intriguing entry in the annals of wyrd British film.
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"The Shout is one of the great films about sound." - Suzy Mangion
Adapted in 1978 from a Robert Graves short story, director Jerzy Skolimowski's 'The Shout' is a stunning exploration of avarice, obsession, lust, and cruelty as the quiet, idyllic lives of Anthony and Rachel Fielding (John Hurt & Susannah York) are subsumed by the machinations of an interloper, Crossley (Alan Bates).
It is sound though that is very much the focus of the film; from Anthony's sonic experimentation to Crossley's mortiferous shout, and the two short progish pieces by Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks of Genesis but it's the score by Rupert Hine married to the sound design by Alan Bell that is the shining jewel at the heart of the movie.
From the press release...
"The film’s score and audio effects were almost entirely created by the songwriter and record producer Rupert Hine (Thinkman, Quantum Jump, Rush, Stevie Nicks, Kevin Ayers, Nico, Howard Jones, Underworld, Tina Turner & more). Rupert recorded reels of ideas and experiments for the film between 1977 and 1978 using an EMS VCS3, Yamaha CS80, Eventide Harmoniser and Roland Space Echo. He also created Crossley‘s terrifying shout and other foley effects such as the musique concrète for John Hurt’s home studio scenes.
Listen closely and you’ll hear Rupert's sounds scattered throughout the film, discreetly mixed by award-winning sound editor Alan Bell (The Man Who Fell To Earth, The Bounty) and Tony Jackson who use them to establish the film’s creeping dread. At other times Rupert’s effects are used to startling effect, violently jolting viewers as the occult drama unfolds."
Released on 5th December by Buried Treasure Records, with pre-orders available from the 28th of November on their Bandcamp page at
'The Shout' is a testimony to the creativity of Rupert Hine, who sadly passed before the completion of this long overdue release.
A neglected milestone in the history of electronic music, a perfect companion piece to the work of those beavering away in the Dark depths of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and an essential item for devotees of both.
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Convened by The Guardian newspaper, and coinciding with the publication of Moore's short story collection, 'IIlluminations', this genial interview between author Alan Moore and comedian Stewart Lee explores the various stories within the book touching on recurring narative themes and strategies in Moore's writing as well as a quick discussion of the then unfinished 'The Great When', of authors, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson, Alan Garner, M.R. James and Robert Aickman.
I'd previously avoided watching this because 'Illuminations' appeared during my long Covid doldrums and I never managed to read further than the first story and having now watched this I need to try again now that my brain is a bit clearer. There're a few conversations on YouTube between these two and they're all well worth a listen as they obviously greatly enjoy each others company and as ever this is both interesting and dare I say illuminating.
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Written by legendary Wyrd Britain screenwriter Brian Clemens - who really should have done better - 'Serenade for Dead Lovers' - the best song title Bauhaus never used - revolves around an old village hall, a 40 year old romance and, for seemingly absolutely no resaon at all, a dud German bomb. Travis and Connery do their best but there's too little here for them to really work with and what could have been a delicately poignant ghostly tale of love lost and found falls pretty flat.
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"I'm a doctor, but probably not the one you were expecting"
On 14th November 2013 - which also happened to be Paul McGann's 54th birthday - some seventeen and half years after he woke up in a New York morgue the 8th Doctor finally appeared on TV again just in time for the shows 50th anniversary and to regenerate into The War Doctor.
"Physician heal thyself"
Having not survived a crash from space when an attempted rescue goes awry, The Doctor is offered a chance to choose his next regeneration by the Sisterhood of Karn, who hadn't been seen in the series since the 4th Doctor serial 'The Brain of Morbius'. With a mind to stopping the 'Time War' between the Time Lords and the Daleks he chooses to shed the mantle of healer and instead become a warrior.
"Doctor no more."
It's always been such a shame that we got so few glimpses of McGann's Doctor - there's been a third since, where we discovered he's averse to wearing robes - but with a battery of Big Finish audios to his name and those few televised performances that show he's only got better as he's got older he remains the longest serving Doctor and the one most deserving of a revival.
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The video below is a short interview with Miller giving a brief overview of his life and work. For those of you who wish to delve deeper I can recommend this two part interview and discussion.
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On the 14th of November, Buried Treasure will be releasing, 'Leviathan Whispers' the deeply spiritual and majestically folkloric new album from Tim Hill.
From the press release:
Leviathan Whispers is an album of longings, laments, deleriums, and drones, both savage and sublime. Brass and woodwind instruments sing over and through autumnal netherlands, heralding ancient spirits and mysterious creatures. There are breaths, hums, and bone songs for shadows and flames to dance to.
Tim Hill is an inspirational figure within the UK arts, jazz, noise, and improv world. Since the 1980's he's operated as a shapeshitfing maverik, fearlessly exploring Britain's diverse musical traditions, from rough music to industrial folk, free jazz to dub, post-punk to avant-rock, incorporating electronics, hymn, noise and drone.
I've got to admit that, despite his formidable pedigree, Hill is new to me, but on the evidence of what I hear here, I need to rectify that.
The music, built using saxophones, tape loops, synths, woodwind and reed instruments, and with the assistance of Nurse With Wound's Colin Potter and drone maestro Jonathan Coleclough, maintains a deeply esoteric quality that exists in both the spiritual jazz realms of the likes of Pharoah Sanders or, more recently. Shabaka Hutchings and the mystical sidereality of the Blakeian Albion of the imagination expressed by the likes of Coil or Cyclobe. It's a fascinating combination, a uniquely British interpretation of spiritual jazz that's born from the hedgerows and holloways, and from standing stones and stories told, and it rewards deep, immersive listening that slowly reveal its more hermetical dimensions.
'Leviathan Whispers' will be released on "recycled and randomly coloured vinyl" and is available in stores from Friday 14th November.
Alternatively, preorders are currently being taken on the Buried Treasure Bandcamp here...
Additionally, to celebrate the launch, there will be a live performance and talk by Tim Hill on Sat, 15th Nov in the Victorian chapel beneath Royal Berks Hospital, Reading.
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Mark Valentine’s book-collecting began with classic supernatural and fantastic fiction and decadent poetry but soon included antiquities, folklore and the Arthurian legends. The first of these enthusiasms is reflected here in essays on Walter de la Mare, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson and David Lindsay and on lesser-known modern ghost stories. There are also several essays on slim volumes of rare and strange verse.
He also explores the origins of the Red Lion inn sign, the enjoyable wanderings of 1930s antiquarians and ramblers, and the keen weather-watchers behind the irresistible title British Thunderstorms, Continuing Summer Thunderstorms. The author speculates on the secrets behind an interwar listing of obscure periodicals and on the odd finds at a village hall flea market. Readers will find in all these essays a delight in the obscurer byways and an engaging interest in the unlikeliest places
I'm a bit of a whim reader of non-fiction these days, I used to read lots but now, with very few exceptions, I rarely find myself picking up anything other than fiction. Those exceptions tend to be an occasional music study, a random curio and any and all of Mark Valentine's explorations of forgotten books and underappreciated authors, with intermittent digressions into the likes of pub signs and barometric observations.
'The Thunderstorm Collectors' is not the latest of Mark's collections from Tartarus Press, I still have that one waiting on my shelf. This one came out a year or so ago and got lost amidst my long-COVID malaise but is still available from the publisher as one of their lovely paperback editions.
I love these books although my bank balance is less keen as Mark guides us through a tantalising and often irresitable array of goodies interlaced with fascinating and typcally erudite examinations of those authors of more lasting reputations such as Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen & William Hope Hodgson.
There's much to entice here and several things have, inevitably, been added to the wants list. Additionally, some of the most interesting pieces here are the ones dealing with Mark's love of ephemera and of the edges of his main focus as he takes us into various Earth mysteries, landscape records and the vagaries of collecting.
As ever, with Mark's books - both fiction and non - we heartily recommend this and suggest that those wishing to try out his work would be well advised to grab one of these fabulous collections and to check out his Wormwoodiana blog.
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Born 4 November 1951 in Hull, Yorkshire, England as Christine Carol Newby, in 1969 the redefined Cosey Fanni Tutti joined her then partner Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson) in the musical collective, COUM Transmissions, pushing them into a more performance art focus.
In the video below Cosey talks about COUM's time in Hull.
COUM reached their peak in 1976 with the 'Prostitution' installation at the ICA in London in a show that included images from Cosey's work in the sex industry and which got the group denounced in parliament as "Wreckers of Western civilisation", which they really should have put on a business card.
The demise of COUM following the ICA show meant a shift of focus back towards music in the company of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and Chris Carter as Throbbing Gristle. Over the next six years TG's boundary and genre pushing music, imagery and performances instigated a new and ever expanding genre of music.
On the collapse of TG in 1981 the various members split initially in two, Genesis and Sleazy forming Psychic TV before the latter left to join John Balance in Coil, whilst Cosey and Chris formed Chris & Cosey and, since the turn of the millennium, Carter Tutti. In those guises the couple further developed the ideas they'd formulated as part of TG often incorporating pop and dance elements alongside the avant garde.
In 2017 Cosey, via Faber & Faber, published her autobiography, 'Art Sex Music', to significant acclaim and this was followed in 2022 by 'Re-Sisters: The Lives and Recordings of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe and Cosey Fanni Tutti'.
The long interview below, dating from 2010, features Cosey in conversation about various aspects of her life, the tools she uses and about creativity in general. Slightly frustratingly, the music has been removed but it makes for fascinating listening and is a genuine pleasure to be invited, however briefly, into Cosey's world.
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West Country Tales was an early 80s BBC 2 series that, at least in it's first series, purportedly dramatised stories of encounters with the supernatural submitted by the public. Episode 2, aired on February 1st 1982, 'The Poacher' tells of the unnamed titular character's meeting with the God Pan in the wood where he plies his trade.
Told primarily - as is the rest of the series - via a narrator (Douglas Leech) with minimal dialogue from the on-screen cast, the Poacher (Dave Royal) walks us through a life spent wandering the fields, woods and rivers of his locale, often, but not exclusively, under the cover of darkness, he is shown as an independent and fair minded man atuned to the rhythms of the woods, never taking more than he needs - we witness his disgust at the wasteful pheasant shoot - and as a repository of old lore. When he meets the Wild God (Michael Venner) it's a meeting marked with the characteristic fear that a meeting with Pan induces and presented in an appropriately oneiric manner that changes the Poacher in the most profound of ways.
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Made famous by ghost hunter Harry Price, Borley Rectory in Essex which he described as 'the most haunted house in England' was an 1862 Gothic style rectory that he investigated and wrote two books about after various inabitants reported ghostly sightings including a phantom coach complete with headless coachman and a ghostly nun.
This documentary film, made by animator Ashley Thorpe, narrated by Julian Sands and featuring Reece Shearsmith as Daily Mirror reporter 'V.C. Wall' and Jonathan Rigby as 'Harry Price', is a stylish melding of actor and animator with the cast playing their parts before a green screen with the house and it's associated shenanigans build around them later. It's a bit too long and as a result a tad dull and the cast, being filmed out of context, often engage in some pretty hammy acting with everything feeling quite static, but it looks stunning and is an obvious labour of love and as such, well worth a watch.
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Written by Jacquetta Hawkes, filmed by Ken Russell and with commentary by Tony Church, this fabulous little film was one of 21 that Russell made for the fortnightly BBC arts programme 'Monitor' between 1959 and 1962.
The entirely fascinating Hawkes - the first woman to read for the Archeology & Anthropology degree at the University of Cambridge, co-founder of CND, gay rights campaigner & wife of novelist J.B. Priestly - provides a text that is as cutting as it is blunt, that satirises both the language and assumptions of her own disciplines and the cosy absurdities and consumerist excesses of British life in the early 1960s.
Following an undisclosed apocalypse that, in 1962, decimated Britain, the film is told from the perspective of a future archaeological team examining the finds an earlier team left scattered on a beach after their deaths. As the narrator comments, interprets, and invents uses and meanings, the camera roams from object to object, lingering briefly on each so that we can appreciate the incongruity of it's setting, the mundanity of the thing and the bleak humour in the description.
Looking very much like an early set design for the later Spike Milligan and John Antrobus' post-apocalyptic satirical black comedy 'The Bed Sitting Room' while walking a similiar path, 'The Lonely Shore" presents a gently biting satire on the time it was made that still feels worryingly apposite today.
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I first encountered the work of Leonora Carrington a couple of years ago in Desmond Morris' book 'The British Surrealists' and I was both blown away by what I saw and stunned that I hadn't heard of her before so I needed to rectify that asap, but circumstances conspired to keep this book on my shelf for the next while, unread beyond a few thumbs through to admire the pretties.
Carrington was born on 6th April 1917 in Clayton Green nr Chorley, South Lancashire, to a rich industrial family and raised, mostly, in a country manor in Cockerham nr Lancaster. Dyslexic, ambidextrous and fiercely independent she was expelled from a number of schools until, against her parent's wishes, she enrolled in a London Art school where, following the June 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, Carrington became besotted with, first the art of and then the person of, Max Ernst, soon relocating with him to Paris and being disowned by her parents in the process.
In Paris she was immersed at the very heart of the Surrealist Movement where her artistic prowess was celebrated. Seperated from Ernst during the war she left France for Spain where she was hospitalised with mental health issues before fleeing war-torn Europe from New York and then, in 1943, to Mexico where she was to spend the rest of her life.
It was in Mexico that Carrington's art was to find it's true focus. Inspired by the indigenous peoples grip on their magical traditions and it's interweaving with Catholicism which, combined with her own long established occult interests fostered by a mother and grandmother steeped in Irish mythology and a long standing love of James Stephens' folkloric novel 'The Crock of Gold', allowed her imagination to flourish. She took these influences, her love of the culinary - a love often expressed in a uniquely surrealist manner - and her feminist ideals and melded them to express her own darkly romantic, often whimsical and always visionary artistry.
In her monograph Susan Aberth provides a wealth of fascinating biograpical information and much insightful commentary on the work highlighting how Carrington's personal friendships and her obsessions were expressed. The text does come to a rather jarring close when the artist arries in her later years, which was a shame as advancing age was a celebrated feature of Carrington's later work, most notably in her novel, 'The Hearing Trumpet' of which we hear not a peep. The monograph's true focus though is where it should be and the book is crammed throughout with beautifully reproduced and often full page images that allow one to to lose hours in it's pages and provides a suitable testimonial to an artist who followed her own idiosyncratic path.
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The first Quatermass BBC TV serial, 'The Quatermass Experiment', shown in 1953, was a phenomenon with five million people tuning in to watch the final episode. This second series ran for six half-hour(ish) episodes in the prime 8pm Saturday slot from 22 October to 26 November and benefitted from the wider availability of televisions with some 9 million people watching the sixth episode.
Professor Bernard Quatermass (John Robinson), head of The British Experimental Rocket Group, reeling from the failure of his latest rocket tests becomes embroiled in an investigation into the appearance of meteorites falling near to where the town of Winnerden Flats has been bulldozed and replaced with a heavily guarded chemical plant.
Like the later Hammer movie version 'Quatermass II' has long been considered the poor relation amongst the various productions, but its impact far outweighs the respect it's given especially in regard to how often shows like Doctor Who ('Spearhead From Space') mined it for ideas. Bernard Quatermass has always been Nigel Kneale's avatar and in his layered allegorical script Kneale comments on post war (re)development, short sighted greed, the inexorable rise of technology, the dehumanising impact of industry and intractable bureaucracy.
Broadcast live, with extra pre-filmed scenes edited in, it suffers from the problems you'd expect - stumbled over lines (especially from Robinson, a last minute replacement as the Professor following the death of Reginald Tate), and lots of emoting while staring enigmatically off camera and it's always funny watching the actors freeze in place at the end of each episode as the credits roll, but it's a glorious achievement that's often surprisingly brutal but shot through with Kneale's dark optimism for the power of science to save us whether we want it to or not.
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For a decade or two from the end of the 90s through the 2010s I was an avid subscriber to The Wire magazine, eagerly pouring each month over descriptions of beautifully obtuse and brilliantly obscure music. That magazine - which I became besotted with after spotting Lydia Lunch staring at me from the cover of issue 173 on the shelves of a small provincial newsagent - cost me a fortune in CDs but my god I got to hear some tunes and one of their writers most responsible for syphoning my bank acount was David Keenan.
'Volcanic Tongue', named after the record shop he ran with his partner, pedal steel guitarist and sound artist Heather Leigh, in Glasgow from 2005-2015, is a collection of articles, interviews, primers and portraits mostly taken from The Wire, that provide an extended snapshot of outsider music of the '90s, '00s & '10s and of it's heritage. Through it's pages we catch Coil in '98 at the release of 'Time Machines', Einstürzende Neubauten in '04 in the wake of 'Perpetuum Mobile', the Klangbad Faust contingent in '03, Shirley Collins on the release of 'Lodestar' in 16, Carter-Tutti in '15 with a new name and with Cosey about to find a whole new audience with her autobiography and there are two very funny interviews with The Dead C on tour in Europe in '13 and with Marshall Allen waxing about the cosmic centrality of Sun Ra in '15. These are paired with a trio of 'Invisible Jukebox' sessions - always my favourite section in the magazine - where songs are played, sight unseen, to a musician, in these instances to Eugene Chadbourne, Glenn Jones and Kevin Shields along with some 'Primers' on Noise Music, Sonic Youth, John Fahey, and Kosmische Musik.
I've been dipping in and out of this book for a few months now and truthfully there are still some chapters I've yet to read - there's even more in there that I haven't mentioned - but I'm at the point where I needed to share this with you all. Keenan was always a very personable and engaging writer that seemed to get the best out of his interviewees and could cut to the core of his subjects and as such anyone with even a vague interest in the outer fringes of music will find much of interest here and an interesting companion piece to his essential exploration of the post industrial underground, 'England's Hidden Reverse'.
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For those of you in or around Bangor, North Wales, this Saturday 25th October, the folks behind the beautifully named Abertoir Horror Festival (it's based in Aberystwyth) are hosting an event at Pontio, Bangor University’s arts and innovation centre, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the first Welsh language horror film 'Gwaed ar y Sêr' (Blood on the Stars).
From the website: "To celebrate 50 years since Shadrach and the youngsters of Gruglon caused chaos in rural Wales, Storiel, in partnership with Pontio and Abertoir Horror Festival, presents a special evening with filmmaker Wil Aaron, a key figure in launching the Welsh Film Board."
The talk will be in Welsh with English translation provided.
Following the talk there will be a showing of 'Gwaed ar y Sêr' along with Aaron's later film 'O’r Ddaear Hen' (From the Old Earth).
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Presented by Nigel Planer - who also did the Prog and Metal episodes of this series - Psychedelic Britannia tells the story of the years 1965 to 1970 as a group of bohemians led the charge to slowly psychedelicise Britain.
Obviously, it's the musicians that are prioritised here and there's some great old footage of, and new and archive interviews with members of Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Small Faces, Procol Harum, Soft Machine, The Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan, Arthur Brown and a host of others. The story tells of the move from R&B into more expansive territory, in part, due to the arrival of LSD and, in part due to a break from the rigid strictures of post-war Britain where the return to normality had begun to feel decidely restrictive and many were looking for new ways of life.
Beyond the musicians there's some fabulous old footage here of the likes of Granny Take a Trip, International Times, the UFO Club and the Alexandra Palace 14 Hour Technicolour Dream with commentary by those who were behind them and patronising them. It makes for a rather lovely glimpse of a unique and brief moment in British life before the optimism tarnished and the colours faded.
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Fellstones takes its name from seven objects on the village green. It’s where Paul Dunstan was adopted by the Staveleys after his parents died in an accident, for which he blames himself. The way the Staveleys tried to control him made him move away and change his name. Why were they obsessed with a strange song he seemed to have made up as a child? Now, their daughter Adele has found him. By the time he discovers the cosmic truth about the stones, he may be trapped. There are other dark secrets he’ll discover and memories to confront. The Fellstones dream, but they’re about to waken.
Beyond a couple of short stories, Ramsey Campbell has been notably absent from my bookshelves for far too long. Strangely for someone who writes the type of blog I do I'm not much of a reader of modern horror and the ones I do read tend to be those channelling the early 20th century heyday like, Mark Valentine or John Howard but, when I saw this on the shelf at the day job a little while back I fancied giving it a go as it seemed rooted in the more rural strangeness that I favour.
Paul Dunstan has escaped the clutches and the plans of his adopted family in the village of Fellstones, so named after the stone circle that sits on the village green. Unfortunately, he's too important to their schemes to be left alone for long, and the villagers are soon going all out to pull him back. I have to say here that Paul is a very different type of person to me as faced with people as controlling and manipulative as his adopted family I'd have categorically told them where to go but he seems to almost want to be manipulated which I found rather frustrating.
The story unfolds nicely to reveal not the 'folk horror' that the prominence of the stones had led me to expect but an entirely more cosmic scheme and the story builds to a transcendent but ultimately downbeat ending that leaves our protagonist in a very different place from where he began. My love of the gothic meant that I would have dearly loved for much more of the back story to have been featured, but we get tantalising glimpses.
As a first - book length - visit to one of Campbell's worlds it was an enjoyable one. Beyond my little obsessions I'm very much a whim reader and I'm looking forward to reading the next one of his that catches my eye.
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In this new collection of eleven stories, Stephen Volk explores the wide span of possibilities of the ghost story in its various manifestations — from hauntings set in the quotidian modern world, to ones that hark back to traditional, but no less chilling, tales of the past. When battle-scarred army veterans are recruited for an archaeological dig in Wiltshire, more than bones are unearthed, in ‘Unrecovered’. A pleasure park becomes anything but pleasurable in ‘Three Fingers, One Thumb’. In ‘31/10’ a notorious, fateful BBC TV studio is revisited, while in ‘The Waiting Room’ a supernatural encounter makes Charles Dickens himself come to question both his creative inspiration and his fundamental beliefs. Three brand new stories are included here: ‘The Crossing’, ‘Baby on Board’, and ‘Lost Loved Ones’ — the latter novella being a sequel to Volk’s television series Afterlife and a welcome return for him to the much-loved character of Alison Mundy, the troubled psychic medium, in a world post-Covid.
Novelist and screenwriter Stephen Volk has an impressive pedigree of dark delights to his name but is perhaps best remembered for scripting the BBC 'documentary', 'Ghostwatch', although in the pages of Wyrd Britain he's praised for penning the very excellent 'I'll Be Watching You' for the BBC anthology series 'Ghosts'.
This collection from Tartarus Press presents eleven stories that deal, for the most part, with aftermaths; of death, of loss, of pride, of violence, of betrayal. Along with two visits to previous work - the aforementioned 'Ghostwatch' and his ITV series 'Afterlife', Volk provides a delicately balanced selection of stories. They are at their best when most grounded - the title story, the Jamesian 'Cold Aston', the poignant 'Baby on Board', or the book's opening story 'Uncovered' - but Volk is a dab hand at his screenwriting game and knows the joy of a good pulpy romp with his return to old haunts 'Lost Loved Ones' resurrecting 'Afterlife' some 20 years after the show apeared on TV, would be a welcome addendum for fans, and an enjoyably energetic read for those of us who missed out through not having a TV at that time..
One can always rely on the good folks at Tartarus to provide an unusual and entertaining read and this definitely proved to be so. Going into this I only knew Volk for his TV work and so was hoping for good things but not really knowing whether his screenwriting skills would translate into prose, but I shouldn't have worried as he has a striking imagination and a prepossessing style and as I've since discovered he has a number of books to his name, I'm retroactively unsurprised at how much I enjoyed this collection. ..........................................................................................
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Artist, author, and occultist Ithell Colquhoun, having established her own Parisian studio in the early 1930s, met many of the key artists and became a devotee of the Surrealist Movement later, briefly, joining the British Surrealist Group before leaving due to it's restrictions on her occult research.
It was this melding of her lifelong fascination with the esoteric and her surrealist practices that were to be her defining influences, remaining with her throughout her life becoming increasingly entwined with her paintings, and her writings showing a psychogeographical fascination with the interweaving of folklore, landscape and sexuality.
In her lifetime, Colquhoun published two unorthodox travel books, 'The Crying of the Wind' about Ireland - Richly visual and full of sly wit, this is an account of Ireland as only Colquhoun could see it, a land where myth and magic meet wind and rain, and the song of the secret kingdom is heard on city streets - and her Cornish book 'Living Stones' - Sacred and beautiful, wild and weird, Colquhoun’s Cornwall is a living landscape, where every tree, standing stone and holy well is a palimpsest of folklore,and a place where everyday reality speaks to the world beyond - and an alchemical novel, "The Goose of Hermogenes' - Lushly visual, rife with symbols and cries from the unconscious, Colquhoun’s first novel is a surreal feminist fable, and a supreme artistic vision. Her books have recently been returned to publication by Pushkin Press (which is from where those italicised quotes were taken).
The video below features Colquhoun fan Stewart Lee in discussion with Mariella Frostrup about his love for the travel books and includes a reading from 'The Crying of the Wind'.
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Long regarded as one of the crown-jewel epics from the pages of 2000 AD, at long last Nemesis the Warlock is back in print and better than ever in a brand-new series of definitive editions. Termight is the ruling planet of a cruel galactic empire led by the diabolical Torquemada, a twisted human despot intent on purging all alien life from the galaxy and punishing the deviants. His motto: Be pure! Be vigilant! Behave! Against his tyrannical rule, resistance rises in the form of devilish-looking alien warlock Nemesis, who represents everything that Torquemada hates and fears. Together, Nemesis and Torquemada are locked in a duel which will affect their fate and the fate of humanity itself as their conflict spans time and space!
Limited pocket money meant I was a pretty occasional 2000AD reader back when these stories were first published and beyond admiring the art, I never really read Nemesis but when Rebellion announced these large-format editions of the full story, the chance to add some more Kev O'Neill to my shelves was too good an opportunity to miss.
Now, the problem I've found with a lot of these older strips is that those telling a longer story can often feel a tad over-stretched. The peril of publishing a story 5 pages a week means it can become an exhausting barrage of cliffhangers when read en masse. I grew up loving comics - I worked for years in the late 80s and early 90s in a comic shop in Cardiff - but was never much of a fan of serialised storytelling and immediately stopped buying individual issues when trade paperbacks / graphic novels arrived on the scene and I could read the whole story in one sitting. Some old strips work better than others in the collected format, and this one - plot wise - suffers a little as it feels stuttery. Don't get me wrong, I love the ideas, the dark humour, the satire and I'm well aware that this is book one and Mills is taking his first steps with his new creation but, that formatting issue that I mentioned does become tiring and the story-telling is at it's strongest on the self-contained tales where his vision is at its keenest.
Now, onto the art. This is perhaps O'Neill's defining work here in the UK, and it's a thing of absolute beauty, maniacal, anarchic, and utterly wonderful. There's a lot of debate over the quintessential 2000AD artist and whether you were to name Brian Bolland, Carlos Ezquerra, Dave Gibbons, Alan Davis, Mike McMahon, Ian Gibson - I could go on - you'll get no push back from me, and I'll join in singing their praises but for me, it's always been O'Neill.
Backing up O'Neill here is Spanish artist Jesus Redondo whose art I've always had a soft spot for from reading 'Mind Wars' in Starlord and 'The Mind of Wolfie Smith' in 2000AD, and here he doesn't disappoint, but his issues lack the manic brilliance of O'Neill's.
Rebellion have done a beautiful job here and the book is a thing of real joy. Volumes 2 & 3 are already out and on my shelves - there'll be five in total - and I'm very much looking forward to watching how Mills masters his story and, of course, getting more Kev O'Neill eye-candy.
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