Raven

Jeremy Burnham & Trevor Ray
Corgi Carousel

A young tearaway on probation from a young offenders' institution, is sent to stay with a wheelchair-bound archaeologist who is trying to save some ancient underground caves from being used as a nuclear waste dumping ground.. Legend has it that the caves were once occupied by King Arthur, and when Raven joins the archaeologist's campaign, he begins to believe he is the reincarnation of Arthur, and the future of the caves depends on him.

From the guys behind the 'Children of the Stones' TV series and book, 'Raven' was another slice of rural horror drenched in megalithic lore and, in this case, Arthurian legend.

Raven is a young man with a chequered past on release from Borstal and roped into helping the crotchety old Professor Young protect an archaeologically significant cave system from becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste.

The story is kind of a muddle with the Arthurian elements being particularly underdeveloped and feeling at best a little tacked on in order to make the whole protection of the land angle work. And work it does but it needed more room to introduce and develop the various aspects such as just who the other members of the round table (or in this case stone circle) are and what exactly did happen with the professor and the bird.

As this is the accompanying novel to the TV series (which I've not seen) I'm going to assume many of these issues were carried over from budgetary constraints relating to the filmed version but then surely the novelisation would have provided an opportunity to address and repair but evidently not.

If it sounds like I'm giving this a bit of a pasting then please know that I did enjoy it.  It's an entertaining little thing but a flawed one that has left me quite keen to track down the series so I can compare the two.

Buy it here - Raven

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Children of the Stones (novelisation)

Children of the Stones 1st edition

Jeremy Burnham & Trevor Ray
Carousel Books

Adam Brake, an astrophysicist, and his son Matthew try to unravel the mystery behind the peculiar behaviour of the inhabitants of the little English village of Milbury while investigating the ancient stone circle surrounding it.

A lot of the time I buy or read books based on the cover art.  I'll often hang back on a book I'm really interested in until I can find the specific edition with my preferred cover image and so it's taken me several years but I've finally hunted down a 1st edition copy of the novelisation of this classic 70s kids TV show.

Trevor Ray

Matthew Brake and his astrophysicist father Adam have arrived in the small village of Milbury in order to research the 53 standing stones that surround the village.  Once there they find themselves confronted by villagers who are friendly but creepy with their solicitous behaviour and their 'Happy day' salutations and overseeing them all, Rafael Hendrick, lord(ish) of the manor and all round shifty sort.

Jeremy Burnham

Father and son soon start to realise that it's not just the locals who are strange but also the stones themselves as psychic phenomena builds along with the tension before the book culminates with a finale as enigmatic in print as it is on film.

Obviously a novelisation is always going to retain a great deal of it's source material but this is a particularly slavish, though well written, one.  The small illustrations heading each chapter even retain the likenesses of the core cast.  This doesn't mean it isn't an enjoyable enough read though but it is one that is lacking in any sort of tension for anyone with a knowledge of the series.

Buy it here - Children of the Stones

Children of the Stones

'Children of the Stones' is a 7 part drama for children produced by HTV in early 1977.  It tells of the arrival of astrophysicist Adam Brake (Gareth Thomas) and his young son Matthew (Peter Demin) in Milbury (actually the Wiltshire town of Avebury), a small town situated within an ancient stone circle.  Milbury is run by the powerful Rafael Hendrick (Iain Cuthbertson) who in emulation of the Druid who built the circle is using it's powers to control the minds of the village's inhabitants.  As the series progresses it becomes apparent that something much greater, more terrifying and infinitely stranger is occurring.

'Children of the Stones' is a glorious piece of drama that still stands with the best British supernatural or science fiction drama.  From the off it chooses not to patronise it's audience (a rarity in TV made for children) and almost seemed to go out of it's way to be as creepy and as strange as possible - take the theme tune as evidence of this...



British comedian Stewart Lee is a fan of the series (and others of it's kind) and has produced a couple of things about it which I'm going to include here.

The first is a short piece from Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe in 2007 talking about the different ways children are represented in TV shows then and now.



The second is a fabulous 30 minute documentary for BBC Radio 4 which features contributions from cast, crew and fans. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n1rbx

Before you dig into all that though you can watch the full series on the player below or buy it from here - Children of the Stones: The Complete Series [DVD]

Happy day

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