In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys a slim but beautifully illustrated short from the world(s) of His Dark Materials Philip Pullman’s new book, Serpentine, is not a novel, nor even a novella. Nor is it technically new: it dates from 2004, although it is […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys a beautifully produced new edition of Arthur Machen’s study of literature The Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947) wrote some truly unsettling horror fiction, some notable novels about the Holy Grail, some subtle pioneering weird fiction (which I’ve previously […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle explores a forgotten work of post-apocalyptic fiction March opened on a comparatively milder note, but there was still no thaw. Food prices, which had been rising for some time, began to rocket, and there was a wave of strikes […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews an early example of ‘gritty’ epic fantasy It was the late, great Terry Pratchett who observed that most modern fantasy is just rearranging the furniture in Tolkien’s attic. And many innovations within the genre have tended to use […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new treasury of 1,000 Scottish words from Robin A. Crawford A clishmaclaver is a Scottish word meaning ‘the passing on of idle gossip, sometimes in a book’. A collieshangle denotes a row or fight in which two […]