Archives: Digital Events

Poppets and Magical Dolls by Lucya Starza

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

Poppets are dolls used for sympathetic magic, and are designed in the likeness of individuals in order to represent them in spells to help, heal or harm. The word poppet comes from the Middle Ages in England, originally meaning a small doll or child, and it is still in use today as a name of endearment. The term is older than the phrase ‘Voodoodoll’ and the use of dolls to influence the fate of a person dates back much further. In Egyptian times enemies of the Pharaoh Ramses III used wax images of him to bring about his death. In the third century BC the Greek poet Theocritus wrote of how a peasant girl Simaetha used erotic magic on her absent lover Delphis to get him to return to her by melting and burning wax dolls. Poppets have also been found concealed in old houses as a form of protection. This lecture explores the history of poppets and their uses in modern witchcraft

Speaker Bio

Lucya Starza is an eclectic witch living in London, England, and grew up in a family where fortune telling and divination, as well as folk magic practices, were part of everyday life. She writes A Bad Witch’s Blog at www.badwitch.co.uk and is the author of Pagan Portals – Scrying as well as other books published by Moon Books on candle magic, poppets, and guided visualisations.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – a Zoom lecture by Ruth Franklin

Known to millions primarily as the author of the archly disturbing short story ‘The Lottery’, Shirley Jackson (1916–1965) has until recently been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone in her classic, gothic novels The Haunting of Hill House (1959, later successfully filmed by Robert Wise in 1963 as The Haunting) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. In keeping with the dark nature of her work, Jackson’s seemingly bucolic life in the New England town of North Bennington was, below its surface, far more tumultuous and haunted than it seemed.

In this online talk, Ruth Franklin will demonstrate how Shirley Jackson’s unique contribution to twentieth century literature came from her focus on ‘domestic horror’. Almost two decades before Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique ignited the women’s movement, Jackson’s stories and non-fiction chronicles were already exploring the exploitation and the desperate isolation of women, particularly married women, in American society.

Ruth Franklin is a book critic and former editor at The New Republic. Her first biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2016) won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography and was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2016, a Time magazine top nonfiction book of 2016, and a “best book of 2016” by The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, and others. In The Washington Post, Elaine Showalter called it “a sympathetic and masterful biography that both uncovers Jackson’s secret and haunting life and repositions her as a major artist.”

Ruth’s work appears in many publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper’s. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in biography, a Cullman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, a Leon Levy Fellowship in biography, and the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism. Her first book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2011), was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Your host for this event will be the writer (and the Last Tuesday Society’s Literary Director) Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward lives in Norfolk, UK, and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

The Treasure Seeker and other Suffolk Ghost Tales by Kirsty Hartsiotis

Suffolk – a peaceful, rural county with big skies, rolling fields, unspoilt beaches and quaint towns and villages. But all is not as quiet as it seems. Could that be the eerie clanking of gibbet chains at the crossroads? Did you see a desolate face at an upper window or a spectral white form lurking in the hedgerow? Cats are not always lucky – and beware a north Suffolk broad in the still, small hours of Midsummer Night. Kirsty Hartsiotis tells with spine-chilling freshness a selection of fabulous ghost tales from all corners of this beguiling county. So pull up a chair, stoke the fire and prepare to see its gentle landscape in a new and eerie light…

Bio

Kirsty Hartsiotis, who is originally from Suffolk, has been a storyteller for more than twenty years, both solo and with her group Fire Springs. She came to storytelling with a lifelong love of stories and history, and a background in drama, heritage and education. She’s also a writer, and is the author of Suffolk Folk Tales and, with Cherry Wilkinson, Suffolk Ghost Tales, as well as a number of other folk tale collections. With her other hat on, she’s a museum curator, curating the Designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection at a Gloucestershire museum, and an Accredited Arts Society lecturer in art history – and folklore.

The image is again copyright Katherine Soutar.

On Wildness, Witchery & things that go bump in the Night – Vivianne Crowley

As we head towards Hallowe’en and all things witchy, Vivianne Crowley will be talking about her life in the witchy world from mediumship to ghosts, to dancing for the Horned God beneath the moon. She will be reflecting on the enduring and alluring world of witchcraft, what has changed, what has not, and what draws us to it still.

Bio

Dr Vivianne Crowley is an internationally renowned Wiccan Priestess and teacher, who has been involved in witchery for over 50 years. She is a worldwide go-to authority on Wicca and contemporary Paganism, and bestselling author of Wild Once and Wicca: The Old Religion in the Modern World. She is a psychologist and was formerly Lecturer in Psychology of Religion at King’s College, University of London. She is now a professor in the Faculty of Pastoral Counselling and Chaplaincy, Cherry Hill Seminary, South Carolina, and sits on the Contemporary Pagan Studies program committee of the American Academy of Religion. Her books have been translated around the world. She can be found at:

www.facebook.com/VivianneCrowleyAuthor , www.viviannecrowley.com

www.viviannecrowley.com> , twitter @VivianneCrowley

The History and Future of the Wildcat in Britain – A Zoom talk with Derek Gow

Derek Gow, who has previously given a talk to the Museum about the history of wolves in Britain, makes a welcome return to give an illustrated lecture about one of our rarest and most enigmatic native mammals, the Wildcat (Felix sylvestris). The species became extinct in England and Wales during the nineteenth century, clinging on thereafter only in the Scottish Highlands. Derek currently has a wildcat breeding complex on his Devon farm and plans to reintroduce these remarkable felines back into the English countryside at a future point.

Derek Gow is a farmer and nature conservationist. Born in Dundee in 1965, he left school when he was 17 and worked in agriculture for five years. Inspired by the writing of Gerald Durrell, all of whose books he has read – thoroughly – he jumped at the chance to manage a European wildlife park in central Scotland in the late 1990s before moving on to develop two nature centres in England. He now lives with his children at Coombeshead, a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border which he is in the process of rewilding. Derek has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole and the white stork in England. He is currently working on a reintroduction project for the wildcat. Derek’s book, Bringing Back the Beaver: The Story of One Man’s Quest to Rewild Britain’s Waterways, was published in 2020.

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Robert Aickman – Master of the ‘strange story’: a Zoom talk by R. B. Russell & Rosalie Parker

Robert Aickman (1914-1981) is remem­bered today as the author of fascinating ‘strange stories’, and also as one of the saviours of Britain’s inland waterways. In Aick­man’s mind these two apparently differ­ent interests were allied; he was an ideal­ist and a Roman­tic who sought the ‘world else­where’ of Shakespeare’s Cor­io­lanus, because the modern world was not for him. Aick­man believed that an alterna­tive realm could exist in life and the creative arts, and he sought to offer this in his fiction, and to build a utopia through the restoration of Brit­ain’s in­land waterways.

Aickman wrote two volumes of auto­biography, The Attempted Rescue and The River Runs Uphill, and both are full of colourful personal details. However, his own versions of events cannot always be relied upon.

Ray Russell has now written the first full biography of Aickman (Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography, Tartarus Press, 2022), disentangling and examining the myths that have sur­rounded the man and his life. In this Zoom discussion he will discuss Aickman and his life along with Rosalie Parker, who has shared in this quest.

R.B. Russell runs the award-winning Tartarus Press with Rosalie Parker. He has had four collections of short stories, three novellas and two novels published. His non-fiction includes an Arthur Machen gazetteer (Occult Territory), a collection of essays (Past Lives of Old Books), and Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Bibliography.

Rosalie Parker is the editor at the award-winning Tartarus Press, which she runs with R.B. Russell. She is the author of four short story collections: The Old Knowledge and Other Stories (2010), Damage (2016), Sparks from the Fire (2018) and Through the Storm (2020).

 

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Irish Master of Mystery – a Zoom talk by Jim Rockhill

Who was Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873)?

In the “Prologue” to Madam Crowl’s Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery (1925), his invaluable gathering of Le Fanu’s hitherto uncollected stories, no less a practitioner of the form than M. R. James pronounced: “Le Fanu stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories. That is my deliberate verdict, after reading all the supernatural tales I have been able to get hold of. Nobody sets the scene better than he, nobody touches in the effective detail more deftly.”

Even though Le Fanu’s work makes a characteristically fugitive appearance in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939), and has attracted praise from writers as varied as Algernon Swinburne, Charles Dickens, Henry James, E. F. Benson, Montague Summers, Dorothy Sayers, Elizabeth Bowen, V. S. Pritchett, Robert Aickman, and Roald Dahl, he was long known, if at all, through two works: the locked-room mystery Uncle Silas: A Tale of Bartram-Haugh (1864) and the collection of strange tales, In a Glass Darkly, collected the year before his death. Fortunately, this Irish jurist, poet, novelist, journalist, and editor has continued to grow in popularity and critical stature with every ensuing decade since James first published his accolade. We invite you to an exploration of his life and work, on what is the 208th anniversary of his birth.

Jim Rockhill received his Bachelor of Arts in English Literature with a minor in German from the University of Michigan in 1979, and subsequent degrees and certifications in healthcare. He has read widely in supernatural fiction with a particular emphasis on the works of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, whose 2014 bicentenary conference and celebration he attended in Dublin. JIm is one of the consulting editors for Centipede Press and Craftsman Audio’s series The Complete Ghost Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

Jim has edited the collected supernatural fiction of Sheridan Le Fanu (Ash-Tree Press, 2002–05), Bob Leman (Midnight House, 2002; Centipede Press, 2021), and Jane Rice (with Stefan Dziemianowicz: Midnight Press, 2003), a selection of Night Pieces by E. T. A. Hoffmann (Tartarus Press, 2008), the essay collection Reflections in a Glass Darkly: Essays on J. Sheridan Le Fanu (with Gary William Crawford and Brian J. Showers: Hippocampus Press, 2011), the anthology Dreams of Shadow and Smoke: Stories for J. S. Le Fanu (with Brian J. Showers: Swan River Press, 2014), and a series of special editions devoted to the work of Le Fanu, co-edited with Brian J. Showers for Swan River Press, which includes My Aunt Margaret’s Adventure (2009), Reminiscences of a Bachelor (2014), a 150th anniversary edition of Green Tea (2019), and a planned edition of both Schalken texts. Additional introductions, essays and reviews have appeared in books on Clark Ashton Smith, M. R. James, vampires, the Gothic, and many more.

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country.Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

 

Folklore, the Gothic and Urban Myth in Scooby-Doo – a Zoom talk by Mark Norman

Born out of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and a country of unrest, Scooby-Doo is something of a strange champion. Yet, more than fifty years later, the franchise is still going strong despite some ups and downs – and the appearance of Scrappy-Doo – over the years.

What is often overlooked in the ghost-hunting and dodgy fairground owner unmasking mayhem is the fact that the Scoobyverse has many interesting representations of real world folklore, tropes and legends. More than this, the programme has had something of an influence on our own real-world folklore and culture from time to time as well: in the fields of the gothic, urban legends and even speech therapy.

Confused? Join the Viktor Wynd Mystery Incorporated gang for an exploration into all this and more as folklorist Mark Norman, the creator and host of The Folklore Podcast investigates. Jinkies!

Mark Norman is a folklore author and researcher, creator of The Folklore Podcast which has enjoyed almost 1.5 million downloads since its launch, council member of the Folklore Society and Recorder of Folklore for the Devonshire Association. He is the author of a range of folklore books and the curator of the Folklore Library and Archive.

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Deirdriu of the Sorrows by Dr Mark Williams

Deirdriu of the Sorrows – 27 Feb 2023

This final talk introduces one of the most famous heroines of Irish literature, whose story was turned into numerous plays in the Irish Revival of the turn of the 20th century. Deirdriu – sometimes called ‘the Irish Helen of Troy’ – is a heroine of great vividness, caught up in a pitiless, brutal struggle for self-determination and her own desire. We will look at the earliest version of the story, The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, and then hear how and why it was adapted and reworked in modernity.

Reading: The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu, translated by Vernam Hull here:

https://celt.ucc.ie/published/T301020B/index.html

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Bio

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.

How Culhwch Won Olwen and tales of Arthur by Dr Mark Williams

How Culhwch Won Olwen and tales of Arthur – 23 Jan 2023

This week we are sticking once more with the Arthurian world, and introducing one of the best medieval Welsh tales: the story of Culhwch and Olwen. This fantastical and varied story features giants, horror, love, and adventure, and is the earliest Arthurian story to survive in any language. Arthur is a Celtic figure in origin, and here we get a glimpse of a stranger, less comfortable Arthur than the one we know.

Reading: How Culhwch Won Olwen, in The Mabinogion, trans. Sioned Davies

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Bio

Dr Mark Williams is Fellow and Tutor in English at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. He is a specialist in the medieval languages and literatures of Wales and Ireland, and the author of Ireland’s Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (Princeton, 2016), and The Celtic Myths that Shaped the Way We Think (Thames & Hudson, 2021). He is in training as a Jungian psychoanalyst

Further Reading

W. B. Yeats, ‘Rosa Alchemica’ in Mythologies (many editions)

George Russell, ‘The Legends of Ancient Eire’ https://www.teozofija.info/Russell_Legends.html

Celtic Myth by Dr. Mark Williams

These lectures introduce a range of famous figures and fascinating stories from the medieval Irish and Welsh past, including many characters who number among the gods and goddesses of the Celts. The aim is to explain their cultural context and status as literature, showing who produced these stories in the form in which we have them, and why. Each lecture also draws attention to the ways any given story has been reimagined in modernity, being forged anew for our own times. In each case I have suggested one paperback to read beforehand.