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Nick Talbot of Gravenhurst
It was tremendously sad to learn of the passing of Nick Talbot, who died on 4th December at the desperately premature age of 37. Talbot had been the creative force behind the group Gravenhurst for 12...
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Hunting The Demons of Ashcombe
It was on a sharp, blue-skied autumn day that I set out to hunt down the demons of Ashcombe. I’d seen pictures of the strange, distorted faces carved into the dark oak of 17th century bench ends in...
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Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination at The British Library
PART ONEThe British Library exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination began, appropriately enough, with a descent. After a brief introductory film in which four explorers of diverse Gothic...
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Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination at the British Library
PART TWOCharles Dickens is the perfect figure to usher us into the Victorian world, and into the dark, narrow and crowded streets of the rapidly expanding, noisily industrial capital. A clip of the...
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Songs of Free Men
A remarkable cover from a collection of Paul Robeson 78s which has just come into the Oxfam Music and Art shop where I work, vintage dust and all. Released in 1943, the illustration explicitly connects...
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The Holcombe Rogus Time Traveller
It was a freezing January morning when I lifted my bike off the train at Tiverton Parkway station and wheeled it down the ramp into the carpark. The station is nowhere near Tiverton (it’s actually just...
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The Ashton Ascension
PART ONEThe early days of March signal the first tenative stirrings of Spring, a turning time of the year when the bite of winter lingers but begins to cede its supremacy. It was a propitious moment to...
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The Beatles in Japan
A bit of a Beatles bonanza in the Oxfam Music and Arts shop in Exeter yesterday, with 8 LPs spanning A Hard Days Night through to Abbey Road (1964-70) coming in. Sgt Pepper, the White Album and Abbey...
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Chris Watson at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum
Sound recordist and musician Chris Watson was in conversation at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum with RSPB communications officer for the South West Tony Whitehead last night. Perhaps the...
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Stornoway at RAMM
Stornoway’s Saturday evening appearance in the rear gallery of the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter was a prelude to a summer spent performing in idiosyncratic locales and at events which...
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The Merry Month of May
This is the unedited version of an essay which appeared in abbreviated form in the excellent Folklore TapesCalendar Customs II Box Set. May Day is one of the turning points of the year, the moment when...
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The Ashton Ascension
PART TWOThe white-washed porch was edged with stone benches, so we were able to perch and munch. The entrance arch framed a pastoral view worthy once more of Samuel Palmer, rounded hills rising to an...
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Calendar Customs II: Merry May
The first Calendar Customs collection from the Folklore Tapes folks focussed on Halloween. It sought to unearth the layers of tradition and vernacular observance which have been largely displaced by...
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The Ashton Ascension
PART THREEWalking towards the Jacobean pulpit at the south end of the rood screen, we paused to look down at two memorial stones embedded in the aisle, its darkly grey, granite surface worn smooth by...
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The Damned
Here's the full version of an introduction I gave to a screening of The Damned as part of a 12 Hour science fiction film festival at the Bike Shed Theatre for Phonic fm. I had to cut it drastically to...
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Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor - Devon Folklore Tapes Live at the...
The Devon Folklore Tapes VI release Theo Brown and the Folklore of Dartmoor was brought to life in the Phoenix, Exeter last week, not far away from the terrain from which it drew visual, aural and even...
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Ben and Winifred Nicholson: Art and Life 1920-1931 at Ways With Words,...
Jovan Nicholson gave a talk about his grandparents Winifred and Ben Nicholson as part of the Dartington Ways With Words Festival in July this year. He has curated an exhibition of their work, Art and...
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The Spectral Book of Horror
The Spectral Book of Horror is an instantly attractive volume. The cover is graced by a gorgeous painting by Vincent Chong showing two boys and a girl standing against a cracked and peeling wall,...
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The Dragon Griaule Stories by Lucius Shepard
Lucius Shephard’s sequence of linked but discrete stories featuring the Dragon Griaule originated in a Clarion Writer’s Workshop in the early 1980s. Seeking inspiration, Shephard went outside, sat...
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Folklore Tapes Calendar Customs I: Fore Hallowe'en
The latest release from the Folklore Tapes folk (the Devon prefix dropped as they search further afield), Fore Hallowe’en, finds them taking a new direction, recalibrating the co-ordinates. Previous...
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