Playmobil Caesar standing on the steps of the senate with a Roman street in the background.

#OTD 44BC
“Well, the Ides of March are come! Happy Ides, everyone!”
“Aye, Caesar, the Ides are come, but they’re not yet gone.”
#IdesOfMarch
#PlaymobilInfestation

'Except for the birds - which sang loud and piercingly, with a loony optimism akin to emergency - the street was solitary and still. A sprinkler whirred on an empty lawn; the street lamps, the lighted porches glowed in long, empty perspectives...'

#BookWormSat
#SouthernGothic

Mostly, he looked like a big piece of old brown carpet that had been left out in the rain.
"You're a mess," I told him. "I bet you don't belong to anybody."
He smiled at me. He did that thing again, where he pulled back his lips and showed me his teeth.

Kate di Camillo
#BookWormSat

Our very own agent, Hattie is doing a 1-2-1 at the Bournemouth Writing Festival on 25th of April 👀. Book now! 📚 This is an opportunity you do not want to miss. 🌟

Book your slot here: BournemouthWritingFestival.co.uk

Black and white woodcut style book cover for the Watkins Book of English Folktales

Following the sad passing recently of the folklorist and author @neilphilipmyth.bsky.social, it became apparent that the review of his excellent book ENGLISH FOLKTALES was missing from the podcast website

You can now read it, and link to the interview, at

www.thefolklorepodcast.com/english-folk...

black and white illustration for The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost. Solid man with mustache, black hair and suit watches a transparent grey figure before him in the hall.

#BookologyThursday
People with a certain strength or fixity of purpose may have ghosts of a certain strength and fixity of purpose--most haunting ghosts, you know, must be as one idea'd as monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back again and again. H.G. Wells, 1902

The cover of 'writing for young people' by Elen Caldecott. A blue background, with illustrated stationery flying out of a box.

It is a NEW BOOK DAY! 'Writing for Young People', by me, is an accessible look at how fiction for children and young adults is crafted. In eight chapters, we take a DEEP DIVE into picturebooks, MG and YA with AUTHOR INTERVIEWS and WRITING EXERCISES #kidlit #ukkidlit uk.bookshop.org/p/books/writ...

I'll be chatting with Phil Errington, expert on John Masefield and author of Opening the Box of Delights, and @pierstorday.bsky.social who adapted the book for the stage.

I'll feature the best of your thoughts on the show too, so make sure to give permission when you email your recordings

Undergrowth with Ivy, Vincent van Gogh

'He had begun to know the ivy, its depth, its mysterious blue reflections, its iron smell of green and ancient botany, its sound of rain on turning pages, its strength and brittleness, and its flavour of cress and stone.' ~
The Time of Green Magic, Hilary McKay
#BookWormSat

As described, painting or arrangement of ivy leaves. 🖼️ Leaves of Ivy, Shirley Hibberd, 1872.

‘Ivy held prior place in this lost garden, the long strands crept across the lawns, and soon would encroach upon the house itself.’ ~ Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier.

This #BookWormSat celebrates the birthday of landscape architect, Leonard Springer with Gardens in Literature.

Shirley Jackson was right. No live organism can exist sanely for long under conditions of absolute reality.

Photo of an elephant facing right wearing a checked knitted blanket while on sandy outdoor ground under a chill bright blue sky

Volunteers created blankets for elephants during a cold spell in Myanmar, Winga Baw Elephant camp #WomensArt

A boy falls over as two little men dash passed him in pursuit of a rolling ball. Looking on in surprise is a woman in traditional Welsh costume. The illustration is by Willy Pogany and is scanned from my 1952 reprint (alas, not the valuable 1907 first) of 'The Welsh Fairy Book' by W Jenkyn Thomas.

A #Pembrokeshire boy, Elydir, was favoured by the Tylwyth Teg and they took him to Annwn to play with the king's son. On one of his trips home, his mother begged him to take just one of the balls of gold they played with. But the #fairies retook it and he was banned from Annwn forever.
#FolkTaleWeek

We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.

~Daphne du Maurier
#PhantomsFriday #Bookchatweekly

A painting of diagonal slashes and crosses of various kinds all filling the white page in red paint of varying intensity. In tiny scratching handwriting the words 30 million dead July 76 M Bishop The Somme

30 million dead, The Somme, painting created by Mary Bishop 1976 in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital where she was compelled to live.
Aged 4 when her father was killed in WWI, the reverberations of his death & her mother’s vast grief traumatised & distressed Mary for the rest of her life

Here's our pick of the best writing comps and subs for November. Join the WHQ slubbers club and send your stories into the world. Go go go!

writershq.co.uk/5-competitio...

Please share widely and follow us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Victorian drawing of a blindfolded man with long black hair and a tight suit with red boots prancing around a stage littered by eggs.

Baron Nathan, the celebrity dance teacher of the 1850s who danced the hornpipe blindfolded, surrounded by eggs. There's something SO malevolent about this image. It's powerfully frightening.

An illustration in green, black and white. There are two houses: a witch is peeping out of the front door of one, a Jack O'Lantern out of the other.

Another lovely #Halloween illustration, this one by Kurt Werth from 'One Dark Night', a children's book by Edna Preston. In the story, various spooky beings gang up but are frightened away by a crafty little mouse.
#witch #jackolantern #illustration #KurtWerth #mouse

Important piece from @booktrust.org.uk and @openuni-rfp.bsky.social about the value of book choice for pupils and how to help promote it in the classroom. Do have a read! files.booktrust.org.uk/docs/documen... @teresacremin.bsky.social @richardruddick.bsky.social

"Once upon a time there was a little witch who was only a hundred and twenty-seven years old". The Little Witch, Otfried Preussler -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lit...
#bookwormsat

Excellent advice...and something for every occasion!
www.joanaiken.com/books/

Illustration of woggle dancing with broomsticks in a forest, a little bat in flight around them.

The Woggle of Witches,
Adrienne Adams, 1971.

Illustration of a lush, green Moominvalley with a variety of Moomin characters and other creatures from the series. The illustration includes Moomintroll, Snorkmaiden, Little My and Moominpappa, who is wearing a top hat and a vest. The characters are in a landscape with a river, a field of white daisy-like flowers, and numerous trees. Some trees have green leaves, while others are laden with yellow, spherical fruit. A ladder is propped against one of the fruit-bearing trees.

‘It is autumn in Moominvalley, for how else can spring come back again?’ ~ Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson.

@racheldeering.bsky.social here for the rest of an Autumnal #BookWormSat 🍂

Romanticism gave Gothic fiction its pulse. Behind every phantom is longing. Behind every monster, love twisted by loss. The horror is never just outside. It’s what the heart won’t forget. #31DaysofHaunting #31DaysOfHalloween

Art: Munch

Art by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite. Black and white illustration of a witch standing in the pouring rain near a lake. Mountains in the far distance.

One of my favourite Flemish folktales is that of a witch who lived near the sea in a derelict cottage that the locals avoided. They were thrilled when a storm destroyed it. The witch went to the sea and kept herself occupied by conjuring storms and capsizing ships.

🌙See thread for more witchery🌙

Amazing opportunity for unpublished authors.

Thanks for the recommendation. Hadn't heard of these before, but they sound like a very fresh take on fantasy and enormous fun!

I'm a bit late to the party on these two, but I really love Cornelia Funke and Catherine Fisher. In the meantime, if you have some gothic recommendations, send them my way!

The Box of Delights. Properly unsettling. Abner Brown's a brilliant villain!