Published on 12, July, 2020
What books have subtley influence you, ones that you read as a child? For me it was Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, as well as being a good adventure story, it introduced me to a whole world of folklore and what I call mystic Britain. You have the history of Britain and then you have the mystic history, the Britain of the things seen from the corner of the eye, the things that you know are there, that you can sense and feel, but can rarely see and other people think you're being daft for caring about. As well as all the strange rituals and folk customs around the country, the fertility dances of Morris Men, to the Hobby Horses and corn dollies. The pull of ancient sacred places, stone circles, holy wells, some very ancient churches, a whole sacred landscape that we're only just rediscovering through the use of such technology as LIDAR. Some customs that cross continenets and generations, throwing coins in a wishing well, these places have often been in use for thousands of years.
That one book set me on a journey thats still ongoing.
Oh I read Garner as well, Elidor gave me nightmares! There was a book I read over and over, "The Old Powder Line" by Richard Parker https://www.amazon.co.uk/Old-Powder-Line-Puffin-Books/dp/0140306579 It was my first "time travel" book, and I still think about it: as well as the weird train that took the MC back into the past there was a hinted-at teenage romance - very tame but it was important to me growing up.
Also "The 3 Investigators" about 3 kids who solved crimes from a hideout in their uncle's junkyard, I wanted to be an investigator and made business cards and everything. By age 11 I was reading some of my mother's Agatha Christies and all the novelisations of the early Doctor Who TV series. Some Sci-fi such as Bradbury and Asimov, and then Lord of the Rings which I read twice as a child.
I was a big fan of 'the 3 investigators'. I think I was the only kid that borrowed them from our local library