Thursday 20 January 2011

Weird Winter Tales - Reviews

A couple of reviews of the event Weird Winter Tales

John Llewellyn Probert -

"Well the event went really well and was surprisingly well attended by absoultely nobody I knew, whcih is always encouraging for...ahem...influencing new potential readers. The day began with Gwilym Games giving a lecture on libraries in HPL's work, followed by a panel discussion on The Necronomicon. After this we had a talk on Kenneth Grant, the real-life 'magician' and how HPL's stories may have influenced his own writing.

After that was Gwil Games' often hilarious account of the Samuels-Games Expedition (his title) to Devon to seek out HPL's ancestors. Gwil kept us rolling in the aisles with this and some of the pictures were classics - especially one of Mark Samuels, Quentin S Crisp and Dan (?) where they reminded more than a few audience member of The Goodies :D

After I read from The Iconostasis of Imperfection Gwil hosted an hour of the two of us discussing HPL in Cinema, interspersed with clips and trailers from Lovecraft movies where I got to talk about Charles Band & the whole 17 year saga of the making of Stuart Gordon's Shadow Over Innsmouth, AIP's HPL movies, Tony Tenser's technique of coming up with movie titles, and finishing off with a big plug for Rare Exports.

All this, mulled wine and Lovecraftian mood music as well - well done, Reading Central Library!"

Cardinal Cox:

http://suptales.blogspot.com/2010/12/weird-winter-tales.html

Wednesday 19 January 2011

Latest Friends publications

Due to illness on the committee our publications shipped in December.

Faunus 22 had its usual collection of articles included two fascinating letters from Arthur Machen to Montague Summers the famous demonologist and master of vampire lore regarding their mutual interest in witchcraft. “Fairy Lore and Its Influence on Arthur Machen and Some Other Contemporaneous Gentlemen” by Thos. Kent Miller discusses Machen’s mysterious Little People. “A Patchwork of Digressions: Arthur Machen and The London Adventure” by Nick Wagstaff covered one of Machen’s most curious books which is a keystone of Psychogeography. “Spectre vs. Rector: The Fall and Arthur Machen” by Mark Goodall discussed the longstanding interest of Mark E. Smith in Machen in depth in an article by the author of a major new book on The Fall. And to close Harold Billing revealed the answer to the salacious mystery of whether M.P. Shiel actually slept with Machen’s French maid.

Machenalia Autumn 2010 contains accounts of the FOAM weekend in Abergavenny, and the text of the London vs Gwent debate which was performed there. It has reviews two new important editions of Machen: S.T. Joshi's annotated edition of Machen from Arcane Wisdom, and the two volumes of the Library of Wales paperbacks which bring back Machen into mass market paperback in the UK. It has the usual other Machen related articles covering Machen events on Hay on Wye and Stoke Newington, and various other film and book reviews.