Category: Literature

Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Television

The Ghost In The Grain: Analogue Hauntings of the 1970s

This presentation was originally given at the Folk Horror Revival day at The British Museum (16/02/2016).  My thanks to the fellow admins of the Folk Horror Revival, especially Jim Peters and Andy Paciorek. There’s an overt connection between analogue technology and the narratives surrounding paranormal activity in British horror, especially when made during the 1970s.  No doubt there are connections between the interest in such … Continue reading The Ghost In The Grain: Analogue Hauntings of the 1970s

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film, Television

Trailer – No Diggin’ Here.

There are few writers that figure more prominently in everything I do than the teller of beautiful Edwardian ghost stories, M.R. James.  Alongside W.G. Sebald, J.G. Ballard, Alan Garner and Virginia Woolf, his writing holds a great power over me with its familiar yet unfamiliar worlds.  His writing preys upon my mind at regular intervals, even outside of the Christmas period from which they were … Continue reading Trailer – No Diggin’ Here.

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Film, Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography

Interview: John Rogers on London Overground and Psychogeography.

John Rogers has been one of the most prominent psychogeographical writers and filmmakers of the last decade.  Fiercely independent and with a strong DIY sensibility towards his creative responses to London, his work is a vital component and documentation of a city still in a phase of hyper-development and gentrification.  Ahead of his adaptation/response to Iain Sinclair’s most recent book, London Overground, I met up … Continue reading Interview: John Rogers on London Overground and Psychogeography.

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Literature, Psychogeography

Muriel Spark’s Ballad Of Peckham Rye

“I shall have to do research,” Dougal mused, “into their inner lives. Research into the real Peckham.  It will be necessary to discover the spiritual well-spring, the glorious history of the place, before I am able to offer some impetus.” To ingratiate myself into newly living in South London, I was keen to find some boundary markers in the area to walk and explore. I had only … Continue reading Muriel Spark’s Ballad Of Peckham Rye

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film

Short Film – Heavy Water.

I remember being sat on a bench on Dunwich Heath in September last year and seeing the dome of Sizewell B for the first time as an adult.  I had just walked a little way down the coast, after a day of filming further down at Orford Ness, from Dunwich beach through to the heath.  I simply was not expecting to be greeted by such … Continue reading Short Film – Heavy Water.

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature

Rurality In Folk Horror And The Films of David Gladwell.

This paper was originally given at The Alchemical Landscape conference at Girton College Cambridge, 07/07/2016. Though more well known for work as a film editor associated with the Free Cinema Movement of the late 1950s, and for cutting work on several films by Lindsay Anderson including If…. (1968) and O’ Lucky Man! (1973), David Gladwell is a director in his own right; a cinematic outsider … Continue reading Rurality In Folk Horror And The Films of David Gladwell.

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography

Wanders: Ian Nairn’s Pimlico (London).

I’ve always had a slight relationship with Victoria and Pimlico in London.  As central London areas go, it has always represented two things to me: the awful feeling of leaving the city and the sense of dread at having to wander around somewhere largely built of private buildings, houses and hotels (not the ideal place to burn an hour in wait for a coach or … Continue reading Wanders: Ian Nairn’s Pimlico (London).

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Film, Landscape, Literature

Place and Youth in Margaret Tait’s A Portrait Of Ga (1952)

“My mother lives in the windy Orkney Islands.  It’s certainly a wonderful place to be brought up in.” In making a short film about her mother, Scottish experimental filmmaker Margaret Tait also explored the interesting relationship between place and youth. In A Portrait of Ga (1952), a 4 minute short film shot on 16mm with a voice-over by the filmmaker, a fragment of biography becomes … Continue reading Place and Youth in Margaret Tait’s A Portrait Of Ga (1952)

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Landscape, Literature, Psychogeography

A Last Glimpse of the Land

“The contours of the Sizewell power plant, its Magnox block a glowering mausoleum, begin to loom upon an island far out in the pallid waters where one believes the Dogger Bank to be, where once shoals of herring spawned and earlier still, a long, long time ago, the delta of the Rhine flowed out into the sea and where green forests grew from silting sands.” … Continue reading A Last Glimpse of the Land

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Literature, Psychogeography, Short Film

Short Film – A Walk By Waiting (Harold Pinter, Iain Sinclair).

My walk around Harold Pinter’s old haunts in the east end of London has produced a number of written accounts now that, with the film that sparked of the whole venture being finally public, I’m not quite sure what else to say about it.  The idea for the walk came about when I saw the, since frustratingly taken down, Harold Pinter Arena documentary which spent a … Continue reading Short Film – A Walk By Waiting (Harold Pinter, Iain Sinclair).

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