1 00:00:02,060 --> 00:00:07,400 Hello, I'm Caroline Clarington from St. John's College, Oxford, and the Oxford English 2 00:00:07,400 --> 00:00:12,890 faculty. And in this little presentation, I'm going to introduce you to Sylvia 3 00:00:12,890 --> 00:00:17,960 Townsend. Warner, one of the more underrated of fantasy writers 4 00:00:17,960 --> 00:00:23,180 in the 20th century. She wrote two key books, one at the beginning 5 00:00:23,180 --> 00:00:28,520 of her career and one at the end. And this is going to be a very brief 6 00:00:28,520 --> 00:00:33,550 introduction to her book. Transend Warner was 7 00:00:33,550 --> 00:00:38,620 born in 1893. Her father was a schoolmaster, a tariff 8 00:00:38,620 --> 00:00:43,810 school, and she was brought up in a fairly unconventional way. She was highly 9 00:00:43,810 --> 00:00:49,450 musical and her plans were to go to study in Vietnam with Arnold Schoenbeck 10 00:00:49,450 --> 00:00:54,680 before the First World War and her father's death put a stop to it. Unlike many 11 00:00:54,680 --> 00:00:59,930 young women of her class, she worked in the munitions factory during the First World War. 12 00:00:59,930 --> 00:01:04,940 But she also started a relationship with a married man. And as a result 13 00:01:04,940 --> 00:01:10,730 of that association, she became an editor of the great collection of Tudor 14 00:01:10,730 --> 00:01:15,860 church music, a 10 volume Oxford University Press publication 15 00:01:15,860 --> 00:01:22,610 which came out during the 1920s. And with which she continued to be involved. 16 00:01:22,610 --> 00:01:27,890 She also was close friends with Theodore Powis, who was the brother 17 00:01:27,890 --> 00:01:33,230 of John Cooper, Powers are quite well-known fantasy writer whose work 18 00:01:33,230 --> 00:01:38,570 is perhaps not so popular today. And she was also well acquainted with Arthur Machen 19 00:01:38,570 --> 00:01:45,850 and his family. Again, another fancy writer whose work is beginning to be rediscovered. 20 00:01:45,850 --> 00:01:51,220 Townson Warner remained independent of her family after her experience of working 21 00:01:51,220 --> 00:01:56,470 in London in the First World War. By 1930, she'd met Valentine Atlant, 22 00:01:56,470 --> 00:02:01,590 who would be her lifelong partner, and they move in together. There's 23 00:02:01,590 --> 00:02:06,600 an interesting biography of townsmen born are written by Claire Harman, which is published 24 00:02:06,600 --> 00:02:11,760 in 1989. And there are also her letters and her diaries. If you're interested 25 00:02:11,760 --> 00:02:16,860 in finding out a bit more about her life. One of the things that interests me most 26 00:02:16,860 --> 00:02:22,140 about Sylvia Townsend Warner's writing is its sheer variety. She never 27 00:02:22,140 --> 00:02:27,630 seemed to write the same novel twice in a row. Lolly Willow's, 28 00:02:27,630 --> 00:02:32,640 the first novel to be published in 1926, about which I'll say a bit more in a 29 00:02:32,640 --> 00:02:37,950 moment, is a fantasy set in the rural south of England. And before that, 30 00:02:37,950 --> 00:02:43,170 she'd written a well-received collection of poetry. She continued 31 00:02:43,170 --> 00:02:48,580 to write and publish poetry through the rest of her life. Lolly Willows 32 00:02:48,580 --> 00:02:53,740 was followed up by Mr. Fortune's Maggette in 1927. 33 00:02:53,740 --> 00:02:58,990 This is a novel, rather, in the vein of W. Somerset Maugham. And it tells of a 34 00:02:58,990 --> 00:03:04,350 missionary, Mr Fortune. And the experiences that he has on the remote 35 00:03:04,350 --> 00:03:09,870 South Sea Island where he's been sent to try to convert the natives 36 00:03:09,870 --> 00:03:15,000 who seem perfectly happy in their own animist religion, really don't seem to want 37 00:03:15,000 --> 00:03:20,410 to be converted at all. A couple of more novels, 38 00:03:20,410 --> 00:03:25,810 rather more realist and set in various historical periods, followed 39 00:03:25,810 --> 00:03:30,940 after Mr. Fortune's Maggette. And they're really rather more like 19th century novels 40 00:03:30,940 --> 00:03:36,130 in their scope and their attitude to character. But after the death of Don 41 00:03:36,130 --> 00:03:42,130 Juan, which came in 1938, was a very different piece of writing. 42 00:03:42,130 --> 00:03:47,560 It drew upon tons and Warner and Atkins' own experiences as volunteers 43 00:03:47,560 --> 00:03:53,320 in Spain in the Spanish Civil War. But it blended that immediate 44 00:03:53,320 --> 00:03:58,510 contemporary kind of reportage with the history and legend of the great 45 00:03:58,510 --> 00:04:03,880 seducer, Don Juan, Don Giovanni, as we know him best, perhaps, and motels 46 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:08,910 operate the same name. The cooler that held them is 47 00:04:08,910 --> 00:04:14,220 a novel that's been recently rediscovered. It's a long novel, but a kind 48 00:04:14,220 --> 00:04:19,350 of quiet, low key story about a group of nuns who live in and 49 00:04:19,350 --> 00:04:24,800 out of the way convent in 14th century East Anglia. 50 00:04:24,800 --> 00:04:30,410 They lived through the Black Death and various other kinds of historical 51 00:04:30,410 --> 00:04:35,630 events in the 14th and early 15th centuries. And this story is 52 00:04:35,630 --> 00:04:41,150 fascinating in the way that it makes you interested in these 53 00:04:41,150 --> 00:04:47,230 women, many of whom are very similar to one another. You learn about their petty jealousies 54 00:04:47,230 --> 00:04:53,150 that little power plots their passions and their weaknesses. 55 00:04:53,150 --> 00:05:00,010 And we also hear the priest who minister them over the years. 56 00:05:00,010 --> 00:05:05,020 Tanzim Warner was given access to the life materials of T.H. 57 00:05:05,020 --> 00:05:10,180 White, the author best known perhaps for writing the Once 58 00:05:10,180 --> 00:05:15,370 and Future King tetralogy, the first novel in which series 59 00:05:15,370 --> 00:05:23,140 is The Sword in the Stone. A wonderful children's fantasy about King Arthur. 60 00:05:23,140 --> 00:05:28,360 Apelin died quite a long time before Tan, said Warner. 61 00:05:28,360 --> 00:05:33,760 And in the later years after Allen's death during the 1970s, 62 00:05:33,760 --> 00:05:39,220 she published the collection of short stories called Kingdoms of Elfin. 63 00:05:39,220 --> 00:05:44,230 They're published serially in The New Yorker. And that's one of the works that I want 64 00:05:44,230 --> 00:05:50,660 to focus on. In this introduction, I'll say more about Kingdoms of Alphin in a moment. 65 00:05:50,660 --> 00:05:56,410 Only Willa's published in 1926 is a quite remarkable story. 66 00:05:56,410 --> 00:06:01,530 It's a feminist comedy, a fantasy. In 67 00:06:01,530 --> 00:06:06,600 some ways, it's quite satirical and it tells the story of Laura Willow's 68 00:06:06,600 --> 00:06:12,490 or Lolly, as she's known to her nephew, Aunt Lolly. In fact. 69 00:06:12,490 --> 00:06:17,620 When the story begins, LOLLEY has just been forced to leave Somerset, 70 00:06:17,620 --> 00:06:22,810 where she's been living with her father. Her father has died and she was then moved to London 71 00:06:22,810 --> 00:06:28,310 to live with her rather annoying brother, Henry, and his family. 72 00:06:28,310 --> 00:06:34,460 Twenty years of being the maiden aunt of looking after the family 73 00:06:34,460 --> 00:06:39,680 and leading a double life pass very swiftly until all of a sudden 74 00:06:39,680 --> 00:06:44,870 one day, Lollie decides while buying flowers in London that 75 00:06:44,870 --> 00:06:50,060 she will leave London and she buys a guidebook to the Chilterns and gets 76 00:06:50,060 --> 00:06:55,130 on the bus and goes off exploring. She's very taken with the landscape of the 77 00:06:55,130 --> 00:07:00,200 Chilterns, with the beach woods and the high chalk hills. And soon she lights on 78 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:05,690 a village called Great Mop. And to her family's astonishment, she ups 79 00:07:05,690 --> 00:07:10,790 and moves to Great Mop, where she rents a room from a landlady and 80 00:07:10,790 --> 00:07:15,920 settles in making new friends with her landlady and with the poultry farmer 81 00:07:15,920 --> 00:07:22,300 who lives nearby. And she begins to enjoy her freedom. 82 00:07:22,300 --> 00:07:27,500 The villagers are welcoming. But perhaps in some ways rather reserved. And there's sometimes 83 00:07:27,500 --> 00:07:32,660 some strange noises at night. Nevertheless, Lollie is quite satisfied with 84 00:07:32,660 --> 00:07:38,420 her life. But then her nephew, Titus, now quite grown up, 85 00:07:38,420 --> 00:07:43,730 decides that he will move to great mop as well. He's come to visit Lollie and been very 86 00:07:43,730 --> 00:07:48,830 taken with this charming village. Titus was meant to take over the family 87 00:07:48,830 --> 00:07:53,900 brewing business and become a successful businessman, but he's decided to become a writer 88 00:07:53,900 --> 00:07:59,030 instead. And his arrival in the village ruins the happiness 89 00:07:59,030 --> 00:08:04,290 that Lollie had found because Titus is a typical young man. 90 00:08:04,290 --> 00:08:09,330 Who is not really very self-reliant, though, he likes to think of himself as such. And 91 00:08:09,330 --> 00:08:14,430 soon Loli is being pressed into making sure that his clothes are washed and that he's 92 00:08:14,430 --> 00:08:19,620 fed and that his house is clean and so on. Lollie finds 93 00:08:19,620 --> 00:08:24,810 all this very frustrating. And then shortly after that, she takes up 94 00:08:24,810 --> 00:08:30,750 with a little cat whom she named Vinegar After, which is familiar 95 00:08:30,750 --> 00:08:36,500 in the book that she's been reading. And it's not long after that again. 96 00:08:36,500 --> 00:08:41,540 That's her landlady lets her into the village's secret. The 97 00:08:41,540 --> 00:08:46,730 villagers are, in fact, Satanists, and LOLLEY is taken up into 98 00:08:46,730 --> 00:08:52,960 the woods on the dark night to take part in the witches Sabbath. 99 00:08:52,960 --> 00:08:59,590 And thus initiated, she becomes herself a kind of witch. 100 00:08:59,590 --> 00:09:04,680 She actually meets Satan and sells her soul to him or 101 00:09:04,680 --> 00:09:10,480 least promises herself to him if he will do something for her in exchange. 102 00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:16,090 All that Lolly wants is for Titus to vanish out of her life. 103 00:09:16,090 --> 00:09:21,190 And so a series of more or less comic mishaps begins to overtake 104 00:09:21,190 --> 00:09:26,480 Titus. His milk keeps curdling in the jug. He falls 105 00:09:26,480 --> 00:09:31,600 into a wasps nest and is quite badly stung. And then luckily, a young woman 106 00:09:31,600 --> 00:09:36,610 who rescues him when he falls, since the wasp nest becomes attracted 107 00:09:36,610 --> 00:09:42,010 to him and they fall in love and decide to leave. Great mope and go off 108 00:09:42,010 --> 00:09:47,770 to live in London once again. Lollie recovers her freedom. 109 00:09:47,770 --> 00:09:52,810 And although she knows this, it's cost her, well, her eternal. So 110 00:09:52,810 --> 00:09:58,020 she's not really grateful if that. Lolly Willows was very well 111 00:09:58,020 --> 00:10:03,720 received. It won the pre feminise in France and became very popular. 112 00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:09,390 It's a really interesting book. Quirky, funny and with a distinct tone 113 00:10:09,390 --> 00:10:14,920 which would carry through towns and borders later writing. 114 00:10:14,920 --> 00:10:20,020 Valentine Acton died in 1969, aged only 62. 115 00:10:20,020 --> 00:10:25,390 And Sylvia would live on for another nine years and she never found another partner. 116 00:10:25,390 --> 00:10:31,740 She was perhaps a little lonely in those years and she turned back to the fantasy mode. 117 00:10:31,740 --> 00:10:36,810 The one that had inspired her in her earliest writing of novels, and she begins 118 00:10:36,810 --> 00:10:42,120 on a series of short stories about the world of fairies, which are published 119 00:10:42,120 --> 00:10:47,440 serially for the most part in The New Yorker magazine. The stories 120 00:10:47,440 --> 00:10:52,960 were collected together and published in 1977 as Kingdoms of Alphin. 121 00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:59,150 And that has recently been republished in 2018 by handheld press. 122 00:10:59,150 --> 00:11:04,460 Sylvia's grandmother was Scott's must have told her a great deal about about 123 00:11:04,460 --> 00:11:09,590 fairies in her youth. And it's fairly clear that she bred collections like Catherine 124 00:11:09,590 --> 00:11:14,660 Brigs, great British folk tales, and that this 19th and early 20th 125 00:11:14,660 --> 00:11:21,420 century collections of other British folk tales and other folk traditions. 126 00:11:21,420 --> 00:11:26,820 Her research is warned likely, however. And although the narrators 127 00:11:26,820 --> 00:11:32,220 who are knowledgeable and dispassionate in her stories are able to tell us all the important things 128 00:11:32,220 --> 00:11:37,500 that we need to know about the fairy called some fairy customs that are related, they're 129 00:11:37,500 --> 00:11:42,810 learning as well and very likely indeed. Turns 130 00:11:42,810 --> 00:11:48,430 out mourners, fairies are about four fifths the size of humans. They have wings. 131 00:11:48,430 --> 00:11:53,680 But it's considered rather déclassé to use them. Only working fairies use 132 00:11:53,680 --> 00:11:59,050 their wings and they have the capacity to make themselves visible or invisible, 133 00:11:59,050 --> 00:12:04,340 switched on and off as if with a switch. They're rather like mediaeval fairies. 134 00:12:04,340 --> 00:12:10,750 Before these became tiny tweak for which perhaps we have to blame Shakespeare, in part 135 00:12:10,750 --> 00:12:15,890 these fire is neither good nor bad, but they operate according to the red lights 136 00:12:15,890 --> 00:12:20,990 and they have their own agendas, their capricious, curious, quite petty, in 137 00:12:20,990 --> 00:12:26,000 some ways whimsical, fake kidnap humans who take 138 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:31,100 their fancy and keep them almost as pets. The Tiffin, the Queen of the Scots 139 00:12:31,100 --> 00:12:36,290 fairies, did truly love Thomas the Rimer, whom she took away the made her lover 140 00:12:36,290 --> 00:12:42,510 for seven years. Various live for many hundreds of years. Unlike the humans, 141 00:12:42,510 --> 00:12:47,600 and when these get elderly, they kill them off or return them rather dazed and unhappy to the 142 00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:52,850 human world. Kingdoms of Elfin encompasses 143 00:12:52,850 --> 00:12:57,890 a good many fairy courts. There's the ancient Scottish courts, the fashionable, 144 00:12:57,890 --> 00:13:03,380 luxurious and highly courtly French courts of Boselli on. 145 00:13:03,380 --> 00:13:08,510 This is a place of great ceremony and very strictly enforced hierarchies. It's 146 00:13:08,510 --> 00:13:13,910 rather like the court of Louis, the 14th of FXI, Louis the Sun King, 147 00:13:13,910 --> 00:13:19,120 except that here they keep werewolves instead of hunting hands. There's 148 00:13:19,120 --> 00:13:24,250 also a rather impoverished Welsh court, a Scandinavian court with absolutely 149 00:13:24,250 --> 00:13:29,560 terrible food, where an ambassador from Posole Omed is sent and has a rather strange 150 00:13:29,560 --> 00:13:34,930 but not entirely pleasant time. And the Persian courts to 151 00:13:34,930 --> 00:13:40,390 the stories abusively written with vivid descriptions and a wry humour. 152 00:13:40,390 --> 00:13:45,520 Yet somehow they're unsettling for the fairies, both so like and yet 153 00:13:45,520 --> 00:13:50,870 not like us. It's hard to call them satirical, yet the view 154 00:13:50,870 --> 00:13:55,910 that they take of hierarchies of self centredness and small mindedness is 155 00:13:55,910 --> 00:14:01,400 often one that does map onto the human world. If you've read Susanna 156 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:07,100 Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, you may recognise many of the fairy traits 157 00:14:07,100 --> 00:14:12,680 in her. Gentlemen, with the Thistletown hair from that book, Susanna Clock. 158 00:14:12,680 --> 00:14:18,050 So my friend Terry Wendling tells me he's a great fan of Sylvia Townsend Warner. 159 00:14:18,050 --> 00:14:23,600 And her version derives in part from this world as imagined by Townsend 160 00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:29,550 Warner, as well as the traditional fairy lore that they both share. 161 00:14:29,550 --> 00:14:34,810 Elf inor and weasel drawer's likely on the Suffolk folk tale of the green 162 00:14:34,810 --> 00:14:39,850 children. Or is it really a focus? Well, it's hard to say. It's a story that's 163 00:14:39,850 --> 00:14:44,980 found in two late 12th, early 13th century mediaeval chroniclers who 164 00:14:44,980 --> 00:14:50,080 both independently tell a story about a boy and the girl, absolutely 165 00:14:50,080 --> 00:14:55,090 bright green, who were found at the edge of a field. And people are harvesting in the 166 00:14:55,090 --> 00:15:00,610 Suffolk village of Wolf Pitt. The boy and girl come, they say, from a land underground 167 00:15:00,610 --> 00:15:05,770 where there's no sun or moon, but just the kind of twilight. And they've been summoned by 168 00:15:05,770 --> 00:15:10,810 bells to the land of the humans. If you're interested 169 00:15:10,810 --> 00:15:15,980 in these children, there's more about them in the Modern Fairies podcast series in 170 00:15:15,980 --> 00:15:21,210 Episode four, which you can hear from this site. But back 171 00:15:21,210 --> 00:15:26,910 to this story, Alfano is from the Dutch ferry courts at Zel. 172 00:15:26,910 --> 00:15:32,160 And he's on his way to England bearing a letter from the ferry queen. That to be delivered to. 173 00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:37,470 Well, who knows where? He has no idea what's in the letter and when it gets lost. Of course, he's not 174 00:15:37,470 --> 00:15:42,660 terribly concerned about it. The ship runs into a violent storm 175 00:15:42,660 --> 00:15:47,790 and it sinks with all onboard drowned. Except, of course, for Alfano, who can 176 00:15:47,790 --> 00:15:53,010 make use of his wings to rescue himself. He takes off from the mast and he's blown along 177 00:15:53,010 --> 00:15:58,010 by ferocious gale. And finally arrives on 178 00:15:58,010 --> 00:16:03,350 the shore in Suffolk. And there he's rescued or captured. 179 00:16:03,350 --> 00:16:08,900 It depends on your point of view. By Martha Blackburn. Marsha Blackburn 180 00:16:08,900 --> 00:16:14,450 is a herbalist and the alchemist, a fortune teller, 181 00:16:14,450 --> 00:16:19,550 a phoney manipulator of the supernatural. And he's very 182 00:16:19,550 --> 00:16:24,760 pleased to find a fairy whom he can make into his apprentice 183 00:16:24,760 --> 00:16:29,840 and his capacity for working invisibly and his knowledge about herbs and various other things 184 00:16:29,840 --> 00:16:35,070 comes in useful. So must the Blackburne and Elford or more 185 00:16:35,070 --> 00:16:40,350 or less go into business together, though, since he's only an apprentice elfin or gets his food, 186 00:16:40,350 --> 00:16:45,660 lodging and clothing and not very much else. Out gathering 187 00:16:45,660 --> 00:16:50,790 herbs one day, Elfin meets Wiesel, who is green 188 00:16:50,790 --> 00:16:56,250 and beautiful and rather savage in her ways. She's very much a child nature. 189 00:16:56,250 --> 00:17:01,330 She's one of the local Suffolk fairies, or so it seems. And she lives in the 190 00:17:01,330 --> 00:17:06,440 land under the hill. She's fond of eating things raw. 191 00:17:06,440 --> 00:17:11,930 She likes acorns and flowers and nuts. But she also scoffs than a handful of minnows for breakfast 192 00:17:11,930 --> 00:17:17,070 crunching them up. Ethanol doesn't care for that sort of thing. But 193 00:17:17,070 --> 00:17:22,470 nevertheless, they become lovers and. It's a real passion 194 00:17:22,470 --> 00:17:27,540 between them. But when they discover that Master Blackburn is planning to 195 00:17:27,540 --> 00:17:33,390 sell them in London, they decide the famous flea. And what happens next 196 00:17:33,390 --> 00:17:38,710 is related in the next slide. Having discovered the dust, 197 00:17:38,710 --> 00:17:43,710 sadly, plots of the Blackburne to sell them in London as a fairy pair 198 00:17:43,710 --> 00:17:50,920 in a kind of freak show, the two lovers decide that they're better off fleeing. 199 00:17:50,920 --> 00:17:56,000 And they take to the road. This is not 200 00:17:56,000 --> 00:18:01,900 easy, however. They don't have many options, elfin all. 201 00:18:01,900 --> 00:18:07,000 Cannot go and live with weasel's relations because the people under the Hill 202 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:12,190 are just as fierce as her. And they would murder him. Also, she says they would tear 203 00:18:12,190 --> 00:18:17,440 him to pieces because he isn't green. Alfano himself 204 00:18:17,440 --> 00:18:22,840 realises that he can scarcely take Green Wiesel with her savage ways 205 00:18:22,840 --> 00:18:27,880 back to his civilised and sophisticated court in say she 206 00:18:27,880 --> 00:18:33,910 wouldn't be torn into pieces, but they would reject her because of her green colouring. 207 00:18:33,910 --> 00:18:39,170 The two managed to make a kind of living in the picaresque adventure around 208 00:18:39,170 --> 00:18:44,360 parts of suffered. And they venture into Norfolk indeed and integrate Yarmouth. 209 00:18:44,360 --> 00:18:49,370 Often all can do some labouring work and he soon becomes suntanned. And they gather 210 00:18:49,370 --> 00:18:54,470 little bits of money that way. Wiesel just draws attention because of her 211 00:18:54,470 --> 00:18:59,510 grimness, and she mostly has to hide. But she is, of course, quite good at sealing 212 00:18:59,510 --> 00:19:04,920 and they live a little by pickpocketing as well. 213 00:19:04,920 --> 00:19:10,050 Winter is coming, however, and sleeping in ditches and eating the food that they can 214 00:19:10,050 --> 00:19:15,300 scavenge from the hedgerows is losing its romance and staying in the little 215 00:19:15,300 --> 00:19:20,310 village. They discover that they can take refuge in the church where they realise 216 00:19:20,310 --> 00:19:25,650 people will only come once a week, apparently, and where they can be safe 217 00:19:25,650 --> 00:19:30,960 and sheltered. So they break into the church and they even find some foods, 218 00:19:30,960 --> 00:19:36,100 they drink the communion wine and they divide the communion wafers. 219 00:19:36,100 --> 00:19:41,360 And then a horribly surprised by the arrival of the cleaning ladies who come with their flower 220 00:19:41,360 --> 00:19:46,820 rota already for the upcoming Christmas feast. The two fairies 221 00:19:46,820 --> 00:19:51,920 retreat up the spiral staircase out of the way, the cleaning lady's higher and higher 222 00:19:51,920 --> 00:19:57,660 and higher until they find themselves in the bell loft. This looks warm, 223 00:19:57,660 --> 00:20:03,150 comfortable and safe, and they settled down there to go to sleep. But 224 00:20:03,150 --> 00:20:08,220 it's Christmas Eve and the bells are rung and drum and drum over and 225 00:20:08,220 --> 00:20:14,500 over again by the bell ringers of the village. And this kills the two fairies. 226 00:20:14,500 --> 00:20:19,630 Poor weasel goes first. An elephant all laments over her body 227 00:20:19,630 --> 00:20:24,770 and dies, too. Nobody discovers them because nobody goes up into the bell 228 00:20:24,770 --> 00:20:29,800 loft until the spring comes and then they're buried 229 00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:36,090 in the same grave. It's a kind of romance. A kind of picaresque. 230 00:20:36,090 --> 00:20:41,110 But the story in the sense with no particular moral. So 231 00:20:41,110 --> 00:20:47,270 I think we can read quite a lot of the story of elfin and weasel. 232 00:20:47,270 --> 00:20:52,370 Ferries like humans make snap judgements about people because of the colour of 233 00:20:52,370 --> 00:20:57,410 their skin or because of their education. They're like human doomed lovers like 234 00:20:57,410 --> 00:21:02,480 Romeo and Juliet, who can't find a place where they can be together. They 235 00:21:02,480 --> 00:21:08,390 struggle to survive. And in the end, their encounter with organised religion 236 00:21:08,390 --> 00:21:13,760 kills them. I hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit about Sylvia Times 237 00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:19,000 and Warner and her writing from this short introduction. She's 238 00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:24,040 become increasingly of interest over the last few years. And now there's quite a 239 00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:29,320 lot out about her in the form of YouTube videos, Wikipedia pages 240 00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:34,380 and various other kinds of resources. I'd recommend that you thought 241 00:21:34,380 --> 00:21:39,660 with Lolly Willows. If you want to find out more about her fantasy writing and plunge yourself 242 00:21:39,660 --> 00:21:45,990 into that extraordinary world and get to know Tamsin Warner's particular 243 00:21:45,990 --> 00:21:51,800 quirky tone of voice. And then there are all the other novels to explore. 244 00:21:51,800 --> 00:21:57,750 But at the individual, find Kingdoms of Alphin. A strange, 245 00:21:57,750 --> 00:22:05,080 disturbing and yet in many places, very funny read indeed. 246 00:22:05,080 --> 00:22:10,540 Fantasy is. A matter of building new worlds 247 00:22:10,540 --> 00:22:16,090 for people to explore. It takes us away from our everyday reality. 248 00:22:16,090 --> 00:22:21,310 But at the same time, fantasy is always reaching out back into our own world, telling 249 00:22:21,310 --> 00:22:26,430 us things about this world that perhaps we don't recognise unless 250 00:22:26,430 --> 00:22:31,760 it's transposed onto a new plane set in a new light. Turns mourners 251 00:22:31,760 --> 00:22:37,130 worked, particularly in Kingdoms of Alphin, does this brilliantly, and I hope you'll enjoy 252 00:22:37,130 --> 00:22:42,180 reading some more of her extraordinary stories. Thank you for listening. 253 00:22:42,180 --> 00:22:44,760 Goodbye.