While you will of course be asking Santa for copies of Welcome to Mars and Medical London this Winter, you might also consider picking up these other items that have shown up at SAP HQ of late – Albion Dreaming by Andy Roberts and two collections of supernatural horror from author and anthologist Mark Valentine.
SAJ contributor Mark Valentine has curated two wonderful collections of horror gems for the Wordsworth Editions series. As you might expect from one of the gentlemen behind Tartarus Press, both books feature authors obscure and celebrated, old and new. The Werewolf Pack includes amongst others European folk tales, luminous high strangeness from Stenbock, the deadly wit of Saki, and contemporary gothic from Gail Nina Anderson and RB Russell, while The Black Veil makes room for William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen, and lesser known but then popular characters like Allen Upward and Donald Campbell. Both books feature obscure items culled from popular magazines of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras and are introduced with essays by the erudite Mr Valentine. If I have one gripe it’s that neither book’s contents include the authors’ names or the dates of the stories, making navigation difficult, but if that’s the worst I can offer then you really have no choice but to buy them both at a terrifyingly low price of £2.99 each. More please!
Albion Dreaming:
A Popular History of LSD in Britain
by Andy Roberts
Andy is perhaps best known for his studies of folklore and British UFO history but here he turns his attentions to a surprisingly under-explored facet of British popular culture – the history of LSD. I’ll be honest and admit that I haven’t had a chance to dive into this, but from a quick dip it looks thorough and fascinating, covering military experiments at Porton Down, Michael Hollingshead, Operation Julie, the free festival scene etc. I was pleased to see things brought right up to date with mention of the appalling story of Casey Hardison who received a 20-year (!!) sentence in 2004 for manufacturing LSD at his home in Ovingdean. Andy suggests that the absurdly long sentence was as much in recognition of Hardison’s defiantly ideological stance as it was for the lab operation he was running. Andy’s writing is always lively and I look forward to getting properly dosed up with this one.
Buy it at Amazon.