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The Circle of Shadows: Dark Academia with Marisa Linton · Mythmakers

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Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for fantasy. My name is Julia Golding.
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Now today we have something of a first because one of our students, though of course he
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was already a very good writer before but she came on our course and since then she's
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gone on to be published. So it's a big MythMakers welcome to Marisa Dinton. So welcome to MythMakers.
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Hi, hello everybody and hi Julia. Thank you for inviting me. Lovely to be here.
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So Marisa you have two books out or one book out and one about to be out. So the binding spell
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is a YA novel which came out with the publisher Chickenhouse a while ago but shortly to come out in
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is it October? October? Yeah. The big big month for books is The Circle of Shadows which is
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an adult book. Who's the publisher of that one? The Circle of Shadows is Hodderscape so it's an
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imprint of Hodder and Stoughton. Ah, it might be interesting to ask that thing about I do this
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why you work with more than one publisher but we'll come to that maybe later on. But first of all
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tell us a little bit about yourself. I believe you're a teacher or an academic I should say
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that's your background but before you became your eminent doctorhood what was the young Marisa doing
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as a reader and a writer? How did it all begin? When I was small. But if you cast your mind back
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what were your the first novels particularly fantasy ones that led you into a love of reading and
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writing? That's an easy one. The first proper book I ever read I mean the first book that wasn't
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a picture book like this is Janet this is John. Where's the line in which in the wardrobe?
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Ah, yes. Ah, that would do it. It's a great one to pick.
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And so yeah that totally fell in love with it. In fact my sister I had a sister as much
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much older than me so she could obviously read very well and she read me the first page of it.
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I can still remember we were sitting out in the garden and she read me the first page and then
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she got bored. She wouldn't read anymore. She just wanted off as big sisters do and I begged her
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but she wouldn't and so I picked it up and I can still remember piecing the words together
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and what that felt like. At first really really difficult but I so wanted to find out what happened.
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I remember the Pauline Bane's illustrations. No I got a picture of the beaver. I didn't know
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what a beaver was. I mean it was really quite small. Never encountered them anywhere,
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in fiction anyway and yeah I just loved it. Just absolutely loved it. I fell in love with an
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Arnie books from from that moment on and was reading and there was no stopping me really after that.
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I read and I read so many things but one of the other kind of the big thing was Tolkien.
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It's Tolkien. And Tolkien also I owed to that was my old brother. That was when I was eight.
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This is ridiculous. There was not enough to do when I was 1970 or something.
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Where was even earlier than that?
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Sixties. Nearly the 1970s almost. I was eight years old and I think I'd already read,
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I must have already read the Hobbit and I said is there anything more like this? And she said
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well he's Lord of the Rings books you know there are a bit and we had to get the matter of the library
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those are the days. So yeah I was eight years old and I read Lord of the Rings.
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And we had to wait quite a long time because Return of the King was out.
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So we had to wait for it to come in. When I said I read them I skipped over some of the
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elf stuff. I could remember that. I mean some of it is very hard even for a broccotious
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eight year old but not a lot else to do. I skipped over some of that but I really wanted again
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to get to the end of the story and that was a huge driving force. No films, no of course not
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nothing. If you want nobody would read it to me of course. If you want to know what happens
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for me stories all about that you've got to want to know what happens. You have to read and
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you have to force yourself. So eight I read all through it and particularly loved the Frodo
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Sam thing. Sam became my first book hero. And always loved him. You know the quiet one
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the sound. He got things done. Yeah he got things done. He stuck it out and that just totally
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turned my brain. Well you're picking up. I think it's really interesting because you're talking
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about being lured into being a prococious reader by not being read to. So I mean people
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listening to this. We advise you to read to your kids. I mean please do please do. But
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that lure of story means that you have to make yourself sort of reach higher than you might do
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otherwise. So I also read Lord The Rings for myself when I was about 11 a bit older than you
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because my family it wasn't part of their culture. We wasn't the thing that we had in the house.
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Whereas my husband it was like a tradition that in the winter his dad would gather the boys
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around and read it to them which sounds lovely but it does mean they first got it read to them in a
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very they didn't have to make an effort it was it was there for them. So it's it's interesting how
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all my kids got it read to them as well. So I wonder if actually the slightly harder route
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that we both took is actually quite good for you in terms of making you stretch and really want
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it more than otherwise. Yeah it's forbidden through or something that you feel like I've got
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for yourself. But I mean I wouldn't say well don't read to your kids. No do. Please read to your kids.
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Please do. I think the most important thing you can do is regard to your kids is throw away their
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mobile phones but that's a whole. Yeah my my kids were I think I missed that bullet by a fraction
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in that we had beginning of smartphones but not like massive social media so they escaped.
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Now as a whole other myth makers isn't it. Anyway um so we're talking about you and you've gone
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on one route you took in life is that you're a historian in life. Yes. So how did that come about
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so what's your period? A French Revolution. I was for many years I was in university education.
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I'm actually professor of history. Oh not a doctor. What are you going to talk to as well?
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Well I wasn't a doctor and yeah now professor but um but that was a whole life stage that went on
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for a long time and uh how I got into that well I think I've discovered when I was older in my 20s
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I discovered politics and the meaning of things and why the past matches and became an average
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reader of history books and people like EP Thompson and making of the English working class and then
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I read some books about the French Revolution and I don't know if you listeners would know about
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that stuff but people like Norman Hampson and just again fell in love with the subject. I'm a
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sort of I'm a bit of an obsessive. If I love something I will keep going. If I don't love it
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I will find something else to do. So that was my career of many years. I was um
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talked for many 30 years and wrote books but they were history books. So if you...
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Now I mean there is method to my madness here because the segue is that your blend of um
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your what how you're writing your fantasy books is it's historical fantasy very firmly
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situated in a particular period um sorry it seems a very happy marriage so I've noticed that your
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latest book The Circle of Shadows is not a hit not set during the French Revolution. We're talking
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Edwardian. So why don't you tell us about The Circle of Shadows? Well I never wanted to write a
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fictional book about the French Revolution because I spent my entire career trying to write
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the truth about it if you can never get it the truth which is another sort of question. As
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as an historian you're you can't go beyond your sources that's it's a discipline what a historian
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does so I wanted to write a truth and so far as I could discover it so that's great and I'm
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you know please I did that and that was good but then there was a part of me that wasn't fulfilled
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by that and that's the part that loved fiction and the idea of making up stories
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and all those years that I was a historian and I did make up stories but I didn't have the courage
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to to try and put them out there in the world so I wrote in fact even before I wrote The Circle of
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Shadows I wrote The Binding Spell it was called The Puka King then it's about a kind of goblin
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king I do I wrote that first and I started that when my children was small and I told them
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this sort of fantasy story and then I wrote it down and then when I stopped being a professional
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historian then I turned into fiction so that was that but I also loved the Edwardian era never
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wrote about it as a historian just an enthusiastic interested person who who found out a bit so that's
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where Circle of Shadows came from and it was fine sorry for our listeners can you define who many
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of them are in America can you find what the A-Bordian period is because it's quite a little
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bejewed little short period as a mystery compared to Victorian era for example well we can
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we can stretch a bit and say late Victorian so that's 1890s okay so that takes in Dracula
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Brahm Stoker and H.T. Wells and H.T. Wells the Edwardian era strictly speaking okay
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down to Navi folks the Edwardian era starts over the death of Queen Victoria and Edward the
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seventh coming to the throne since 1900 goes on to the first world war 1914 but yeah it doesn't
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have to be it it starts in my mind a little bit earlier than that but it does end in 1914 because
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everything changed in 1914 that's when we get obviously modern warfare and terrible terrible
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things happening which are interesting to write about and know about but it didn't fit my interest
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in fiction there's a reason why I really love the Edwardian period yeah I also think that Edwardian
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is partly defined by transport as well because it's motorcars beginning of motorcars beginning of flight
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and bicycles and bicycles were massive for women I've got some family photos of some I suppose
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they must be my great great aunt or something but they've all got lots and lots of photographs of
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them looking in their culots like divided skirts cycling around the countryside and suddenly
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women didn't have to wait for somebody to saddle a horse or get out the carriage for them but
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they could go off and then you could cycle to a railway station and you know bobs your uncle off
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you go so I think that there's an element of opening up and bigger horizons in the Edwardian period
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tell me if I'm wrong but your book moves around quite a lot as a result of the ease of transport
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so you're not a single like small village at all it's a Oxford there's a place up north where
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there's a seance and so on so there's a much more a sense of a freedom of movement
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for Evie when when Stanley who's the main character yes it's it's a very liberating time in a lot
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of ways there are new inventions yes so yes the origins motorcars that's just before 1900
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they're already quite well established by 1900 we have some people who have had the money the
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means would gotten by one bicycles have been around a bit longer but again they're very liberating
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quite cheap compared with a horse or a certainly a car and there was a sense of increased
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possibilities and excitement I think it's a great time in terms of social history it's a time for
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women to have a greater place in the world and to feel they can do more things and I think
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that's really interesting there was more access to education so working class men also could
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could could widen the horizons it with it's a very optimistic time and a time of progress I'm
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I mean terrible things happen also but it is this time of widening horizons and that really intrigues
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but I also like how it's dealt with in literature because the writing of that kind of period the late
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19th century the early 20th century is a time when many writers that are thinking about the
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possibilities of the psychic realm being a real place dimension that you can get to if you only have
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the technology I mean what are the things they're doing is at the telephone there's another
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invention from this from this sort of time period um phonographs so you can have the music recorded
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and photography is well I mean that that's much earlier but it's becoming much more sophisticated
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by this date so this is a sense that you can map and chart things and find out about things and
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part of that might be the psychic realm so you get institutions like the society for psychic
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or research that's really flourishing in this time period and that's based in London and it's
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somewhere where people can go and and conduct experiments about yes P and feel they can find out
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about this this new world that's just sort of on the borders of their knowledge and lots of people
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who we would think of as very hard-nosed scientists uh by into that physicists uh politicians
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all sorts of scholars that they they all join up these groups and the most famous of them of
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course have it now the most famous probably not at the time he's Conan Doyle who was very committed
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to um belief in spiritualism and the ability to speak to the dead and things like that
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and this where it brings us to your novel because one of the sort of obvious parallels in your book
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is with the world of Sherlock Holmes so why don't we hear a little bit about Evie Wind Stanley
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and her detective career well oh gosh I see her as a kind of female Sherlock Holmes but she's
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a detective into the occult which of course Sherlock Holmes didn't do Sherlock Holmes only did
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rational and yes as you say Arthur Conan Doyle did believe in in the psychic realm more so over time
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and more so after the death of his son but that comes later during the First World War but even in
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the 1890s he's sort of ghost hunting and becomes a member of the ghost club and and is interested in
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such things he's very interested and yet Sherlock Holmes is the most rationalist detective ever
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totally won't hear anything else and even something like the hand of the basketballs that
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Conan Doyle wrote in 1902 you know he wanted to dig its Sherlock Holmes but he came back because
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he needed the money which we all understand came back Sherlock Holmes and and wrote the hand of
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the basketball girls and you think well it might be a supernatural hound Holmes is having none of it
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and of course isn't supernatural so yes that's he sort of has a bit of a cop out there I think with his
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with his spectral hound Evie Wind Stanley I wanted her to be part of that world a bit different
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so she's a woman she's young she's not a fusty chap dusty chap sitting in a gentleman's club sort
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of drinking brandy and smoking cigars she's not from that world at all she's young and progressive
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and interested in new things and I thought I mean I wanted to have a heroine because being female
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and I'm interested in the female perspective and but she's also she's someone who I thought would
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appeal to people now who are reading because because she has quite a modern outlook certainly
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about men and the the limitations that are prescribed for women in her society so she was
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confronting that and I like that about her so I I liked her as a sort of a window into that world
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who who was progressive looking but also of that time and in fact I mean there were
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when we read up on that time there were lots of women doing lots of things in real life
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they they weren't all sort of bound up in corsets and you know just waiting to get married
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that there were there were lots of women who were doing very active very lively things including
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becoming private detectives not for the occult obviously because that's yeah so we're working
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in fantasy so obviously when you come down on the you know which side of the line you come down on
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in the occult is going to be on the fantastical side of it because you're in a fantasy world
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which is quite fascinating but you mentioned Sherlock Holmes but of course at the same time Sherlock
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as Sherlock Conan Doyle's writing what they often call Victorian Gothic here he and people
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like Kipling are quite happy to write a ghost story or something like that so it's perfectly
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possible to do both my favorite Conan Doyle Gothic stories are one about the mummy in Oxford
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not number 52 it's called I think 52 it's absolutely brilliant it's a short story which I would
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love to see adapted as a anyone out there adapt it as a screenplay and sorry Mark Gatius do that
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as he what as a doctor program no no he does the Christmas things I think he did oh did he I must
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mummy you know the mummy that the student where the plot yeah it's great oh well I must
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look that up thank you anyway so but there's some serious sort of real world applications in what
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you're writing about as well which is unfortunately always relevant and particularly relevant at the
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moment considering the very scandals rocking America amongst others and here in the UK which is
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this sort of sexual exploitation that goes alongside secret cabals groups of people so
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Evie's gender is also relevant to what she's looking into so without giving away too much for
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the plot do you want to give us a sense of what it is that she's actually investigating what are
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the stakes who's at threat who's under threat her her father wasn't a seller of occult books and he's
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died in mysterious circumstances before the story begins and then her home is bergled somebody is
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looking for something in her father's study and Evie becomes convinced that there's some kind of occult
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mystery around her father's death and it has to do with this cryptic thing the circle of shadows
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so she starts to investigate and she goes first to North Yorkshire where she is in a grand house
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where she attends a science she goes with her younger sister grace and grace is
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almost I can't give way too much of the plot but grace is vulnerable in some ways to certain things
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that are happening and Evie is very protective of her sister and so she sees her younger sister
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being under threat from men certain men and then from occult forces so she's trying to protect
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her sister she then moves on to Oxford which is where you are of course yeah it is a historical
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and not an entirely accurate Oxford but Oxford is where she goes and she's investigating this
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mystery and she comes across a group of very privileged young Oxford men actually I didn't have to
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make that much of them up I have to say yeah it's it's a bit Bullington Club without without
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so the Bullington Club is an infant well I don't know it so it exists it's like a drinking
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dining club which sort of it's like class-ridden vestige should we got rid of personally think
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anyway it's it's all the worst side of that sort of thing of which we've had prime ministers
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of recent times for long to so I don't usually have to tell too much of the plot but you get a sense
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of she's questing after trying to protect a family member and solve a mystery around her father's death
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this leads me into asking you a question about the way it's being described because we all
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want to be producer book we then handed over to the marketing people and they start putting labels on
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it and one of the ones that you're being given is this genre of dark academia which is partly
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well I mean there's a number of those as the famous ones like Babel dark academia
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um these about the Shannon books and uh what's that other one um the Debra Harkness ones
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those discovery of witches that's it so do you think dark academia is actually a genre
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are I was just wondering when I asked that question to you or is it just a place that we keep going
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back to um does it exist as a persona hand on heart I don't really think so
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yeah certainly when I wrote circle of shadows I hadn't heard of dark academia as a thing I wasn't
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intentionally let's write a dark academia book it wasn't like that at all I wrote a book
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it's dark there are a lot of academics in it and it's set in that kind of old with that sort of
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vibe so if you like old libraries and books grim-wise with with magical knowledge and secret
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societies and groups then yeah if you I think dark academia is helpful as a
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a signpost for people like this kind of thing you might like that so I think it can be useful
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in that sense and if somebody offers me a label and it helps then I'm happy to accept it
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but I see so many books that have been described to this dark academia some of them very
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high brow your great books like you know Jonathan art secret history but that's no way Shable
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Form has had a supernatural book and it's it's very different to some of the other books that
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have put into that category so it can be quite hard I think to know exactly what you should
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fit there what does fit and what doesn't fit I'm very comfortable with the label I mean it is dark
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and it is the sort of people who like scary books on a winter's evening might like it so in that
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sense yes I think that's a really good label I know a bit about academics and they're a person
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that is so that that that has a dark that it was not so yeah I mean some of it does certainly
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feature and having a feminine perspective on all that the perspective of the outsider who's
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trying to investigate something secret in that sense yes absolutely it is that that's what it is
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I guess it's a bit like the school story so the school story can be I know Mallory Tows or
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something you know Blighton but it can also be Harry Potter or you know one of those magical stories
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I suppose it does exist but anyway it just seems as though it's a bit more to do a metadata than
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actually because you're she's not at college herself she's she's a detective so it's really
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mostly a fancy detective story yeah I but I thought so you've this is your second book as we
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mentioned at the beginning and so how is this moved a hot escape about the fact that this is an
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adult book so it rests nicely to have a different publisher with an adult book because chicken
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houses a younger fiction publisher it wasn't it wasn't deliberate just who who who will publish me
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which is how I do it yes if you really want the benefit of my books yeah it wasn't like that
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yeah yeah I mean I've written these books and then turned down but I just about every agent
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and if I have a message for anyone listening who's writing fiction keep going yeah
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and also find your community those are my two messages really because it is very tough
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I wrote as I said I wrote the Puka King that became the binding spell very much in isolation
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got turned down by everybody but then it won this big prize it won the Times Chicken House prize
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and that part of the prize is that they published it so that was done and just did
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research um circle of shadows then got taken on almost immediately afterwards because
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publishers had heard of my success with the with the binding spell long before it was published so I
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um I um actually had two books oh sorry that's that's really exciting everybody who's watching
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this on youtube because I was warned we've been joined by most delightful beautiful
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can she's not very delightful um I might have to move her because sorry I will yeah we will do
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a little pause in the proceeding do pause just a second that's quite funny we might have to keep
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the cat in because it was a very pretty cat even if yeah um so we're talking about moving to
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from writing from what for a YA audience which is very different well very different but it
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has different things that you have in mind when you're doing that to writing the circle of shadows
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for an adult audience are you thinking of this as a series this particular book because
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it's a two book deal oh so this I am writing the sequel as we speak that is why I spend my time
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doing yeah fantastic have you got a title for it it probably won't stay the same though I found
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I have a title but I don't know if they'll yeah that's um so I probably shouldn't yeah no don't
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no yeah people don't realize how little power also to have over their own titles I've had books
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that have been published under one title in one country and in another and a completely
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different title both in English which is very confusing and you worry sometimes that people might
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buy a mistake buy both and find it's the same book but it's not the author's fault it's to do
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with the market you're in yeah so do you enjoy the process of working with an editor and being
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edited because that's one of the privileges of actually doing a professional route to being
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published as opposed to self-publishing something or that kind of route I've loved it yes it's one
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you get an editorial letter do you do you always feel some people feel attacked by it and sort of
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you know clam up and try and defend what they're doing if only you understood how brilliant I am
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or do you actually sort of say right this is my opportunity to make this better the editors I've
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worked with have been brilliant I can imagine what you're saying that if you can imagine a
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circle of stats where somebody wants you to basically shred the book as you've imagined it
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and that would be yes that would be really really hard and you'd have to say at what point do I
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sort of dig my heels in and say this is not my book this is something else I could yes I certainly
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could imagine that scenario happening but it wasn't my experience my experience with both books
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has been really positive in that I felt that both editors for the binding spell and then the
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circle of shadows wanted the best for the book really cared for the book and if you trust the
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editor and they and you feel they're engaged with your your book and your world and your characters
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then you can trust the process and in neither case did they force me to do anything there was no
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kind of get rid of that character oh my god it was it wasn't like that and I think if an editor
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really cares about your book and then get ages with it they can help you see things that you've missed
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so if there are the problems we all have problems it's like sort of technical problems along the
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the way this bit doesn't work so well how do you get these characters from here to here is this
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motivation quite worked out is this backstory working those kinds of things if you trust the
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editor they can help you find the best way up the mountain that's how I see it they can say well
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have you thought of this path and it can be quite a shock when you get the editorial letter because
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you haven't thought about that path you didn't even know that path existed but if they're really
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engaged with it then yeah I would I would listen to what they say really closely if they want
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the best for the book and they they really know what they're talking about and I had that and
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yeah that was that was brilliant and I think both my books are a lot better for that editing
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process yeah yeah I do think I do remember right at the beginning of my career back in
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2004 something like that I had a sort of development deal with a publisher Oxford University Press
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for my first set of fiction fantasy fiction books and I did a rewrite after a sort of big
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edit letter and the editor said to me after that when I saw that you would take an edit that's when
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I decided to give you a contract so it's a really good skill to try and learn to be edited
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it's really important to not feel attacked but to think what they're trying to do is make this
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the best book it can be for a market into which it's going so I never really considered myself
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writing a mortal prose anyway you know so I'm quite happy to be told where I can be improved
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and it's really important to be able to do that so just playing on your sort of interest in
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libraries and academia and the fact that you were a historian I had a little fun question for you
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which was what do you I mean you have grimoires and things like that in in libraries what
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was for you would be a dream discovery as a historian and as a writer in an archive somewhere
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in the body and library or something like that you can have two different things if the
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or maybe the same thing would be what you want to write about is there a missing manuscript
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that historians are hunting for as a historian my work is serious as a historian my work is
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been on the leaders of the French Revolution and there is there aren't that many personal
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documents from the most important time not personal documents so letters personal letters a diary
33:35
oh my goodness from Robert Spierre or Sanjouz or one of these people that would just be heaven
33:41
that would be wonderful because because there's a historian you can't let yourself go beyond the
33:46
sources so they don't if somebody didn't write something down and it didn't happen to have been
33:53
kept by a whole succession of people you will never find it so many documents are burnt or
34:00
just generally got rid of because people were afraid to keep them or didn't see the point of
34:05
keeping them so that there are or they they raised parts of them or rewrote them and then publish
34:12
them and so many things happen so that that kind of that window into someone else's mind that
34:17
I've been researching those that that's that's for me is the gold yeah as a as a writer of fiction
34:27
well I think above all I'm a reader of fiction so the things I would actually like to find
34:34
would be another book by Tolkien yeah you secretly hate only only I can I confess this can I be
34:42
really honest I couldn't get on with the Silmarillion I could not I love Lord of the Rings so much
34:48
so much apart from the fact that not many women in it but I can't tell you how much I loved it
34:54
and still do I would love to find something more of that nature or I also love the golden age of
35:03
detective fiction and those women writers like Agatha Christie Dorothy L says whole cash of
35:08
Agatha Christie books Dorothy L says books I would just sit happily and spend the rest of my life
35:14
reading them till I'd run out of books and probably not need to write because if if you can live in
35:20
someone else's world and it's a wonderful world why would you ever want to do anything else I think
35:25
so so for me that would be my my dream yeah I quite like to find that CS Lewis wrote a story where
35:33
Susan belatedly got to Narnia she's always been a stick to beat him with but I critic since
35:41
and I've got a feeling he probably didn't think too much about it other than thought well I better
35:45
have one of them not get there just as it'll be fair and picked on four old Susan because she
35:50
liked nylon's and lipstick um you grew up yeah yeah I don't yeah I think perhaps if someone had asked
35:59
him what happened to Susan he'd say I will actually later in life I believe in second chances
36:04
anyway so that's what I'd like to find okay and so that would it come to Lucy sorry I know
36:10
people say that how he treated Susan and yes it's appalling by our standards but he wasn't one
36:15
of those writers who didn't have women playing a place I mean there are if you go back you and I
36:21
know many of these writers they didn't really see much point in women at all in their in their books
36:26
but Lucy's the the most important character in their the Narnian stories by by quite a long way
36:31
so he could see that place for a girl and that's probably one of the reasons why I loved the book
36:38
because a six-year-old overall I was but yeah Susan that's a sad disappointment of all his books
36:44
the Narnia books the the last battle is that was the hardest to get on with yeah is it a lot of reasons
36:51
yeah yeah well I agree basically but he also is brilliant on female baddies
36:58
because not only if you've got jadeus the white witch but you've also got the the green witch
37:04
in the silver chair who's a sort of lame air type as a seductress another another version of a
37:11
bad person so yeah and that hideous strength can I just say
37:17
which we got a little little CS Lewis yeah why not people love CS Lewis listening to this so
37:23
yeah loved it loved that yeah and the hideous strength yes that has some issues with it about
37:29
the place of the woman in the home I noticed that the BBC dramatization of it I think
37:34
might was it you who suggested it I think it was yeah and BBC have done a version where they get
37:40
rid of that problematic radio play this is they've got rid of that problematic element which
37:47
was a relief right okay that's what we want to find in a in the Bodleian archive or somewhere
37:55
in your case it might be over in the Sorbonne or or a little forgotten library in some French
38:01
backwater town we always end by thinking where in all the fantasy wells we want to do something
38:08
which relates to the theme of your the guest's book and I thought it would be fun to think of
38:15
the idea of fighting the occult or detecting the occult in like Evie Wind Stanley does but in
38:22
another fantasy world where would be the place that most potential for excitement and adventure
38:30
if you're going to fight occult forces have you got any faves that you'd like to mention
38:38
that's a hard one for me to answer because most of the books that I've read and loved
38:42
on the occult are set in our world but with yeah it can be in our world but I meant the world of an
38:47
author so you know it could be Bram Stoker's world or it could be more Bram Stoker than let's go with him
38:56
yeah that is a good take actually thank you for giving me that very much yeah Dracula brilliant of
39:03
course absolutely brilliant the jewel of the seven stars that's that's a very kind of occult
39:10
book as well by him yeah yeah I've not read that that's let's go on the reading list in Egyptian one yeah
39:17
I mean it's it's flawed it's flawed don't read the layer of the white worm no
39:23
okay I'm fortunate there are some books that you cannot read now without without being so
39:30
oh my god did they really say that yeah there are some things and that was it it's the it's the
39:35
racism actually yeah don't go don't go there but yeah the layer of the white worm is it's a brilliant
39:43
one and I just I love those worlds where we seem to be in this world and everything is all very
39:48
cozy and understood but just outside just beyond there are these dark occult forces um
39:54
don't as weekly the devil rides out there's another one don't know if you want to spend time in
39:59
no no but it's about potential for story really um I think for me I was thinking about this and
40:05
actually um staying with the inklings that we were talking about I think that Charles Williams
40:11
has a wonderful take on the occult so the greater trumps um that's that's wonderful and the
40:21
place of the lion and um I mean there's lots and lots of them the one about the hunt for the
40:30
holy grail the title of it is escaping me at the moment um that what I really like about that is
40:39
where you get books that invest some object with great power it everyone tends to be really sort of
40:47
focused around it like in um well the grail itself in the sort of Arthurian legends it becomes
40:57
this great thing everyone sort of looking for there's a character of an archdeacon in that in
41:03
this Charles Williams version where he basically says it doesn't matter if it's a grail or not
41:09
because faith isn't about a cup the fact whether or not it held Jesus his blood doesn't matter
41:17
it's the faith of the person that matters so he's quite ready to hand it over to the bad guys
41:21
because he thinks well it's that isn't where faith resides and I love that turning around of
41:27
saying these objects are only invested with this by the people who sort of you know it's their
41:36
faith that activates them so Charles Williams I think is a really fascinating um place to fight
41:41
the occult so I'd love to know so much more about the inklings you know well there's a great
41:47
biography about um Charles Williams himself by Greville Lindock which is because he's a bizarre figure
41:54
he was a wizard for the rose accrucians that he believed in magic oh very occult yeah really
42:01
occult but a kind of white magic or whatever one calls that benign um and the fact that he was
42:09
meeting regularly with bluff CS Lewis and catholic Tolkien is fascinating he says
42:17
isn't it yeah well on that thought sorry wrap things up we could obviously you know we could
42:22
wander off into Charles Williams by ways um an interesting very interesting writer thank you
42:29
Melissa so just to reiterate the circle of the shadows is out in October 2025 so if you're
42:36
listening to this later on it might well already be out so do look out for that by hot escape
42:43
and thank you for joining us thank you oh thanks very much I've enjoyed it
42:57
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