WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF WHITBOURN

Whatever Next ? [ Downs Lord Triptych / The Two Confessions / Amy-Faith & the Stronghold]

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Interview

A Hymn to Merrily

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As a historian...

Favourite links

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Favourite links

Much as I hate to see you go, if you must leave perhaps you would like to visit some of my favourite diversions.

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Kirsty Mcgee Website of the officially very wonderful indeed, 'folk-noir' singer-songwriter ( and guitar maker ), Kirsty Mcgee. Benevolent Providence directed a wander I presumptuously assumed to be random to her first album in the Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly in Babylon. Ever since, in the grip of a powerful compulsion which I wish to share, I've acquired her two succeeding CDs, a rarity early demo EP, and indeed the high pleasure of meeting the lady herself at several gigs. Awaiting your pleasure and available via Ms Mcgee's website are:

Honeysuckle. Fellside Recordings Ltd. 2002.
Frost. Park Records. 2004
Birds. Park Records. 2005.

All unreservedly recommended.

The Haunted Library.
See elsewhere on this site for a tribute to Rosemary Pardoe, Chief Librarian at the Haunted Library.

Ash-Tree Press
Ghost Story Society
Web-sites associated with Christopher and Barbara Roden, an Anglo-Canadian couple (and friends of mine) who seem to have access to thirty-six hour days wherein to achieve all the things they do. Collectively, a mighty buttress of the continuing English Ghost-story tradition.

British Lawnmower museum
A personal obsession. The quest for the perfect push-mower has proved longer and more fascinating than many a fantasy series.

CEP. The Campaign for an English Parliament
Speaks for itself - though, alas, not loudly enough (yet)

CPGB. The Communist Party of Great Britain
As CAMRA are to beer, so the CPGB (formerly 'The Leninist faction of the CPGB') are to real, red, communism - not the reconciled-to-dying-under-capitalism Guardian-reading polytechnic pinkery of all the other brands. 'Jack Conrad', their leading light, writes fairly well - and fairly and well, and, if you strictly restrict yourself to the bubble-universe of the web-site and 'Weekly Worker' journal, then for whole seconds at a time, it almost makes sense. All too soon though, the elf-spell fades and reality elbows back in. When the CPGB goes (via the Grim Reaper and incurable tetchy factionalism ?) a major chapter of history will have closed. Meanwhile, in the absence of a decent Jacobite site [ * see below ], I recommend a browse within the CPGB site.

[ * 31/08/03 - said site now found. See: http://www.jacobite.ca - But don't let that deter you from continuing to visit Uncle Jack Conrad ( or whatever he's calling himself this week ) and his CPGB chums.

See also the splendid House of Bourbon legitimist site at: http://www.realcasadiborbone.it/uk/presentazione/index.htm

So okay, in true regal style they may have ignored my e-mails, but I still like them.

Ða Engliscan Gesithas/'The English Companions'.
'A organisation formed in response to the 1966 public 'celebrations' (!) of the Norman victory at Hastings. Its aim is:

'to bring together all those with a common interest in the manifold aspects of the Old English period, its language, culture and traditions, thus to create a common fund of information and enthusiasm and to breathe a new life into our native language, literature and art. To promote a wider interest in, knowledge of and affection for all aspects of early English culture and tradition.'

Earthlight Publishers
In memoriam.

Juliet Mckenna
Ben Jeapes
Julia and Ben are two young guns on the British SF and Fantasy scene, and pens (or keyboards) to watch. Which is not to mention ( save here ) James Stoddard, the Texan ( but uncannily English in style ) author of 'The High House' and now 'The False House', whose website is at http://www.sff.net/people/james-stoddard/JSWebsite/Homex.html

Stoddard has created an admix of Narnia-meets-Gormenghast, only - dare I say it - better !

http://www.tekumel.com/
http://www.weirdrealm.com/tekumel/
Two sites devoted to the life-work of Professor M.A.R. (Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman) Barker, (to whom I dedicated my third book, To Build Jerusalem), an American academic and linguist, who has devoted his life to the painstaking realisation of his fantasy world 'Tekumel' and 'The Empire of the Petal Throne'. Decades-spanning creativity of high beauty and strangeness which I cannot recommend too highly. Sheer genius.

British Fantasy Society
Rosemary Pardoe was a co-founder of this worthy body. A mighty stronghold against the Null.

And finally:

'Islam is in fact the last refuge for those conservative western intellectuals who wish it were true that the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution, in short the 'modern world'. had never come about. Islam is, indeed, the only remaining mental space in which these events have not yet happened' Ibn al-Rawandi'

From that prelapsarian world comes the home of Mr and Mrs Bewley ( a convert or 'revert', as he would prefer) to Islam of many years standing, as well as senior figure in the Norwich Islamic Commune wherein Richard and Linda Thompson dwelt (for a while). Allah has granted him a beautiful prose style of almost Orwellian crystal-clarity and passion. There is also anger there, true, but largely justified anger I feel. From this site and its essays emanates the spectral perfume of blooms from that English garden evoked by Gibbon, wherein, thanks to a change in the result of the Battle of Tours (732 A.D.):

'the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet'

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