Why this journey and why ask you to accompany me? Well it would be easier to start with why Fantasy? Back in the day, when I was at lower school (that’s ages 5 – 9) I used to gorge on historical non-fiction from the school library and the scholastic book catalogue. Stories of Rome, Vikings and Crusaders entertained me on many an evening. My heroes at the time were, Caesar, Scipio, Leif Erikson and Richard Coeur de Lion. And then there were the weird ones. Books covering UFOs, mysteries, Loch Ness, myths and legends. Greek gods, Norse gods and Roman gods were my weekend reads. I am sure you can see where this was going. But at the time, I couldn’t – Not until my Form 6 teacher read Alan Garner’s ‘The weirdstone of Brisingamen’ to us.

From the intro I was spellbound (did you see what I did there?). Cadelin Silverbrow keeping watch over the sleeping knights in Fundindelve, ready to waken and save the land. The characters were both fantastic and believable, as believable as my historical heroes. And the main protagonists; Colin and Susan, were just like me – well, Colin was, Susan was slightly different. I felt I was being sucked into the world that Garner had woven, just as Colin and Susan were drawn into the mystical battle between Cadellin and his allies and the forces of the Morrigon. It felt to me that Garner’s world could have been under any hill, in any wood or anywhere. But after a while I came to realise that it wasn’t that.  The world of Cadellin and Fundindelve, like so many others in the Fantasy genre, can be found at the turn of a page.

Since then countless other books took pride of place on my shelves – Howard, Burroughs, Leiber, Le Guin, Harrison, Tolkien, Eddings, Feist et al. All were fantastical worlds to be lost in, worlds to replace the humdrum of daily life. But all had the ability to be perceived as more realistic than a world where nurses are paid a pittance whilst sports and entertainment starts are paid millions, reality TV stars can be elected as presidents, and the world’s most powerful tool is used to watch videos of people falling over (which I will admit, can be quite funny).

As a footnote to The Weirdstone, some thirty odd years later, I named a character in an online RPG as Brisingamen in homage to the book. I met some fantastic people as Brisingamen, and after a few years I went to visit a great couple only to found myself driving past Alderley Edge a few miles outside their town of Macclesfield, the scene of the final cataclysmic battle in the book. It was as if the circle was complete.

Not really a circle – more an ouroboros.