by Phil Rickman
If you want a good idea of where Lionel Darvill is coming from, you should read the profoundly resonant Meadowland, The Private Life of an English Field, by John Lewis-Stempel, and its sequel The Running Hare. I doubt any books have better caught the threatened magic of the Herefordshire border countryside.
Gurdjieff’s teachings are, of course, still circulating widely. Occasionally given the fuel of publicity when someone famous, like Kate Bush, embraces them. And before her, other experimental musicians like Robert Fripp and of course Arthur Brown, the God of Hellfire.
It’s also a century since four morris men, members of the demonstration team of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, founded five years earlier by Cecil Sharp, died at the Somme.
Also by Phil Rickman
THE MERRILY WATKINS SERIES
The Wine of Angels
Midwinter of the Spirit
A Crown of Lights
The Cure of Souls
The Lamp of the Wicked
The Prayer of the Night Shepherd
The Smile of a Ghost
The Remains of an Altar
The Fabric of Sin
To Dream of the Dead
The Secrets of Pain
The Magus of Hay
Friends of the Dusk
THE JOHN DEE PAPERS
The Bones of Avalon
The Heresy of Dr Dee
OTHER TITLES
Candlenight
Curfew
The Man in the Moss
December
The Chalice
Night After Night
The Cold Calling
Mean Spirit
OTHER TITLES
The House of Susan Lulham
Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2017 by Corvus,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Phil Rickman, 2017
The moral right of Phil Rickman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 78239 697 0
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 699 4
Printed in Great Britain.
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
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