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From: Peter Keane
I just want to pass on my thanks and congratulations to everyone involved in the events last weekend (8-9 October). In particular to Alan Garner but also to everyone else. I left with great memories and mementoes which I will treasure. Thankful.
From: Peter Dunn
The University of Warwick has announced that it is to award an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters to acclaimed Cheshire author Alan Garner.
It is particularly fitting that this honorary degree should be announced in this month as October 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of his first published novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. The book has never been out of print and has been enjoyed by several generations of children.
The full press release can be read on the Warwick University web site.
From: Deborah Shannon
I was 7 years when I bought my copy of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I am 43 now and reading my well thumbed and battered copy to my 9 year old daughter. The book's influence and that of other AG books, such as Red Shift has been significant in my life. As a child I rode to Alderley Edge on bikes with my friend from our home in Cheshire and felt the numinousness of the place - the whole geography speaks of ancient times! It has influenced my love of history and archaeology and when doing my first degree in the 80s wrote my English dissertation - "Myth, time and place in the novels of AG" (unpublished!) I later became an Educational Psychologist and on re-reading the books I now sense the honest way in which AG captures being a child - no wonder he has so captured the imaginations and appealed to several generations of children. I am so glad that now the recognition he deserves is happening.
From: Anne Buck
I vividly remember first reading The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in my first year at junior school back in 1962. I already loved any tales involving mystery, magic and the unexplained but Alan Garner's writing fired my imagination and stimulated my continuing interest in Celtic mythology, British folklore (and later folk music) and local history and legend. As the previous writer remarked, I can never thank Alan Garner enough for all his wonderful books.
From: Sarah Welch
I read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen over forty years ago. It was the book which woke up my imagination and curiosity. I cannot thank Alan Garner enough for the great gift that he gave me when he wrote this book. A gift which has stayed with me, and influenced the way I look at the world all my life.
From: LB - London
It's 40 years since I first met Colin and Susan. Will I ever find out what became of them? Did Susan join the hunt, did she take Colin with her? Did maturity lose the connection to the realm of magic or alienate the pair from the world of men? I want to thank Alan Garner for creating this interest in me that's lasted a lifetime as so many other things have not. Yet, I also want to curse the man for leaving me with such a feeling of expectation, of a story not quite finished and a sadness that the only finality is that I'll never know.
From: Johanna Maitland
I loved, lived and breathed these books. Weirdstone was, without a doubt, my favourite. I dragged my family to the Edge for many weekend walks to see if we could find the locations from the maps. I also famously failed to complete a Venture Scout trip into the mines as a teen - my imagination was running riot and I had to return to daylight!
From: Susan, Didsbury
I just loved The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Moon of Gomrath, made so perfect partly by the Edge being local to my family and mainly for the excellent (and almost believable to a child) story. I originally read my older sister's copies of the books in the early 70s (I will be 47 this Oct) and still feel as strongly moved by the characters, the dialect and the description of the countryside now as I did then. As children, my sister and brothers and I spent many a Sunday crawling into the caves and trying to find the gates of Fundindelve, I now take my daughters there, and although the caves are blocked off, it is always a pleasure stroll and explore the Edge. The clever use of local places and specific landmarks woven into the old tales makes the book so much more than just make believe. What a fantastic writer Alan Garner is.
From: Paul Davies
During the last year at my primary school in Macclesfield our teacher read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen to the class. I was immediately transported to Alderley Edge in my imagination and was captivated by the story, living each moment of Colin's and Susan's adventures. At the weekends and school holidays (when I became old enough) my friends and I took the bus into Alderley and walked up the hill to explore the edge and do our best to find the iron gates. Alderley Edge became our favourite place and we spent many summers there exploring the woods, mines and tunnels, many of which were sealed off.
I cannot think of a better time in my childhood than my time on the Edge and the influence that Alan Garner and his books had on my life gave me a very happy childhood and provided a much needed escape from the most devastating moment in my life when I discovered my father dead. Someone asked me once who I would most like to meet if I was given the opportunity. Without doubt, that person would be Alan Garner. I came close whilst walking the dogs on the edge about three years ago when I bumped into a fellow dog walker who, when I got talking, told me that her husband had actually met Alan once. Unfortunately I lost his contact details and so it never came to pass. I will definitely try to attend the celebrations on Alderley this October and if I am fortunate enough to meet Alan in person, well a very big part of my life will be complete.
Please Alan, write a third book in the series! The Weirdstone and Moon of Gomrath still remain my favourite reads of all time even though I am now 53.
From: Dan Stobbs
Mention of the BBC radio dramatisation of the Weirdstone reminds me that there were actually two different adaptations, and I heard the first as a child of (I guess) around 8 or 9. From memory it was gripping (as most radio drama was then), and when it was redone (in the 1970s?) I listened again, and may even have taped it if it was after 1975 when I had my first cassette recorder. One thing I particularly recall about the first was that 'Cadellin' was pronounced with the appropriate Welsh sounding of the 'll': the 'hissed Cymric lateral' as Anthony Burgess identifies it - this approximates to the 'tl' in the word 'antler' - and the child actors playing Colin and Susan did so beautifully.
In the later dramatisation, 'Cadellin' was pronounced in a very Mancunian way particularly by the actor playing Colin, which rather spoilt it for me I'm afraid! I should certainly love to hear both of these again, if the BBC still has them. It would also be fascinating to see again the BBC's television production of Red Shift. I actually have an audio tape of this somewhere, taken from the headphone socket of my portable TV, since this was before the home VCR.
I have read all the Garner books many times and they never fail to grip me in their exquisite and restrained use of language and the sheer craft of their construction, and I still have the paperback of Red Shift that Alan Garner signed for me at a talk he gave in a Manchester bookshop. What a marvellous collection of work he has produced over the years, exploring and retelling potent myths. Truly he is one of Britain's literary treasures.
Note from webmaster: A recording by Philip Madoc is available on Naxos Audio Books (www.naxos.com) and the 1995 Robert Powell version is available in libraries on cassette. The BBC recordings are available from some websites which are not endorsed by this website.
From: Lydia
Having just read the events that have been planned for this year I am so sad that I can attend none of them. I now live on the other side of the world. However, I will be there in spirit. My very best wishes to Alan Garner on these special days.
From: Elizabeth Horrocks
I have long been a fan of Alan Garner (I bought my copy of the Weirdstone on honeymoon!) Once he came to speak at a children's books course I was running, and my daughters attended Alderley Edge Primary School, as he did before them.
From: Jane Weir
I am so pleased that I found out today that it is the Weirdstone's 50th anniversary. It is the first book that I can remember reading excitedly as a child - hunched up inside a tower of pallet sides - the world excluded - in the small orchard of ancient, gnarled apple trees in which my parents were building our house - and I still have all of Alan's books in my bookcase today.
The Weirdstone and Alan's other works also awakened a sense of place and time in me - as so many of your other readers have claimed. I can never view the landscape around me without wondering about those whose feet have trodden it before me. Time is nothing and everything. My interest in archaeology was sparked by the Weirdstone and having enjoyed working on the fabulous Roman Middlewich Project I am also the secretary for the Ermine Street Guard - the best Roman re-enactment and Roman military experimental archaeology society in the UK!
From: Lydia Sage
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Well, what can I say. I first read this nearly 50 years ago now when I was 10 years old. I still have the book on my bookshelf here. I absolutely loved it, no doubt about it. I even wrote to the publishers to tell them how much I had enjoyed it too. Unfortunately I never did hear back. However, my affection for this book has never waned. I have read all of Alan Garner's books but this one will always have a special place in my reading heart.
I particularly remember the part where Colin and Susan go underground and have to swim through a tunnel holding their breath. How did they do it? How terrifying. If I had been with them this would have been my greatest challenge.
So, thank you to Alan Garner for giving me the gift of this magical book.....
From: Sue in Northwich
First read at school, I really got fired up when I read The Moon of Gomrath, borrowed from Abergele library on a rainy 1970's caravan holiday. It helped that I was a Susan and lived about 10 miles from The Edge.
All my friends had Donny Osmond and David Soul on their bedroom walls. I had Alan Garner's picture. I had a scrapbook, mostly Manchester Evening News and Cheshire Life articles. I had Griselda Garner's Factfile. I turned up at his house! I was obsessed of both books and Mr Garner in the way only a schoolgirl can be.
My Mother blames him for me being pagan, I did get asked to leave our Methodist Sunday School as they didn't think that 'Morrigan' was a good career choice for a 12 year old (they were quite tactful about it, they didn't think I was 'getting anything from Sunday School anymore'). I drew the characters, I walked The Edge, I even played The Morrigan in a musical production.
A brilliant wordsmith, Alan Garner has gone on to write possibly greater things, but, in my heart, the power of his first two books never diminishes.
From: Nick Van der Graaf
I'm amazed to hear this is the 50th anniversary of this wonderful book. It is most fitting that this anniversary should be so enthusiastically celebrated.
Growing up I was a real little science bug. I wandered the fields and forests of Pickering, Ontario where I lived for a few years as a child (sadly, nature in that area has been entirely subsumed by the explosive growth of suburbia) identifying species and rocks etc., and looking at things through a microscope.
My parents gave me The Weirdstone of Brisingamen when I was about 8 or 9. I'd never read any fantasy before (aside from the usual childhood fairytales) and I just loved it! And it really changed my relationship with nature - when I walked through forests after that I was still interested in zoology and biology etc., but the area was now subtly transformed by magic and possibility. I also now thought about who might have gone there before me, which is a tremendously exciting feeling. That sense is still with me today, and I am all the richer for it. Thank you so very much, Alan Garner. Bravo!
From: Sally of Smallwood
I first read The Weirdstone when I was about ten, and have re-read it often - I'm forty six now. For me a touchstone of how much I enjoyed a book is that I wanted it to be true (i.e. that it had really happened). In the case of The Weirdstone and The Moon of Gomrath I think I still feel like that.
I love reading the novels, and hearing the speech patterns in my head - I've lived "under the hills" for most of my life and find the Cheshire dialect comforting! I'm about to attempt Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on the basis of this - wish me luck!
From: Markymiff
Read Weirdstone for the first time when I was 10 years old living on Heyes Lane in Alderley Edge, loved the story of course and the fact that I knew all the places. Particularly loved the maps, and spent the next decade exploring every single site. Wanted (still do) to live & die as heroically as Durathror.
Garner's sense of place has ingrained itself within me, my family originate further along the lyme - Ashton in the north, Audley in the south, but Alderley became my spiritual home.
Still read the book (and all his others) every couple of years or so - sadly the village has died for me as a place to go, its celebritisation has ripped out any soul it once had. And the Edge itself has lost some mystique with the NTs work - Birds are back, paths are well kept, the DCC have removed the danger from the mines - all good things but now the darkness, mystery, understated terror and exhilaration of all those holes into the hill can only be found in the books. Long may they live on at least.
At 50 I still enjoy walking on the edge trying to remain unseen (as much as I ever did when I was 8) - and one day I will find fundindelve - hopefully with my son (now nearly 5) who it will be a pleasure to share the stories with.
From: E Smith
I remember the Weirdstone of Brisingamen in Primary School in Dundee, Scotland. My teacher at the time, Mr Stewart, did a whole project surrounding the literal, visual and descriptive aspects of the book. We designed our impressions of the characters, created displays. I remember the school library had three copies of the book and one copy of the sequel. There were a lot of competitive pupils trying to get both books to see what happened next. Gowther Mossock "He was an Oak of a Man" sticks in my mind - metaphor and simile were taught through the work and also literal references. Svarts were very sleek and evil in my mind. My school also got a large Video Disk machine which had satellite mapping imagery that could zoom into Alderley and Cheshire. I don't think the tech took off, but it was so amazing to do this.
I am very excited to visit the area during 10.10.10. I have a lot of passion for folk tales. I come from a folk music background and as a 30 year old, will relish the chance to see the area that inspired the author and many others.
From: Emma Dobell, Canada
I have loved the Weirdstone of Brisingamen for years ... I've read and re-read and "lived" that book, over and again through the years and it's still on my bookshelf. I'm 46 now.
My grandparents lived in Timperley and my visits to England with my mother always included a trip to The Edge and a tramp around the woods and the places named in the book. My grandfather had a fantastic imagination and showed us the wall where the sleeping knights lie ... I think over the years we discovered all of the points of interest from the book.
Congratulations on 50 wonderful years of storytelling and here's to 50 more. Very pleased, also, to read about the Blackden Trust and learn more about the preservation efforts in that area.
Good luck with everything and thanks again.
From: Joanne Spencer
One of my most favourite books ever (read when I was 10 years old) along with all the other wonderful books Alan Garner has written. When we first moved to the area from southern England over 25 years ago - The Edge was one of the first places we visited in search of the locations in the book (with the hairs standing up on the back of my neck and a shiver down my spine). The place names have mystery and magic because of the book. We just missed a visit down the mines so that is an event I will definitely be on and as many of the talks as I can manage!
From: Medicus Matt
This and Moon of Gomrath were two of my favourite books in childhood so I'm very pleased to hear of these celebrations. Do you think there's any chance of persuading the BBC to release the Weirdstone radio drama that was broadcast on Radio 4 as part of the celebrations?
From: Mr Sumner (Y4 teacher)
This book was read to me by my teacher in 1979/80. It had a huge effect. The fact the setting was real and that years later I was able to re-read it and visit the Edge itself has led to a strong love of this book. In some ways it has helped to steer me towards the person I now am. I am now a 40 year old school teacher who thoroughly enjoys leading his Year 4 class towards the excitement of literature. I have also gone from small one or two hour long walks round the Edge to walking holidays throughout the UK. An inspirational book, one that I'll share again with my class.
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| Updated: 21/02/2010 |