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Myth & Folklore,
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The Great Book of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by John Matthews
£30.00
The most famous and influential work of English fantasy ever published, reimagined for a new generation of readers by John Matthews, one of the world's leading Arthurian experts, and illustrated by internationally acclaimed Tolkien artist, John Howe. The tales of how the boy Arthur drew the Sword from the Stone, or the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, or how the knights of the Round Table rode out in search of the Holy Grail are known and loved the world over. It all began when an obscure Celtic hero named Arthur stepped on to the stage of history, sometime in the sixth century, and oral tales led to a vast body of stories from which, 900 years later, Thomas Malory wrote the famous Morte D'Arthur.
THE GREAT BOOK OF KING ARTHUR presents these well-loved stories for a modern reader, for the first time collecting many tales of Arthur and his knights either unknown to Malory or written in other languages. Here, you will read of Avenable, the girl brought up as a boy who becomes a famous knight. You will learn of Gawain's strange birth, his upbringing amongst poor folk and his final rise to the highest possible rank - Emperor of Rome.
There is also the story of Morien whose adventures are as fantastic and exciting as any to be found in the pages of Malory. In addition, there are some of the earliest tales of Arthur, deriving from the tradition of Celtic storytelling. Here is the original Arthur, represented in such powerful stories as 'The Adventures of Eagle-Boy', and 'The Coming of Merlin', based on the early medieval text Vita Merlini, which gives a completely new version of the great Enchanter's story.
These age-old stories, still as popular today as they were from the Middle Ages onwards, are dramatically brought to life by the luminous paintings and drawings of John Howe, whose work on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies has brought him a world-wide following.
THE GREAT BOOK OF KING ARTHUR presents these well-loved stories for a modern reader, for the first time collecting many tales of Arthur and his knights either unknown to Malory or written in other languages. Here, you will read of Avenable, the girl brought up as a boy who becomes a famous knight. You will learn of Gawain's strange birth, his upbringing amongst poor folk and his final rise to the highest possible rank - Emperor of Rome.
There is also the story of Morien whose adventures are as fantastic and exciting as any to be found in the pages of Malory. In addition, there are some of the earliest tales of Arthur, deriving from the tradition of Celtic storytelling. Here is the original Arthur, represented in such powerful stories as 'The Adventures of Eagle-Boy', and 'The Coming of Merlin', based on the early medieval text Vita Merlini, which gives a completely new version of the great Enchanter's story.
These age-old stories, still as popular today as they were from the Middle Ages onwards, are dramatically brought to life by the luminous paintings and drawings of John Howe, whose work on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit film trilogies has brought him a world-wide following.
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The Slavic Myths by Noah Charney & Svetlana Slapsak
£18.00 £20.00
Pulitzer-nominated author and one of the great public intellectuals of Slavic culture bring to life the unfamiliar myths and legends of the Slavic world. Slavic cultures are far-ranging, comprising of East Slavs (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), West Slavs (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland) and South Slavs (the countries of former Yugoslavia plus Bulgaria), yet they are connected by tales of adventure and magic with deep roots in a common lore. In this first collection of Slavic myths for an international readership, Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapsak expertly weave together a retelling of the ancient stories with nuanced analysis that illuminates their place at the heart of Slavic tradition.
Though less familiar to us than the legends of ancient Egypt, Greece and Scandinavia, in the world of Slavic mythology we find much that we can recognize: petulant deities, demons and faeries; witches, the sinister vestica, whose magic may harm or heal; a supreme god who can summon storms and hurl thunderbolts. Gods gather under the World Tree, reminiscent of Norse mythology's Yggdrasill; or, after the coming of Christianity, congregate among the clouds. The vampire - usually the only Serbo-Croatian word in any foreign-language dictionary - and the werewolf emerge from the shallow graves of Slavic belief.
In their careful analysis and sensitive reconstructions of the origin stories, Charney and Slapsak unearth the Slavic beliefs before their distortion first by Christian chroniclers and then by 19th-century scholars seeking origin stories for their new-born nation states. They reveal links not only to the neighbouring pantheons of Greece, Rome, Egypt and Scandinavia but also the belief systems of indigenous peoples of Australia, the Americas, Africa and Asia. In so doing, they draw out the universalities that cut across cultures in the stories we tell ourselves.
The Watkins Book of English Folktales by Neil Philip
£13.49 £14.99
This is a golden treasury of over one hundred English folktales captured in the form they were first collected in past centuries. Read these classic tales as they would have been told when storytelling was a living art - when the audience believed in boggarts and hobgoblins, local witches and will-o'-the-wisps, ghosts and giants, cunning foxes and royal frogs. Find "Jack the Giantkiller", "Tom Tit Tot" and other quintessentially English favourites, alongside interesting borrowings, such as an English version of the Grimms' "Little Snow White" - as well as bedtime frighteners, including "Captain Murderer", as told to Charles Dickens by his childhood nurse.
Neil Philip has provided a full introduction and source notes on each story that illustrate each tale's journey from mouth to page, and what has happened to them on the way. These tales rank among the finest English short stories of all time in their richness of metaphor and plot and their great verbal dash and daring.
England on Fire by Stephen Ellcock & Mat Osman
£22.50 £25.00
This is a book about English art like no other. Forget the tired rogues' gallery of lords and ladies, forget the tall ships and haywains. These images cut to the heart of England's psychic landscapes to portray an Albion unhinged, where magic and rebellion and destruction are the horses to which the country is hitched.
On these fabled shores we are all castaways, whether our family has lived here for four thousand years or for four. Here you will find depictions of ancient trackways, chalk carvings and standing stones, of animal-masked community rituals, of streets set ablaze in protest, of occult dreams and psychedelic prophecies. There are over 200 images by artists ranging from William Blake, J.M.W.
Turner and Samuel Palmer to Paul Nash, Louis Wain, Bill Brandt, Derek Jarman and Ithell Colquhoun to present-day visionaries such as Paula Rego, Cathy de Monchaux, George Shaw, Jamie Reid, Matt Collishaw,Tacita Dean, Lina Iris Viktor, Yinka Shonibare, Nick Waplington, Dan Hillier, Nicola Tyson, Sutapa Biswas and Chila Kumari Burman. The mind-blowing selection of images is accompanied by short texts by Mat Osman, exploring magic and mazes, ghosts and gardens, shipwrecks and cities. These poetic renderings of a spectral isle, together with Stephen Ellcock's hallucinatory visual journey, reclaim Albion as an eternally inspiring and anarchic domain - an England on fire.
© 2025 Watkins Books. WATKINS MEDIA LIMITED. COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER: 9171151. COMPANY REGISTRATION ADDRESS: SHEPPERTON HOUSE UNIT 11, 89 SHEPPERTON ROAD, LONDON, ENGLAND, N1 3DF.
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