ONCE UPON A TIME...

Back in 1992, folklorist, writer and poet Neil Philip published a book called The Penguin Book of English Folktales. Meticulously researched, it was a treasure trove of English folk stories, featuring versions of more than 100 folktales told as they would have been when storytelling was a living art, and the people gathered round the fire listening to the weird tales unfolding would have at least suspected that boggarts, witches, ghould and goblins were quite possibly listening from the shadows. Within the book’s pages there were original versions of Snow White, with three robbers, and Jack the

Giantkiller.

Thirty years on, Neil Philip’s masterwork is being republished as

The Watkins Book of English Folktales

in October, with an introduction by none other than Mr Sandman himself, Neil Gaiman. In it, he writes that one of the stories in Neil Philip’s original book, The Flyin’ Childer, made such an impression on him that it inspired his own retelling in Sandman – so if you’ve been following the adventures of mardy goth Morpheus on Netflix, here’s another layer of storytelling magic to weave into your viewing experience, if you’re of a mind.

The new edition from mind, body and spirit press Watkins Publishing is a thing of beauty that will sit perfectly on a bookshelf next to Stephen

Ellcock and

Matt Osman’s recent England on Fire: A Visual Journey Through Albion’s

Psychic Landscape and a second-hand copy of Russell Ashe et al’s Folkore, Myths and Legends of Britain. This was originally published by Readers’ Digest in 1972 and is now the Holy Grail of seekers after folkloric tales, with eagerly sought-after, rare-as-hens-teeth copies changing hands for astronomical sums. In the shadowy, shifting, evergrowing world of English folk tales, it would seem, there are books of stories and stories about books – and no-one better placed to tell either than Messrs Philip and Gaiman.