This paper examines a strand in British television historical drama that presents what I term a “Gothicised” version of history. This actively engages with historical trauma as returning to confront its originating society, as the classic Gothic text represents the returning or ongoing effects of a traumatic past in the narrative present. In Peaky…[Read more]

This paper considers the 2018 television adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock as an example of Gothicised historical television drama, which uses the Gothic mode to present a past in a way that challenges our expectations of what prestige historical drama should be like, and to emphasise historical traumas and the way that they are still relevant…[Read more]

Keynote paper.
This paper examines the connections between the winter season and Gothic historical television dramas. It defines Gothic historical television dramas as dramas with a historical setting that take on a Gothic aesthetic and emphasise themes of trauma which are active in the past and continue to be active in the present. It also…[Read more]

From living dolls to spirits wandering in search of solace or vengeance, the ghostly youth is one of the most enduring phenomena of supernatural fiction, its roots stretching back into the realms of folklore and superstition. In this spine-tingling new collection Jen Baker gathers a selection of the most chilling hauntings and encounters with…[Read more]

In the mid nineteenthcentury, a subgenre of ghost stories emerged that had roots in a hybrid tradition of institutional religious doctrine and oral folkloric expressions of anxiety over the fate of the child’s soul in the afterlife. Given the persistently high infant mortality rates and increased public awareness of child abuse across the c…[Read more]

in Vision, Contestation and Deception: Interrogating Gender and the Supernatural in Victorian Shorter Fiction, ed. Oindrila Ghosh (Avenel Press, 2021), pp.51-58

Merels (also called Nine Men‘s Morris) comprises a family of traditional board games with ancient roots. Between medieval and modern times, merels saw an interesting onomasiological shift : Several European languages took up a new name for the game. This new name is sometimes claimed to have originated in German, but the details surrounding this n…[Read more]

The Gothic clings to Irish and Welsh coasts and finds voice through strange stories. Centuries of accumulated death and tragedy forms a dense web of sorrow with particularly prolific roots in the literature, songs, and stories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These traditions resonate within the longer history of lives and vessels lost…[Read more]

Text for the conference talk on a group of games of chance with two dice and a game board/printed sheet with put & take instructions

Slides for the presentation on a group of dice games with put & take mechanics

Games of 21 Combinations are a group of games of chance, based on the combinations rolled with two six-sided dice. Never as popular as the Game of the Owl or the Game of Seven, with which it shares certain features, Games of 21 Combinations show an great variety of designs from the 16th to 19th century.
This is the English version of the paper…[Read more]

There is nothing like a firmly established typology of dreams – simply because the taxonomies on which existing typologies are based vary widely: They can be oneirocritical, thematic, or based on dreaming characters or their responses, on narratological functions, etc. The essays in this volume will discuss a broad range of dream types, with a s…[Read more]

The little known German card game “Höllfahren” or “Hölle” has a forgotten history that stretches back into the 16th century, when it was called “Untreue”, “untreuer Nachbar”, “in die Hölle (fahren)” and similar names. Several images and textual references indicate the game’s popularity in the 17th century. Unusual for a card game, Höllfahren emp…[Read more]

overview on the history of the card game “Höllfahren” or “in die Höll”

This paper draws on the letters and messages and newspaper clipping held by the BBC Written Archives Centre in relation to the 1954 adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a case study for considering how we understand the historical reception of programming. This production is particularly useful in this regard because it achieved a certain…[Read more]

‘Folk horror’ has often been considered, following Mark Gatiss’ description of the genre, as centrally focused on a particular ‘obsession with the British landscape, its folklore, and superstitions’. While these elements are clearly significant, they become more problematic when opening up the genre to include texts from beyond Britain. Not only…[Read more]