lloydshep

Rebecca Part One

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again…” We’re off to Cornwall to see if the dream-house of Manderley, as featured in Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’, could ever be a real place. We start off in Lostwithiel, a town where we think Rebecca’s inquest could’ve taken place. We move to Fowey, the nearest villageContinue reading “Rebecca Part One”

The Remains of the Day Part Two

In part two of our adventure with Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, we have some questions, and make an apology. Our questions include: what the hell are we doing on Dartmoor? And what happened to Day Five? Our apology follows a discovery made thanks to Ship’s Dog. We end on the remains ofContinue reading “The Remains of the Day Part Two”

The Remains of the Day Part One

We’re taking our first Nobel prize winner out for a walk! Actually, it’s more of a drive, as Kazuo Ishiguro’s unforgettable creation, the butler Stevens, drives his boss’s Ford down the backroads from Oxfordshire to Cornwall. In part one we ask where exactly Oxfordshire ends and Berkshire begins (clue: it isn’t where Ishiguro thinks itContinue reading “The Remains of the Day Part One”

Cold Water Part Two

Taking Gwendoline Riley’s exquisitely concise novel for a walk around Manchester, we’re drawn across Piccadilly Gardens, through the Arndale Centre, across to a Salford pub and then back and round to the Central Library and the canal. We marvel at how rapidly Manchester keeps changing – old buildings demolished, new ones thrown up in theirContinue reading “Cold Water Part Two”

Cold Water Part One

This small gem of novel is a great way to introduce yourself to the world of early-noughties Manchester. In Part One we journey from Ian Curtis’s Macclesfield memorial stone to a basement bar somewhere between Oxford Road and Manchester Piccadilly. For Lloyd this is a bit of a homecoming. For Tim it’s a chance toContinue reading “Cold Water Part One”

The Rats Part Two

In part two of our adventure with James Herbert’s The Rats we discover how much the East End has changed, and how much it stays the same. The Regent’s Canal is a crumbling, abandoned ruin in Herbert’s book – today, it’s a polite playground for joggers and cyclists. But cheap tower blocks still loom overContinue reading “The Rats Part Two”

The Rats Part One

Fancy a trip into the dark heart of London’s East End? A place of racist killings, crumbling housing, and striking schoolchildren? We’ve got an unexpected guide for you: James Herbert’s 1974 splatterpunk debut, The Rats. Don’t worry – we won’t be reading the really gory parts. But we will be using the book to navigateContinue reading “The Rats Part One”

Dracula Part Two

This is the second part of our adventure with Bram Stoker’s epic chiller Dracula. Having travelled south from Whitby, we find ourselves in Purfleet, Stoker’s imaginative location for the estate of Carfax and Jack Seward’s asylum. We then head to Piccadilly to pick a virtual fight with the online Stoker cognoscenti over the location ofContinue reading “Dracula Part Two”

Dracula Part One

We’re taking on a book which is as much a myth as it is a novel: Bram Stoker’s 1897 chiller, Dracula. Like Stoker’s eponymous neck-botherer, we find ourselves washed up in Whitby, one of the most theatrical settings we’ve ever seen for a book. We hunt down the bench where the Count attacks poor LucyContinue reading “Dracula Part One”

The Woman in Black Part Two

This is the second part of our adventure with Susan Hill’s classic chiller The Woman in Black. In our ongoing hunt for places which could have inspired the fictional locations of Crythin Gifford and Eel Marsh House we find ourselves in Lincolnshire, where the land merges into the sea seemingly without interruption, where old rockContinue reading “The Woman in Black Part Two”