Join us at the Royal Northern College of Music for an evening of folklore, myth and magic!

Author Ceri Houlbrook will be in conversation about her book FOLKLORE: A Journey Through the Past and Present, co-written with Owen Davies. Ceri will be joined by Tabitha Stanmore, author of CUNNING FOLK: Life in the Era of Practical Magic. The authors will be in conversation with Mel Giles, Professor in European Prehistory at the University of Manchester.

This event is part of Oxford Road Corridor’s Cultural Welcome Week, find out more here.

Doors: 6pm, starts: 6.30pm

Tickets are £5. Admission is free when purchasing a copy of the book.

Following the event there will be a performance by RNCM students in the Carole Nash suite. Witching Hour is a spellbinding live performance that merges classical, contemporary, and folk music with storytelling. You can find out more information here.

About FOLKLORE:

A gripping guide to the weird yet everyday world of British folklore. In this ground-breaking book, two leading experts provide the definitive guide to British folklore past and present.

Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook explore folklore in all its remarkable variations, from village rituals and fairy tales to UFO legends and internet fanfiction. Travelling through a landscape of witches, wizards and wicker men, they reveal how folklore has been researched and written about in the past and show how it continues to be lived in the present. At the same time, they provide the reader with a valuable toolkit for understanding how to interpret the diverse examples given.

The book's key message is that folklore is much more than the fossilised remains of a distant, rural past. Folklore is and always has been ubiquitous, dynamic and political. It is a living tradition that draws from many sources, including migrant communities, and is forever being renewed and updated.

About CUNNING FOLK:

It's 1600 and you've lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they've been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you're facing trial. Maybe you're looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do? In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might well have been cunning folk: practitioners of magic who were a common, even essential part of daily life, at a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane.

Charming, thought-provoking and based on original research, Cunning Folk is an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world by an expert historian, as well as a commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.

About the authors:

Ceri Houlbrook is a Lecturer in History and Folklore in the History Group. Her primary research interests are the heritage and material culture of ritual and folklore in the British Isles, from c.1700 to the present day. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester in 2014, having focused on the archaeology and heritage of the British coin-tree.

Tabitha Stanmore is a specialist in English magic and witchcraft between the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, and particularly interested in the role that the supernatural played in everyday life, culture and politics. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher on the Leverhulme-funded Seven County Witch Hunt Project, investigating the people affected by the 1640s witch trials in eastern England. She lives in the South West of England with her partner, her cat Faustus, and not enough books.

Our event format is usually a 45 minute talk or discussion followed by a chance for audience members to ask questions. There will be the opportunity to get your book signed/dedicated after the event. Events are a brilliant opportunity to discover new books, meet authors and likeminded readers and learn something new.

Support your local bookshop and help us keep the Manchester literary scene vibrant and exciting. You can follow us on Eventbrite and social media (@BlackwellsMCR) to keep up to date on upcoming events.

FOLKLORE: Ceri Houlbrook and Tabitha Stanmore in conversation