You Can Be Sure of Shell

Throughout much of the twentieth century (and indeed before then) publishers competed in producing books on the English counties, not just general guide books, but books setting out the literary and historical background to the county.



Macmillan led the way with their "Highways and Byways" series; sturdy octavo volumes written by well known literary figures, such as Edward Hutton and E V Lucas and illustrated by eminent artists such as Joseph Pennell and F L Griggs.



This series began with "Highways and Byways in Devon and Cornwall" in 1897 and came to an end with "Highways and Byways in the Welsh Marches" in 1935. Not all counties were published, notable omissions being Lancashire and Cheshire and the series also covered regions of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Normandy, a total of 37 volumes being produced. These volumes are attractive and do provide a detailed review, being particularly strong on history and literature.



Next up we have Hodder and Stoughton's "King's England" series. This began life in the 1930's and was resurrected in various forms once all the English counties had been completed in the original red cloth, blue dustwrapper, format in 1952 with "Northumberland", the 41st volume in the series. These were edited by Arthur Mee, but used other authors in building up descriptions of each village, town and city in alphabetical order illustrated by brown and white photographs. The descriptions are gloriously positive as even the most unprepossessing of villages is found to be blessed with a wonderful church font, a magnificent oak tree or a remarkable grave.

Passing over Robert Hale's "County" books and Pevsner's "Buildings of England" series, we come to the gold standard for county guides - the Shell Guides published initially by the Architectural Press, briefly by Batsford but reaching their glorious best when Faber and Faber took over the series.



The Shell Guides, which were published over the period 1934 to 1984, were aimed at motorists touring their own country. With a mixture of essays on the county, a gazeteer and carefully chosen photographs they complemented perfectly the ordnance survey map on a motoring holiday. In fact, so good are they that it would be highly unusual for my wife and I to spend any length of time in an area of Britain new to us without packing the appropriate Shell Guide.



The initiative for the series belongs to John Betjeman, at that time working for the "Architectural Review". Betjeman sought sponshorship for a series of guide books from Shell, who were suitably enthusiatic, the idea complementing their own brand of advertising.











The first guide "Cornwall", written by Betjeman himself, duly appeared in 1934 published by the Architectural Press. Further volumes from this Press on Derbyshire, Devon, Dorset, Kent, Somerset and Wiltshire followed over the next few years.











"Devon" was authored by Betjeman, the others by different authors commissioned by Betjeman, including Paul Nash, the artist, whose "Dorset" contains a mixture of photographs and Nash's own drawings, making it particularly attractive.







These volumes are all spiral bound with relatively short gazetteers, and separate essays on various aspects of the county, such as geology, architecture, natural history and antiquities. Gazetteer entries are often short and not always complimentary. This sort of critical appraisal continued to be a great strength of the series, as authors heaped scorn on recent architectural developments in some towns and cities. In particular, James Lees-Milne in his "Worcestershire" is in fine form in his condemnation of the damage visited on Worcester by insensitive development and would have been even more vitriolic if the publishers had not objected. The point for Shell after all was to encourage people to travel to places, not put them off. In retrospect, it is surprising how much licence was given to the authors.







Batsford took over the publishing of the guides in 1937 and were responsible for "Hampshire", "Northumberland and Durham", "The West Coast of Scotland" and "Oxon" (1938). This latter guide was written by the artist John Piper, supported by his wife Myfanwy Evans and this volume again broke new ground in its use of images and incorporation of cartoons by Osbert Lancaster.











Piper and Betjeman had become friends in the mid 1930's and their joint involvement with the Guides from 1938 to 1964 (when Betjeman resigned) ensured that the guides would continue at a high standard. Piper remained as editor until the series closed in 1984.

In 1939 Faber and Faber took over the series and as well as re-issuing several of the earlier guides produced their first original guide, "Gloucestershire", in 1939, the last guide issued before the Second World War. It would be 1951 before the next guide "Shropshire" was issued, fittingly enough jointly authored by Betjeman and Piper.



By now the spiral binding had been replaced with conventionally bound boards and the gazetteer expanded to occupy the great majority of the text.

During the next 33 years many of the original county guides were revamped and re-issued sometimes by the original author, more often by new authors and the guides became thicker as the gazetteers expanded and entries became longer.







In addition, new counties were added, culminating in "Nottinghamshire" by Henry Thorold in 1984, the last guide issued.



In addition to "Nottinghamshire" Thorold produced guides to Durham, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Staffordshire, all detailed inventories of all that is good in the county. Other notable authors were Norman Scarfe, author of "Cambridgeshire", "Essex" and "Suffolk" and W G Hoskins, author of the superb "Rutland".







The first holiday my wife and I took with a Shell Guide was in 1968, when we paid a brief visit to Dorset, taking Michael Pitt-Rivers' 1966 guide. This was our companion at sites that have since become very special, such as Durdle Door, Gold Hill at Shaftesbury and Maiden Castle.



Holidays in Pembrokeshire were considerably enhanced as Vivyan Rees's "South West Wales" took us to lonely villages nestling in the shadow of the Prescelly Mountains or to forgotten standing stones on lonely Pembrokeshire trackways. I could go on; we have since spent weeks in, for example, Cornwall, Northumberland, Norfolk and Devon, always with the Shell Guide at hand.

As they have become even more appreciated for their sheer excellence, and since they more and more tell of an England that is disappearing, the Shell Guides have now become collectable and are becoming expensive. This is a pity because their best place is at your side in the car, which is exactly what John Betjeman, soon to be poet laureate, had in mind when he went into business with that unlikeliest of partners - a multi-national oil company.







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Felix Kelly: Visions of Haunted Houses

One of the joys of book-collecting is that new categories emerge within the collection without any initial intent to create that category. Surreptitiously, a new group of related books appears and initiates a new interest.

So it was with Felix Kelly, at first just a name identifying him as the illustrator of the dust jacket of Faber and Faber's "Best Horror Stories" (1957). I first encountered this volume in its year of publication and, with its suitably ghostly picture of a wraith-like figure with a skeleton in its arms outside a deserted house, it immediately puts you in the world of M R James.

Some time later two more Felix Kelly dust jackets turned up, again in Faber and Faber's series of "Best of ..." collections. These were "Best Tales of Terror" (1962) and "Best Detective Stories" (1959), both edited by Edmund Crispin and again both suitably menacing with threatening figures appearing out of the dark.

Perhaps, though, the definitive Felix Kelly ghostly image is that making up the wrap-around dust jacket of Joseph Braddock's "Haunted Houses", (Batsford 1956). Here, trade-mark wraiths glide between gothic mansions in a landscape of tombstones and bare trees. Particularly effective is how the title of the book is placed on a white shroud (?) hanging over the scene.

Two more dust jackets complete this collection, both published by Home and Van Thal. That of Rhoda Broughton's "Twilight Stories" (1947) is set within an architectural drawing of a decaying window and has the usual leafless tree and gravestones as backdrop to the solitary figure.

"A Strange Adventure in the Life of Miss Laura Mildmay" (J Sheridan Le Fanu, 1947) again features gravestones, towards which a female figure is falling as ominous black birds approach out of a lurid sky.

Felix Kelly (1914-1994) was a New Zealander, born in Auckland, who came to live permanently in England from 1935, serving as a fighter pilot in World War II. He is often compared with Rex Whistler and, like Whistler, made something of a speciality of decorating country houses with murals, often depicting imagined romantic landscapes replete with ruins in the manor of Claude. In pursuit of this career he was friendly with many aristocratic families, in the eighties working for Prince Charles at Highgrove.

Perhaps his most famous murals are those in the Garden Hall at Castle Howard, which he painted for Granada TV, under the patronage of the Howard family, for "Brideshead Revisited". It is these murals, depicting imagined Vanbrugh buildings, with features from Castle Howard, that Jeremy Irons, in the character of Charles Ryder, is seen painting in the series. Indeed there are so many parallels between the career of Kelly and the fictional Ryder, that the former's character may well have been used by Evelyn Waugh as the model for Charles Ryder.

The actors Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews are seen in the Garden Hall below:

A Kelly painting of the station at Castle Howard, painted for the Howard family:

As an artist, Kelly incorporates surrealist elements, but is chiefly associated with the Neo-Romantics. Some other typical works:

Kelly's childhood remembered in this surreal image of Takapuna Beach, near Auckland:

Mural for the Banqueting Hall, the Royal Palace, Kathmundu, Nepal:

Disturbing image with Kelly-esque woman in a black cloak:

A monograph on Kelly (known to friends as "Fix")was published in 2007 by Donald Bassett, an art historian at the University of Auckland, accompanying an exhibition (A Kiwi at Brideshead) of his work.

Felix Kelly illustrated many books, some with superb dust jacket designs, but, for me, it will always be his haunted houses decorating the dust jackets of some of my favourite books that retain their hold on my imagination.

Pleasure in Being Frightened

When I was a child we lived in an old farmhouse with dark corridors leading to bedrooms rarely visited. Having two older brothers it is not surprising that I was introduced to stories of ghosts and witches at an early age. The most terrifying room, however, was the sitting room, only used for social events, that lay at the far end of the house from the parlour, where we spent most of our time. Even on a warm summer day, I did not care to linger there. But the frisson of fear was never altogether unpleasant and it is to these apparently harmless childhood terrors that I attribute my love of ghost stories.

The first ghost story I remember was read to us by our live-in land girl, one night when my brother and I had just been put to bed. With hindsight, A E D Smith's 'The Coat', in which an old moth-eaten greatcoat, first seen hanging from a coat hook, attempts to strangle an unwary visitor to an uninhabited house with it's horribly flapping empty arms, may not seem the most suitable night-time reading for 6 year olds, but it is the only bed-time story from that period that I actually remember. Years later, I found the story again in 'The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries', in a part of the book invitingly called 'Sealed Section'. The coat belonged to a disreputable person who had been shot when wearing it and now apparently waits in the house for those staple ghost story characters who know something's wrong but still persist in invoking any malevolent spirit in the area.

Since then there has rarely been a period of my reading life in which ghost stories have not been close at hand. At first it was through anthologies, such as the superb collection 'Fifty Years of Ghost Stories', in which I first read M R James and Sheridan Le Fanu, both of whose stories are just as fresh 50 years later.



There were also the excellent Faber and Faber collections 'Best Horror Stories', with it's wonderful Felix Kelly dust wrapper, and 'Best Ghost Stories', followed by Basil Davenport's anthologies 'Ghostly Tales To Be Told' and 'Tales To Be Told In The Dark'. It was in these latter collections that I first read Arthur Machen.



Once I had read the massive Wise and Fraser anthology 'Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural' and Montague Summers' 'Supernatural Omnibus', I was in a position to sort out the great writers from the merely competent. I also began slowly to search out the original volumes by these authors from which their stories had been drawn by the anthologists.

So, who are these great authors and what are the key books that constitute a ghost story collection?

Most, myself included, would place M R James at the head of the list. His four volumes 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary', 'More Ghost Stories', 'A Thin Ghost and Others' and 'A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories' were published between 1904 and 1926 and define what has come to be known as the antiquarian or scholarly ghost story. Oblivious to warning signs that are blindingly obvious to the reader, M R James's typical hero, pursuing his antiquarian interests will insist on provoking the malevolent entity that will either finish him off in a particularly nasty way or guarantee him (and us) future nightmares and other unpleasant moments.





As to what are the best stories from the 30 or so written by MRJ, strong claims may be made for 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You My Lad', from the first of the four volumes (published in 1904) and 'Casting the Runes', from the next volume (1911). I do have a particular fondness for the superbly titled 'The Tractate Middoth', from 'More Ghost Stories', partly because most of the action takes place in a library, which I assume to be the Fitzwilliam. It is the removal of the book of the title from the library that precipitates the rather nasty revenge taken on the borrower, when a 'little dark form' rises out of the shadow behind a tree trunk and two arms emerge to cover his face in a 'mass of blackness'. Those staple trappings of ghost stories, cobwebs and spiders, feature prominently in this story.



E F Benson, like M R James, produced four excellent volumes of ghost stories, beginning with 'The Room in the Tower' in 1912, followed by 'Visible and Invisible', 'Spook Stories' and 'More Spook Stories' (1934). Though variable in quality, there is much to enjoy here, my own favourites being 'The Face' and 'Pirates', both much anthologized. In the latter story, a middle-aged man purchases the house of his childhood, long deserted, and restores it to its former state when he and his brothers and sisters, now all dead, used to play in the garden. Living more and more in the past, he finally joins the phantom children in a game of Pirates and is found dead the next morning. The ghosts in this story are the ghosts of childhood; it is significant that the house had been re-furnished with much of it's original furniture, returned to the house after some 40 years. This re-creation of the past brings back the former inhabitants of the house. Or is it all down to an over-active imagination and a weak heart? As with all the best ghost stories, there are several possible interpretations.



Ghosts of children, or ghosts haunting children, are plentiful, from the vengeful children with the fearfully long finger-nails, who return to tear the heart out of the unfortunate Mr Abney, in M R James' 'Lost Hearts', to little Miles and Flora, corrupted by the ghosts of their former governess and her lover, in 'The Turn of the Screw', or again is the whole nightmare visited on the children by their paranoid new governess, the un-named young lady who narrates the story?

It is time to introduce the third of the writers who, to me, define the English Ghost Story. This is, paradoxically, an Irishman, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, who, along with his admirer, James Joyce, is associated in my mind with Dublin in a way that no other city or writer is. Whenever in Dublin, I stand outside the house on Merrion Square from which Le Fanu emerged for his nocturnal walks round Dublin and in which he is supposed to have succumbed to his final nightmare. Walking the lonelier streets of Dublin, I listen for the following phantom footsteps that pursued Captain Barton to his terrifying end in 'The Familiar' and in a quieter section of Aungier Street, I observe a deserted house with grass and small trees growing from the roof that I would like to have been the setting for Le Fanu's short tale 'An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street'. This short topographical tour of Le Fanu's Dublin must end outside the much haunted 'House by the Churchyard' in Chapelizod, the setting for the Le Fanu novel so admired by James Joyce and one of the influences on his 'book of the dark', 'Finnegans Wake'.



There are many excellent stories by Le Fanu, collated originally from the magazines of the period by M J James in 'Madame Crowl's Ghost and Other Tales of Mystery' (1923), but it is to 'In a Glass Darkly' (1872) that we must turn for what I consider to be the finest ghost stories of the nineteenth century. As well as 'The Familiar' and the justly celebrated 'Green Tea', we are introduced in this volume to the most terrifying vampire in literature, the wonderful Carmilla, immortalised for all the wrong reasons by the late Ingrid Pitt in the lurid and explicit film 'The Phantom Lovers'. It is worth quoting in full the last sentence of 'Carmilla':

"It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations- sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door"

To my mind the last phrase of this sentence captures the essence of the ghost story; it is in our unguarded moments that the phantoms of our own past as well of those of literature return to surprise us and, I sincerely hope, cause us not a few unpleasant moments.



I will end this all too brief survey with a personal selection - eleven of my favourite ghost stories, restricted to one per author. These are given in chronological order of publication.

'The Old Nurse's Story', Mrs Gaskell (1852)
'Mr Justice Harbottle', J Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
'Oke of Okehurst', Vernon Lee (1890)
'The Turn of the Screw', Henry James (1898)
'Man Overboard', F Marion Crawford (1903)
'Afterward', Edith Wharton (1910)
'The Green Room', Walter de la Mare (1925)
'A Warning to the Curious', M R James (1926)
'The Face', E F Benson (1928)
'The Rosewood Door', Oliver Onions (1929)
'The Sweeper', X Private X (1931)

If not one of these stories makes you unwilling to look back as you turn the lights off when leaving an empty room on a dark night as the wind moans in the trees, then maybe ghost stories are not for you.

It has often been said that the ghosts of the nineteenth and early twentieth century did not survive in the era of electric lights and motor cars. This is only partly true; there are many modern writers who have maintained the traditions of the 'Golden Age' of the ghost story. In a later blog, I will turn my attention to some of these later practitioners of the art.







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