Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Crafts and Assaults: Two Uncanny Tales for the Season
    Crafts and Assaults: Two Uncanny Tales for the Season
    Crafts and Assaults: Two Uncanny Tales for the Season
    Ebook58 pages53 minutes

    Crafts and Assaults: Two Uncanny Tales for the Season

    By GMW Wemyss

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    It’s ‘the time of year when the English-speaking peoples, not without an assist from their Celtic connexions, tend invariably towards the haunted and the grotesque in their tales and anecdotes’; and rather than allow that season to pass without something to offer our readers from the very beginning of it, Mr Pyle and Mr Wemyss made a wager on the Saturday before All Hallows’ Eve: a story apiece, as ‘unco’ uncanny’ as they felt they wished to be.

    The novelist, West Country essayist, and historian GMW Wemyss returns us to the dark, deep woods of Wiltshire at night, older than Stonehenge, where dark deeds are afoot – until interrupted by the well-loved ensemble cast of his Village Tales series, led as ever by the indomitable (and exasperating) duke of Taunton and the Muscular Christianity of the Rector, Fr Noel Paddick. (Apparently, a case of possession can, actually, be stopped by a brilliant throw in to the wicket. Sometimes....)

    And Markham Shaw Pyle, the historian and critic, then takes us out ‘West of One-Hundredth’, to the Big Empty of rural Texas, where anything might happen: and does happen, posing a problem of law and ethics, and the howling question, ‘When does the beast crowd out the man?’

    From the Eve of All Hallows to Christmas of the Dickensian ghost stories, this is the season of the uncanny and the strange; and this volume is as near to a gift as the authors can contrive, in hopes that their loyal readers ‘may be, for a moment, if no more, diverted and amused with what is, after all, the merest trifle ... as they await more substantial fare, quite soon’.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBapton Books
    Release dateOct 28, 2014
    ISBN9781311448552
    Crafts and Assaults: Two Uncanny Tales for the Season
    Author

    GMW Wemyss

    Parliamentary historian, chronicler of Titanic’s sinking and Churchill’s ascent, annotator of Kipling and of Kenneth Grahame: GMW Wemyss lives and writes, wisely pseudonymously, in Wilts. Having, by invoking the protective colouration of tweeds, cricket (he was a dry bob at school), and country matters, somehow evaded immersion in Mercury whilst up at University, he survived to become the West Country’s beloved essayist; author or co-author of histories of the Narvik Debate, the fall of Chamberlain and the rise of Churchill, of 1937 – that year of portent – and of the UK and US enquiries into the sinking of Titanic; and co-editor and co-annotator of Kipling’s Mowgli stories and Kenneth Grahame.

    Read more from Gmw Wemyss

    Related to Crafts and Assaults

    Related ebooks

    Horror Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tired of the Same Trump-Era ‘Must-Reads’? Read This Instead

      Jan 29, 2019

      We need brighter and more idealistic visions of reading. Concentrate, we should tell ourselves, and thereby feel a little freedom. The post Tired of the Same Trump-Era ‘Must-Reads’? Read This Instead appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      The New History Wars

      Oct 30, 2022

      The New History Wars
      17 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 29, 2020

      I read with interest about Captain Francis Grose and his contribution to the English language (My History Hero, November). However, Captain Grose also had a hand in creating one of Scotland’s most famous literary figures, Tam O’Shanter by Robert Burn

      6 min read

    • Article

      Wolverhampton Wonderer

      Mar 25, 2021

      Wolverhampton Wonderer
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letter from Wartime

      Sep 24, 2020

      What I’m writing about is what it feels like to be living through the blood-red dusk of a nation. The post Letter from Wartime appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Books & co

      Mar 11, 2022

      Deserters of the First World War: The Home Front by Andrea Hetherington Th deserters who were shot at dawn and pardoned a century later is a familiar one. But alongside these 306 UK soldiers are the stories of another 80,000 men charged with deserti

      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘Each Envelope Was A Treasure’: How I Became Le Carré’s Friend And Reader

      Oct 8, 2022

      I’d seen the man on several occasions, seated in a corner of my local pub. I was clueless as to who he was. Then, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, I went to the Wells Tavern [in Hampstead] with a journalist, who knew the white-haired, conservatively

      3 min read

    • Article

      Southern Stand

      Mar 16, 2020

      Southern Stand
      5 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Nov 26, 2020

      It is always my favourite time of the month when BBC History Magazine arrives on the doorstep, and I was pleased to see some ancient history making an appearance in the November issue. I enjoyed Andrew Bayliss’s account of Leonidas and the battle of

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Supreme Act Of Trust

      Aug 10, 2022

      The Supreme Act Of Trust
      5 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Matt Seidel

      Dec 9, 2017

      I tend to buy used books in bunches, which means the haul from some expeditions stays buried for weeks, months, years even. For this entry, I highlight three finds that, breaking custom, I bought and read almost immediately this year: Hugo Charteris’

      6 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 28, 2021

      As an ex-amateur boxer, I was interested in the reference to black American world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson in Prejudice on the Pitch (October). My great uncle Alan fought Johnson in Portsmouth on 11 June 1908. Because of Home Office interfer

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Mark Slouka

      Dec 16, 2021

      When times get hard—and the news, I think it’s fair to say, has sucked of late—my reading, like everyone else’s, gets reactive. The post A Year in Reading: Mark Slouka appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • Article

      Very Hampstead, very Kingsley Amis

      Oct 29, 2020

      I HEARD THESE WORDS in the Flask Bookshop in Flask Walk, Hampstead — which I owned and ran from 1975 until 1988 — while slumped in the back room on my leather swivel chair, quite as usual, smoking a pipe and reading: I was always reading. It was a un

      10 min read

    • Article

      Who Can Tell Native Stories?

      Jul 11, 2023

      Who Can Tell Native Stories?
      7 min read

    • Article

      Refracting History | Stories In Digital And Print

      Mar 4, 2021

      British Columbia’s history is told through multiple lenses. We must seek out diverse perspectives, continually reframe the ways in which we understand the past, and carefully choose formats for sharing stories. Should a particular story be told in pr

      6 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Aug 5, 2021

      One of the pleasures of the summer, as lockdown was lifted, has been the return of history festivals. These live events have become part of our cultural landscape over the past few years, and what we have been missing really hit me at the Chalke Vall

      3 min read

    • Article

      Books & co

      Nov 11, 2022

      by Rachael English This novel, inspired by true events, tells the story of a mother’s sacrifice to save her child from starvation in the Irish Famine. Young mother Bridget Moloney had faced the heartwrenching experience of leaving her baby daughter

      5 min read

    • Article

      Winter Reads!

      Dec 11, 2020

      Winter Reads!
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Petulant King

      Nov 12, 2022

      The Petulant King
      8 min read

    • Article

      Bending the Arc

      Dec 4, 2017

      With all the hoopla this year over Canada 150, and amid the energies and dollars directed at celebrating our national story, I have been thinking about local history and why it matters. Our readers are deeply engaged in research about their families.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Fair Dinkum Dictionary

      Mar 25, 2021

      Fair Dinkum Dictionary
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Crafts and Assaults

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Crafts and Assaults - GMW Wemyss

      Crafts and Assaults:

      Two Uncanny Tales for the Season

      GMW Wemyss

      Markham Shaw Pyle

      Bapton Books

      ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

      Markham Shaw Pyle, author of Fools, Drunks, and the United States: August 12 1941, and of Benevolent Designs: The Countess and the General: George Washington, Selina Countess of Huntingdon, their correspondence, & the evangelizing of America, holds his undergraduate and law degrees from Washington & Lee. He is a past or current member of, inter alia, the Organization of American Historians; the Society for Military History; the Southern Historical Association; the Southwestern Social Science Association; the Southwestern Historical Association; the Southwestern Political Science Association; the Virginia Historical Society; and the Texas State Historical Association. He is the co-author of The Transatlantic Disputations: Essays & Observations; The Bapton Books Sampler: a literary chrestomathy; and When That Great Ship Went Down: the legal and political repercussions of the loss of RMS Titanic; and co-editor and co-annotator of The Complete Mowgli Stories, Duly Annotated, and The Annotated Wind in the Willows, for Adults and Sensible Children (or, possibly, Children and Sensible Adults).

      GMW Wemyss lives and writes, wisely pseudonymously, in Wilts. Having, by invoking the protective colouration of tweeds, cricket (he was a dry bob at school), and country matters, somehow evaded immersion in Mercury whilst up at University, he survived to become the author of Cross and Poppy: a village tale; The Confidence of the House: May 1940 and of Sensible Places: essays on time, place & countryside; co-author of The Transatlantic Disputations: Essays & Observation; The Bapton Books Sampler: a literary chrestomathy; and When That Great Ship Went Down: the legal and political repercussions of the loss of RMS Titanic; and co-editor and co-annotator of The Complete Mowgli Stories, Duly Annotated, and The Annotated Wind in the Willows, for Adults and Sensible Children (or, possibly, Children and Sensible Adults).

      Together, they are the partners in Bapton Books.

      Copyright 2014 by Bapton Literary Trust No 1

      (for Markham Shaw Pyle & GMW Wemyss)

      All rights reserved

      First Smashwords edition

      Book design by Bapton Books

      A note to the reader: it is the aspiration of this imprint, small though Bapton Books be, to have as few errors and literals – 'typographical errors', misprints – as occur in any average Oxford University Press publication (which, alas, in these thin and piping times, gives us a margin of perhaps five or ten). Any obliging corrections shall be gratefully received.

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment, and yours alone. This ebook mayn't be re-sold or given away to others. Should you wish to share this book with others, do please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or should it not have been purchased for your use only, then do please return to Smashwords or its channels and purchase a copy of your own. We shall be greatly obliged to you for respecting the hard work of our authors and this publishing house.

      It is available also in print from many online booksellers.

      Contents

      Two gentlemen in a library

      Will the circle be unbroken?

      Safe in port

      The Destruction of Sennacherib

      Afterword

      Two gentlemen in a library

      The Englishman and the American were talking quietly in the library. The port was excellent. The talk was, seasonally and appropriately, of the odd and the inexplicable, the unnerving and the unco' uncanny. It was getting late, but neither the Englishman nor the American seemed inclined to end their quiet debate.

      Neither should have at all cared to be thus apostrophised: the former, who could be quite obtrusively Scots in rather a baronial fashion when he liked, and who was proud also of his Anglo-Welsh and Anglo-Irish forebears, was – when not being conscientiously a West Countryman at all points in his contrary moods of localism – insistently 'British, damn it all, not English merely, it's that sort of ignorance and laxity which gives the damned Nats a handle'; and the latter, a Southerner with roots in Texas and ties to Virginia, tended to be those things first and an American second, unless dealing with foreigners: and even they, and even in the name of 'leaving his politics at the water's edge', were invariably corrected, indeed barracked, if they called so Southern a figure a 'Yank'.

      They were old friends, the two, in a way; the best of enemies, in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1