Correspondences can be identified between (on the one hand) androcentric cosmogonies, ancestral misogyny and tribal blood rituals, and (on the other) the classical paradigm of vampirism, especially in its literary and on-screen flowering. Specifically, the initiatory culture-hero and the archetypal vampire both confer a haematologically-mediated…[Read more]

This paper presents some of the ideas central to my current developing research into the modes of historical television drama, particularly the Gothic mode. In focusing on the 2018 television adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the paper illustrates the idea of the Gothic mode in operation, considering its relationship to notions of historical…[Read more]

This paper examines the use of the Gothic mode in historical television drama to suggest it is used to emphasise engagement with historical traumas, and suggest that these traumas still have relevance today. This emphasis works by engaging with the associations that are acquired around the Gothic mode through experience, recognising the aesthetic…[Read more]

In 1894, Lord Alfred Douglas referred to homosexuality as “the love that dare not speak its name”, a phrase that describes the unmentionable nature of homosexuality in a period of time when sodomy was illegal. Even in the 21st century, there continues to be something unspeakable and forbidden about homosexuality. This paper equates the uns…[Read more]

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]

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]

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]

This paper considers the use of Boym’s formulations of reflective and restorative nostalgia as a productive lens for viewing the tensions within folk horror texts and their appeals. Considering folk horror texts such as The Wicker Man, Midsommar and The Living and the Dead, the paper will demonstrate that Boym’s two conceptions help to draw out…[Read more]

This paper examines the responses to the 1954 BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, as held by the BBC Written Archives Centre, in the light of the British Horror Comics campaign of the mid-1950s.

Keynote presentation at the UK’s first academic folk horror conference.

Invited research presentation given at the University of Reading, 8 October 2015.

It has become a standard approach when considering screen presentations that incorporate the country house to examine them in the light of Andrew Higson’s formulation of the heritage drama, which presented an essentially conservative, depoliticised spectacle of grandeur, safely distanced from the reality of the majority of viewers. However, the c…[Read more]

While there has been a growing acknowledgement of the existence of earlier examples of television science fiction, the typical history of the genre still privileges Nigel Kneale’s The Quatermass Experiment (1953) as foundational. This was a significant production, and an effective piece of television drama, but it was not the first piece of B…[Read more]

Each Christmas during his tenure as Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, M.R.James would take part in a ritual celebration of Christmas with students and colleagues which invariably culminated with the reading of a ghost story. This tradition drew on a long tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas that can be traced back through the l…[Read more]