Bookslut has a new appreciation of Sheridan Le Fanu and Robert Aickman. Robert Aickman is a new name to me, but he sounds fascinating. Sadly, he’s yet another author who can’t be purchased for the Kindle, despite being published in print by Faber and Faber (three print volumes: Cold Hand in Mine, The Wine-Dark Sea, The Unsettled Dust). You might think publishers wanted people to go get the pirated versions.

I was delighted to learn that the first story in Cold Hand in Mine is set in Wolverhampton. I’m always keen to find horror and fantasy stories that arise from my own West Midlands of England…

“The Swords” is one, a seedy [horror] tale of adolescence and first love, set against a grimy industrial background of Midlands Britain, replete with carnivals, snakemen and two-bit whorehouses.

Aickman also co-founded The Inland Waterways Association, along with L.T.C. Rolt, a grassroots organisation which so wonderfully restored the old canals of the Midlands.