The Haunted Landscape: Fairies - A Dangerous History (at Conway Hall)

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In Britain, fairies filled the landscape. They haunted rivers and seas; the air; and the earth beneath your feet. Almost anything strange in nature belonged either to fairies or the devil. People saw them, heard them, and even smelled them. In Wales they appeared at local markets and forced up prices. Sightings of fairies in the British countryside have been recounted by the most unlikely witnesses, well into the era of living memory. In Ireland especially, fairy paths, trees and forts were treated with intense reverence. If you accidentally built your house across a fairy path, you might slice a corner off the building, or abandon it altogether. And it was in Ireland that folklore met the strangest fringes of real terror. For the many disturbances credited to angry fairies were, in fact, the work of real poltergeists.

Richard Sugg is the author of eleven books, including Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires (2015), A Singing Mouse at Buckingham Palace (2017), Fairies: A Dangerous History (2017), and The Real Vampires (2019). His newest book, Our Week with the Juffle Hunters, is a children’s story inspired by fairy folklore. He is currently writing Talking Dirty: The History of Disgust. He lives in Cardiff.

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[This talk was filmed at Conway Hall, London, in 2019]

Conway Hall hosts a wide variety of talks, concerts, exhibitions, courses, performances, community and social events. It is also renowned as a hub for free speech and independent thought, hosting suffragettes, political radicals, scientists, philosophers, artists, performers; campaign, charities and other non- profit organisations.