New issue of Vala, the #Blake Society's journal is online here: https://blakesociety.org/vala-3/

It's bittersweet. Julian Sedgwick's piece is lovely, but made me miss #MarcusSedgwick all over again.

I am devastated at hearing the news of #MarcusSedgwick. I didn't know him well (my partner was his classmate in Swedish evening classes), but always found him wonderful, stimulating and delightful company.

He was an enthusiastic contributor to my doctoral fieldwork research, and was fascinated by #folklore. He was rapt throughout Ronald Hutton's Katharine Briggs lecture for the Folklore Society, although he rather wanted mediaeval peasants to be more pagan than Hutton concluded they actually were, and we had a lovely discussion of it over dinner afterwards.

Oh, this is dreadful.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/nov/17/marcus-sedgwick-celebrated-childrens-author-dies-aged-54