Reinventing Christmas folklore

Christmas Present

A few days ago, chatting over morning coffee and social media, The Other Half and I happened upon a mention of Père Fouettard, a Christmas character.

Thanks to the wonders of the internet and search engines, it didn’t take long to discover that Père Fouettard is a sort of counterpoint to Father Christmas in northern and eastern France, and in Flanders, and that he carries a whip with him to punish the naughty children.

This is not too far removed from Krampus, the half goat, half demon figure who can be found from Bavaria to northern Italy to Hungary and more, and who, through comics and more recently a film, has found his way into American and British minds.

It struck me how sanitised our own gift-bringing mythology is: at one time, a bad child in the UK might have been led to expect a lump of coal as a present, but we don’t seem to have the same child-snatching villain as Krampus or, indeed, Père Fouettard, who is sometimes equipped with a sack to take away naughty children, never mind whip them.

But then again, Victorian society was a weirdly mixed bag when it came to frightening children with morality tales, yet sanitising the likes of fairy tales.

The late 19th century was also the time when British personifications of Father Christmas morphed from the sort of Green Man version that owed a great deal to ancient myth and folklore – and is famously presented as the Ghost of Christmas Present in John Leech’s illustration for Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol – to the red-cloaked old man we are so familiar with today.

Our discussion ranged across various other elements of Christmas folklore, including the vexed question of when Santa first needed elves.

Godey's Lady's Book

Elves were an established part of Germanic and Scandinavian folkloric traditions, but it was only in the US, where they’d made their way via migration, that they were incorporated into Christmas, with a first festive appearance in literature coming in 1850 in an unpublished book by Louisa May Alcott, called Christmas Elves.

Harper’s Weekly published a poem mentioning elves in 1857, but for the idea of the elves in the workshop, we can thank a 1873 edition of women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, with its cover illustration showing Santa surrounded by toys and elves and with the caption: "Here we have an idea of the preparations that are made to supply the young folks with toys at Christmas time”.

I’ve always rather thought of folklore as a process that has stopped, and that we preserve, as in amber, but it continues to grow, even if modern communication and entertainment methods have largely overtaken the oral tradition.

Star Wars has a sense of the mythological about it. And Christmas myth and folklore have not stood still in recent years either. Some reworkings and new versions are more successful than others.

In 1996, Terry Pratchett’s 20th Discworld novel introduced us to the Hogfather – with a two-part TV version following a decade later.

Josh Kirby's original cover artwork for Hogfather

Pratchett, of course, famously said that he’d occasionally been accused of penning ‘literature’ – and Hogfather is a good example of how his novels are so much more than simple ‘entertainments’.

Here, beyond the satire – and I’d suggest that Pratchett is one of the finest satirists the UK has ever produced – are questions and reflexions on the relationship between storytelling, myth and folklore and the human condition; on the fine balance between somehow believing (à la the willing suspension of disbelief we engage in at the cinema or theatre) and yet not allowing such beliefs to usurp science and reality.

The God Delusion didn’t hit bookshelves until three years after Hogfather, but re-reading it again this December, it was difficult not to see The Auditors as being akin to Richard Dawkins and others.

However, Hogfather is far from the only evocation of Christmas to add to the mythos and, indeed, to offer a sense of Christmas not being ‘just about the children’.

A Dan Mora cover for one issue of Klaus 

Klaus, written by top comic creator Grant Morrison and illustrated by Dan Mora (who has won an award already for his work on this), first appeared in seven parts, beginning at the end of 2015.

Now available as a trade – although when it’s a large-format, limited-edition hardback with gilded page edging, it’s hard to think of it as a ‘trade’ – this presents us with a far darker Santa origin story that draws on Norse myth and Siberian shamanism.

There are no elves here and nothing sanitised, but a brutal and beautiful tale that draws us back to Christmas as a festival marking the depths of winter.

It’s a really top work (the architectural aesthetic attracted me first, since it owes more than a little to the kind of Germany that we’ve experienced in the last couple of years), and left me with a meditative sense of something that was not new, but as old as the hills.

If you’re unfamiliar with Morrison’s work, just this work should illustrate why he’s so highly regarded.

Klaus is available now from BOOM! Studios, both in the limited edition mentioned above (it seems that Forbidden Planet still has copies) and in a non-limited edition. A one-off, single story comic has also just been released to follow up the first series/book.

I’ve also read Krampus! from writer Brian Joines and artist Dean Kotz (published by Image) and, while it’s an entertaining romp, it also serves to reiterate how good Klaus is.

So, folklore/mythology does not stand still, even in technological, cynical times such as ours. And thank goodness for that.

Winter is coming ... to the beach

Every year, at around about this time, I take a number of books off shelves and stack them in a corner of the flat.

Then, over the following period, they are shuffled, increased one day and decreased the next, as I debate whether or not this is the right selection for holiday reading and whether there are enough books or too many.

Every year, I am told by people that I should get a Kindle. Every year, I explain that:

I do not actually like reading books on a tablet;

if I drop a book on a damp beach, the damage will never be greater than a single lost book;

I distrust The Cloud and continue to prefer to actually have my ‘stuff’ under my control and my control alone.

The first part of this usually occurs a month or so before a trip. This time around, it has been just a few days – which possibly suggests how welcome the trip itself is going to be.

And while there is therefore little adjustment time, the pile itself reveals a considerable jolt in my reading habits over the last eight months or so.

Back in ancient times – okay, the end of the 1970s and beginning of the following decade – I ‘discovered’ horror and fantasy fiction.

In the case of the former, it was largely Stephen King and, in the latter, Tolkien and, a few years later, Terry Pratchett.

I read Stephen Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant novels avidly, plus works by William Horwood.

But then, Sir Terry apart, I drifted away from fantasy because it all really rather seemed to be largely inferior Lord of the Rings. This is possibly the point at which to state that, for vaguely complicated reasons, in my mid-twenties I did a series of commissioned illustrations of places from Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit for a hotel owner in Torquay who just happened to be called Tolkien and was a nephew of JRR.

Unfortunately (or not – I don’t recall them being stunning, and they took me an age) I have no record of them. Hey ho.

Be mother to your own Funko Pop dragon

Late last year, it seemed the time to pick up LoTR once more. Reading the first part again, I found myself thinking that Frodo is still wet and irritating, but I also enjoyed the poetic stuff much more, including Tom Bombadil.

And I moved from that to Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy – works I’d been promising myself I should read for some years.

Thus far, I’ve only read the first book, Titus Groan: I didn’t find it a quick read, but it is a stunning one, and it reawakened by interest in fantasy. Surely there had to be works out there that didn’t just slavishly echo Tolkien’s formula?

One of the first books I found was Neil Gaiman’s American Gods – a sure fire hit given my predilection for Norse mythology (I have also been reading more extensively than before this year).

Half a dozen of the Sandman graphic novels sit on my shelves and there is also Dark Omens, a copy of the novel he co-wrote with Sir Terry years ago, but I had not dipped into any of his own novels.

Sure enough, I loved American Gods. I love Gaiman’s version of Odin and all the other gods from around the world that he brings to life.

The Other Half read and enjoyed it too, so his Anansi Boys is going with us on holiday.

The discovery of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks has opened up a wonderful variety of works, including Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood, which is a slow burner, but draws you inexorably under its spell.

What is not a slow burner, however, is George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones – the first book in a series that seems to have spawned a little TV show.

Now I haven’t even watched a trailer for the TV version, but the first 800-page volume utterly gripped me.

This is masterful storytelling – not least given the number of threads that Martin develops at the same time and his ability to ensure that the reader never becomes confused or loses track of what’s going on and who is who.

... or your own direwolf

I still haven’t watched any of the TV version, but I am now aware of the look of it and the actors playing the main characters – and also some of the collectibles that are available. It is, as you may gather, my new favourite thing (just in time to be able to join in with all the comparisons between the stories and the state of British politics) .

The second book was the first thing into this year’s book pile – followed a short while later by the third – or to be strictly accurate, part one of the third instalment.

TH White’s The Once and Future King – his series of novels about King Arthur, including The Sword in the Stone – makes the pile: another that The Other Half is also likely to indulge in. I’ve spent years thinking that I should read some version of Arthurian legend and the time has come.

After a recommendation from a delightful Polish barista in a local coffee shop, I have just been reading – and thoroughly enjoying – The Last Wish, a collection of short stories featuring Geralt, the witcher of Rivia, by Andrzej Sapkowski.

Blood of Elves, the first full novel, is already waiting on the shelf, but that is for another time.

For a change of flavour, the holiday fantasy is joined by two Maigret novels and one collection of three modern Italian crime fiction novellas.

But I already know that, as we head south on Friday, it will be A Clash of Kings that will be the first tome to be opened. I can hardly wait.

There can never be too many books

And so it is that World Book Day is upon us again – and almost gone, at the time of writing.

In an era where, increasingly, digital seems to dominate, it’s wonderful to think about books.

Yes, yes: I know that books can be digital too, but, to me – and many millions more – there is nothing to beat the tactile joy of a real book. Indeed, for billions of people on this planet, the old-fashioned variety of bound paper is all that they can hope to have access to.

Do you remember the joy when, as a child, you managed to read a book on your own for the first time?

I cannot remember the title of the first book I managed like that, but I remember sitting in a small red and white straw child’s basket chair with it, and being so proud when I got to the last page.

Not that long after, I took enormous pleasure in Enid Blyton’s Well Really, Mr Twiddle, which had me hooting with hysterical laughter.

Many years later, I got pretty much the same sense of pride from reading an entire Asterix book in German. Books always offer potential for new moments of personal achievement.

At the beginning of my twenties, I suffered some sort of breakdown after being injured and then chucked out of polytechnic. For ages, I couldn’t read – even much-loved books could not hold my concentration beyond the first few pages.

What revived reading for me was Stephen King. I picked up Carrie in a local bookshop and couldn’t it down. Then The Stand and It, with many more to follow.

I ‘discovered’ Terry Pratchett before he was anywhere near national treasure status, standing in a small sci-fi and fantasy bookshop to meet him once when nobody else was even around.

The result is three very precious signed volumes of the earliest Discworld novels.

Books – among the very first things I’d unpack in my nomadic early adulthood: get those out and it would start to feel like home.

Books, which provide a wonderful pre-holiday ritual when considering what from my buckling shelves I wish to take.

Books, which bring with them knowledge and entertainment.

While the majority of the books that I have bought in recent years have been non-fiction, I still seek out good storytelling too.

Penguin are now releasing the entire Maigret collection, and with new translations that finally do Simenon’s noir novels justice. Those are on pre-order with me.

There are old friends that I have read many times already and will probably read many times more: Jan Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre (which I hated at school), Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Stephen King’s The Shining (the movie was crap) and Joanne Harris’s Chocolat, all of which I find new things in every time I pick them up.

I have a few antiquarian (relish that word) books – some up to 200 years old. They are to be treasured and looked after: I feel only a temporary guardian.

And I also rather pride myself on having a collection of books about German history – no! Not that period! – that would, I suspect, count as pretty decent.

I still judge a bookshop on its history section: on whether it is just full of WWII and the Nazis or goes beyond that.

Of course, talking of the Nazis, it’s always worth remembering how they burnt books on Bebelplatz in Berlin in 1933 – right next to the Humboldt University. That symbolism should tell you something about the power of the written word. And today, of course, we have groups of religious fundamentalists who want to deny people – and women and girls in particular – the right to learn.

Whether in the deepest, darkest days or winter, curled up on the sofa with a good read and a hot chocolate or under a parasol on the beach in the height of summer, is there really anything that can compare to the pleasure that can be found in the pages of a good book?

So let’s celebrate books today – and those who create them and those who read them – but let’s never stop loving books for all the other days of the year.

And PS: make sure you love your local library too.

How many books can I pack?

Gore Vidal – purveyor of light fiction?

It's the time of the year of The Book. Or rather, The Books. How many? What sort? Light? Heavy? Fiction? Non-fiction?

This year, the great debate about holiday reading matter has only begun earnestly far later than usual.

An initially rather ambitious list had been sketched out in my mind for some time, but the ensuing weeks had seen it redrafting itself in less literary terms.

It was the moment, I'd decided, for Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain. The chance to spend pretty much entire days reading is the perfect time to get into such a book.

But with a certain rueful sadness, I've been pushing that idea toward touch. Frankly, I'm just too tired.

I had also been contemplating Lewis Lockwood's Beethoven: The music and the life, but have abandoned that in favour of the first volume of Paul O'Grady's autobiography, At My Mother's Knee ... And Other Low Joints, which has been recommended as a damned good – and very funny – read.

But then something rather unusual happened – unusual, that is, because in general, I'm a rather slow reader and because, right now, I'm spectacularly knackered.

Yet in successive weekends, I've swept through The Lady in the Lake and The High Window, with Simenon's Maigret and the Black Sheep (poorly translated, since you ask) in between, so it struck me that a full-blown Raymond Chandler binge seems to be on the cards.

In which case, my Book Club 1979 omnibus, containing Playback, The Long Goodbye and The Little Sister, looks set to travel. It was one of my first real adult books, and it's got Bogart on the cover.

St one time or another, I've read all the Philip Marlowe novels, but with the exception of The Big Sleep, none of them for a good 20 years or more.

No extra Maigret will travel, because they're so short that I've had to take a shed load to make it worth while.

It did raise the point in my mind, though, of the snobbery that still surrounds genre fiction. Chandler's novels are superbly written – there's a poetic quality to the prose – with both intelligence and an understanding of the universal human condition.

I'd suggest that they have far more to say to us (and are a vastly better read) than much of what I've read in recent years that passes as modern English 'literature' (it's a wonder how Blake Morrison's The Last Weekend, for instance – a book that I was handed to review when a positive review was demanded – has ever received plaudits: it has so much less subtlety than anything Chandler wrote, yet it's 'literature').

Jean Gabin: 'Maigret needs you!'

Simenon may not be in quite the same class – although that may not be helped by translation matters – but the Maigret novels are still stylish and tight, with an underlying empathy for the ordinary man and woman in the street.

Only a short while ago, Iain Banks died. Hailed for his literary works such as The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road, but less so for his sci-fi novels, which were even published under the ever-so-slightly different name of Iain M Banks.

Literature and genre fiction, it seems to say, can never quite meet.

But Banks's Culture novels are not simply great yarns -–and they are most certainly that – but they also have depth, and use the world he created to explore some fascinating ideas.

And Consider Phlebas is, for me, that very rare beast: a sci-fi novel that I've read more than once - a stonkingly good space opera that goes beyond any confinements of (sub) genre and into being a good piece of literature.

Terry Pratchett is another who suffers from this snobbery about the divide between genre fiction and Literature, although the volume and overall consistency of the quality of his satire has, to an extent, forced the naysayers' backs against the wall.

Admittedly, that's partly because satire is a very English form of literature, with a long and glistening tradition - even if some people seem to have forgotten that Pride and Prejudice is essentially a satire and not an 18th-century rom-com.

Tom Sharpe – another who has lately departed this life – was a particularly savage example of the species and, as a satirist, his work was never subject to stuck-up-nose syndrome.

Incidentally, if you haven't read them, Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, his first two novels, which are an assault (and battery) on apartheid in South Africa, are well worth a read. Having visited Pietermaritzburg, where both novels are set, it's almost frightening real. Indeed, I'll swear blind I've actually met one of his characters there.

Personally, I think Pratchett is better: where Sharpe most often seems just to be rage, with Sir Terry, there's a deep underlying humanity, and his characters are far more rounded than Sharpe – or, for that matter, PG Wodehouse.

Finally – the light fiction.

Samuel Vimes, for instance, who appears in a number of the Discworld novels, is a delightful and enormously believable creation.

And Pratchett too is the one author I can think of who has made me howl with laughter on one page and shed a tear just a turn of the page later.

If the difference between literature and popular fiction is that, at core, the former makes you think, then Pratchett does that. As does Iain M Banks.

But back to the books list. After such a sudden spurt of reading, I'm back in the mood for some more serious stuff.

So the pile – and it does exist as a real, actual pile – is now made up of a collection of Mann's short stories, including Mario and the Magician and The Black Swan, plus Gore Vidal's Julian and Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark.

Then there's the O'Grady, plus the second installment of Kim Newman's Anno Dracula alternative history/horror/steampunk/fantasy series, The Bloody Red Baron (I read the first part in Collioure last summer and it was very good).

And some more crime fiction in Involuntary Witness, a police procedural from Italy's Gianrico Carofiglio.

Now remind me: this is the easy reading selection, right?

By the book

On World Book Day, moving behond the simple - and obviously obvious - point that books are quite simply fabulous, it seems entirely apt to ask a number of literary questions.

The current 'big question' that seems to be exercising many in the literary world is less 'what are you reading?' and more 'what are you reading it on?' Or put another way: books v ebooks. Which is a sort of new religious war.

Now frankly, there are some downright daft – and pretentious – arguments doing the rounds in favour of both sides of this debate, but it seems to me that ultimately, the only one that is important is what you like yourself. In other words, it's entirely subjective.

Personally, I can do many things on a mobile device - writing this blog, for instance, or reading news on a wide variety of sites - but when I want to read a book, whether fiction or not, then I will read a book.

There is a pleasure in the physical aspect of a book. You hold it differently. It feels utterly different in your hands. That's not to say mobile devices are bad - they have their place.

The point is, there are arguments for both. And they're neither right nor wrong in simplistic terms.

But on this day, let's move away fom such diversions.

Books are a wonderful part of my life - as is literature (the two are not synonyms). As recently as 12 years ago, I considered Tolkien to be the greatest author ever and writer of the greatest ever novel(s), but fortunately, the last decade or so has seen me grow up. And realise - amongst other things - that Lord of the Rings is far from original. Far, far, far from it!

So here's a brief list to celebrate some of my favourite books - and hopefully inspire you to think about your favouring books too.

Favourite classic novel

I have to go for Pride and Prejudice, which I read approximately every two years - and always find something new in it.

I hate the chiclitification of it - this is a very clever satire, not a simplistic rom-com. Fab stuff - and too subtle of most people, it seems. Jane Austen still utterly rocks.

Favourite modern novel

The Tin Drum

There are quite a few contenders for this - more than one by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - but Günter Grass's debut novel was one of the first pieces of serious literature that I read, and it remains an astonishing work that lives high in my personal panteon - not least as an example of northern European magic realsm,, which people seem to be surprised exists.

Favourite short story/novella

Death in Venice

I have now lost track of how many times I have read Thomas Mann's apotheosis of western short fiction since I first discovered it, some 10 years ago.

It took me a month to read, that first time - I was so utterly stunned to discover that a book could have as many layers as an onion. I couldn't write anything myself for months thereafter. And then, like a damn bursting, thoughts and words burst forth: my working vocabulary seemed to grow expotentially.

There are reasons I rate Mann so very highly. And that's without even beginning to explore the ideas in a book that so many completely misread and/or misunderstand.

Favourite graphic novel

V for Vendetta

Alan Moore's graphic masterpiece was the first graphic novel I ever read. It was a shattering read and I've not seen it bettered.

Otherwise, Asterix. In English, German or even the original French.

Favourite piece of non-food non-fiction

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of Prussia

Christopher Clark's history of Prussia is a fabulous example of modern history writing. Quite simply superb.

Favourite piece of foodie non-fiction

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Anything by Elizabeth David is worth reading. But this collection is, in particular, an utter joy.

Favourite single volume of poetry

The Man With Night Sweats

Thom Gunn's collection left me stunned by its power when I read it in a single sitting. Extraordinary stuff.

Favourite childrens's book

Well Really, Mr Twiddle is possibly appalling, but it was the first non-picture book that I ever read, all on my own. And I sat in a little red and white whicker bucket chair and chuckled madly through the entire Enid Blyton affair.

Favourite piece of genre fiction

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler's masterpiece is, err, a masterpiece. Cynical poetry. Superb.

Favourite comic novel

Witches Abroad

Just on of Terry Pratchett's fantastic series of comedy fantasy satires. I could have picked any one of many others, but this gets the nod. It ranges from outright farce to heart-rending pathos.

I love PG Wodehouse and Tom Sharpe, but Pratchett has taken the English comic novel to new heights.

So, what about your own lists?

Getting over my reading listlessness

It’s been a funny old year thus far for books – having for once not even kept a list, I’m struggling to remember what, if anything, I read while winter was still with us.

That wouldn’t be a first – it seems a sort of unofficial habit of mine: to start off slowly in January and pick up as the months pass.

Venice gave me a kick on the book front: after re-reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice for the umpteenth time, it was on to Donna Leon’s police procedurals set amid the canals and featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti.

So far, I’ve read Death at La Fenice, Death in a Strange Country, The Anonymous Venetian, A Venetian Reckoning and Acqua Alta.

They good fun; quite dark and a bit obsessed with the Mafia and corruption, but with a cast of main characters that are reasonably well drawn. They're hardly the apotheosis of the genre, but they're enjoyable for when I want something light, which doesn't tax "the little grey cells" too much.

And there are plenty more in the series, but given the speed at which I gobble them up, I’m keeping a couple for summer and the beach.

I have also managed a couple of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels – Monstrous Regiment and then Night Watch, both of which were as brilliant as one expects from Sir Tez, plus Gore Vidal’s Sexually Speaking: Collected Sex Writings, which was odd, since it had nowhere near the amount of sex I was hoping for, but was superb anyway and had me ordering another collection of Vidal’s essays straight away.

And then, as seen in yesterday’s review, Blake Morrison’s The Last Weekend.

That interrupted a re-read of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep – and thank goodness I could return to that on Sunday evening.

Re-reads are intriguing. There aren’t many books I’ve read more than once – let alone more than that. I should take that as a lesson and I’d easily and quickly be able to cull my library. But Chandler, as with Mann, would be at no risk of eviction.

There have been other bits and pieces in the past few months – I can rarely read history in one go and have two tomes on the ‘reading-in-process’ pile at present.

But my mind is already turning to my reading list for Collioure at the end of August. We barely took enough last year and, since my new case (the old one had to be Sellotaped up on the way back from Venice) is bigger and lighter, it shouldn’t be a problem to ensure a nice variety this time.

On the more serious front, I’ve promised myself I’ll take Elizabeth David: A Biography by Lisa Chaney.

On something of a crime fiction kick, I’m tempted to try one of Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels, which are set in Sicily, together with one of the Wallander novels by Henning Mankell, plus – as mentioned already – some more Donna Leon and inevitably, some Maigret.

I may pack the new collection of Vidal essays and possibly the first volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, plus some poetry: I’m about two thirds of the way through Ted Hughes’s Tales from Ovid, which has finally conveyed to me the glories of Greek mythology – not least in actually getting me familiar with a few of the stories. On these grounds, I’m contemplating some more Hughes.

Such a selection should keep me going. At least for a few days!

Just an old romantic

How do you cope with the trip to work in the morning? Particularly on dark winter days and particularly on Mondays?

I seem to have spent the greater part of my winter travelling with headphones firmly attached to my ears and creating a bubble of warmth around me with Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade (first and third movements in particular).

My corporeal self might be on the 394, but whatever else it is that constitutes the rest of me is elsewhere: standing, à la Kate Winslet on the prow of the Titanic; only not on a liner at sea, but speeding over the snowswept Russian landscape in a horse-drawn sleigh.

Yes, I know that Scheherazade is supposed to be about Arabia, but Rimsky-Korsakov was also one of Russia’s great nationalistic composers, who used folk songs and lore in their own work. Such incorporation might have been known as orientalism, but what I hear – well, what I see – when I listen to Scheherazade is a Russia, blistered white by snow; a cold that burns your eyes and rasps the skin, and leaves you feeling more alive than ever and even vaguely heroic.

This morning, for a change, it was Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra – the second movement is like floating in honey. If it’s not the apotheosis of Romantic music (and convention certainly says that that has to be Wagner) then it’s not far off.

But this is all really quite new in terms of my musical tastes. I’ve loved classical music since I was a teenager, but until recent years, the likes of Wagner and Strauss were far too rich a diet for me.

Then something happened to change that.

It was a few years ago. I was heading west with m’friend and culinary guru George, to visit Garcias & Sons, a rather fabulous Spanish deli and cafe on Portobello Road.

It was a long journey by bus – neither of us like the Tube, which, apart from anything else, is always too noisy to enable conversation.

So there we were, upstairs on an old Routemaster, plodding down The Strand, chatting away. And since George is German, I happened to mention, as a snippet that might be of passing interest, that where I had been doing a bit of work in the preceding weeks there was a German colleague called Brunhilda.

This – unexpectedly on my part – proved to be a cue. Specifically, for the story of the Nibelungenlied – the German legend that is the basis for Wagner’s operatic Ring Cycle, and an influence on many other artists – not least, JRR Tolkien (and more of him later).

But on the basis that one of the central characters is called Brunhilda, I was told the story – of Siegfried, the dragon, Kriemhild, Brunhilda, Gunther, Hagen … all the way to the climax, where the Burgundians are burned alive in the hall, loyal unto death.

I don’t know whether, in reality, my jaw really did hit the floor of the bus, but that’s what it felt like.

Metaphorical or actual, my gobsmackedness was real.

First, there was the shock of being told a story. I have no other memories of anyone, at any time in my life, telling me a story in such a manner. And this was storytelling – as an art; an ancient art of communication. I don’t remember anything like it from my childhood. And certainly nothing since, but this was not childlike storytelling, but something completely grown-up.

And then there was the dawning realisation that this was what romanticism meant. Not daffodils and bland insipidity. Not soppy stories of lovelorn couples, but something with teeth and guts and passion.

From there is was hardly a major step to start ‘getting’ Wagner. And it was like finding part of my soul.

Coincidentally, I have a slight Tolkien connection. Around 22 years ago, just after I’d moved south, my parents decided that I hadn’t had a holiday in years. This much was true.

So they decided that I should holiday with them. In Torquay on the so-called ‘English Riviera’. This, by and large, was a mistake: a single woman of such tender years and an un-rebellious nature is not likely to have much fun when holidaying with parents who believe that she should dine with them in the hotel every night and go to bed at the same time they do (for some reason or other, I also remember trout with almonds and dry white wine from that holiday – which tells you something if that was a central memory from a whole fortnight away).

Anyway, the hotel that we stayed at was run by a nephew of JRR. It had, if memory serves, nine rooms. And the owner and his wife had long been thinking of having each room designated not by a number, but by a place from Middle Earth. So Rivendell and Bag End etc. The idea was to have illustrations from the books done and then mounted on the doors beneath acrylic plates.

The problem was that of all the people they’d met down the years, the Tolkien enthusiasts couldn’t draw and the artists didn’t like the books.

My father leapt in to offer my services as someone who could tick both boxes. Thus, in the face of the understandable skepticism of JRR’s nephew, I meekly went and bought myself a drawing pad and some pencils, and proceeded to sketch some ideas.

I got the commission. Eventually, I even got a bit of money for it. And I can still legitimately claim to have done artwork for the Tolkien family, based on JRR’s books.

So there you go – that’s my little Tolkien connection. More salient in terms of this story is the point that, until just over 10 years ago, if you’d have asked me to name what I considered the best book in the whole wide world, I’d have said: Lord of the Rings.

Now before I upset anyone, let’s make it clear that Lord of the Rings is a very fine work of literature.

But to quote Terry Pratchett – who was commenting in 1999, during the frenzy of polls and lists marking the end of the millennium: “If you don’t think Lord of the Rings is the greatest book in the world in your teens, there’s something wrong with you.

“If you think Lord of the Rings is the greatest book in the world in your forties – there’s something wrong with you.”

I was saved from that embarrassment by the onset of my own late (but better late than never) surge into something resembling adulthood, and the suggestion by George (after a request for recommendations) that I might appreciate Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks.

I did. And being aware of the title of Mann’s seminal novella (but not of the first thing about its actual subject matter), I read that next. And was thus thoroughly gobsmacked all the way into the middle of the following week. Or to put it more precisely, I found myself incapable of writing anything for several months – and then finally, when standing on a remote beach in Ireland, watching the wind blow a layer of sand across the beach like a magic carpet, I struggled to find the words to describe the scene to myself. And when they came, it was a dam break, with words pouring out: a vocabulary that seemed to grow almost exponentially in the coming weeks.

You see? It’s that romantic thing – and that’s before you get to Visconti’s film version, with the lush sounds of Mahler’s third and fifth symphonies making up the score.

Not that I realised the romantic nature of the story at the time – that only emerged later, after that telling of the Nibelungenlied.

The sense of fate, of the tragic but somehow honourable – all that: a feeling of something outside – beyond – convention; raw and edgy, violent and noble at the same time.

So there you go. Yesterday might have been Valentine’s Day, but give me the power and the passion of the Nibelungen any day.

Give me the thorns and not the roses – or at least, if you’re going to give me the roses, gives me the thorns too.

Please.