The Magic Carpet Flight Manual

**addition to post: the programme is now available to listen to online or download here**

The name of this programme alone makes me want to listen to it. The Magic Carpet Flight Manual will air online and on the BBC World Service this Friday (times here):

Web-dreaming one day, writer Cathy FitzGerald stumbled on a site belonging to a museum in Iran. It purported to tell the "true history" of the flying carpet and detailed its many uses – military, as a means of aerial attack; commercial, as a vehicle for the transport of goods; and cultural, as a device to help readers in the library at Alexandria reach the high books. The article appeared across the web, rarely with any caveat or credit.

In search of a "real" flying carpet, Cathy tracks down the article's author, Azhar Abidi, who helps her separate carpet fiction from carpet fact. She goes on to meet a physicist working on levitation in the quantum world, and a Japanese astronaut who took a carpet ride in space.

Cathy FitzGerald explores the past, present, and future of the magic carpet and wonders what our desire to defy gravity tells us about ourselves.

from the BBC website

I love the term 'web-dreaming', it sounds so much more inspirational and productive than the haphazard, frantic click-throughs I too often indulge in. Web-hunting, web-scrounging, web-sifting, web-tunnelling all come more easily to my mind, but from now on I will only web-dream. Funnily enough I came across the peculiar museum website mentioned a while ago whilst researching magic carpets for a previous carpet post.

The author of the fictional history of the carpet Azhar Abidi is a writer, born and raised in Pakistan, who now lives in Australia (thanks to Matt at Books and Adventures for the link to his blog). Marina Warner has also been interviewed for the programme and her fascinating podcast on magic carpets, which is well worth listening to, is still available online here.

Photograph by churl CC license: some rights reserved.

The tales of William Palmer

What if all the myths and folktales of these islands were true? And what if they were not only true but present now in our world? All the spirits, existing, as they have always existed, in the gaps between tower blocks, in the shadows under bridges, in the corner of our vision...
(from the Pilgrim programme info)

Stepping slightly off the crooked path of fairy tales and into the undergrowth of folklore that sprawls alongside, I wanted to let you know about Pilgrim, a wonderful series of BBC Radio 4 plays by Sebastian Baczkiewicz inspired by the folklore of the British Isles.

William Palmer is 900 years old—he was cursed by a fellow pilgrim on the road to Canterbury in 1185 for claiming that Christianity would wipe out the old beliefs. That pilgrim was the Lord of Faerie and William must forever walk between the worlds of the Greyfolk (them) and the Hotbloods (us). Pilgrim is a delightful—and frequently chilling—mix of tales old and new. The second series started today with The Drowned Church, and it's available to listen to online for the next seven days. There's also an interesting 'making of' blog post here. It's a series not to be missed!


Photo by Steve Bowbrick CC license: some rights reserved.

Moss Witch by Sara Maitland

I just wanted to draw your attention to a wonderful story that is on the shortlist for the BBC National Short Story Award and currently available to listen to online, or download, as a podcast.

'Moss Witch' is set in a remote tract of ancient woodland in Western Scotland and involves an encounter between a young bryologist (his hair, 'the colour of winter killed bracken') and a Moss Witch (her face, 'carved with long wrinkles running up and down her forehead and cheeks'). The story is beautifully read by Hannah Gordon and I'm not going to give anything else away because I don't want to spoil it, you will just have to listen to it. Even better, listen to it and buy the book it's published in too (details below).

There is something so magical about moss; I grew up in a house beside a wood, and even in the dead of winter, when empty branches let through so much stark grey sky, and the air is bitterly cold, there is a softness to the wood where the ground is carpeted, and the trees clothed, in moss. I'm sure moss softens sounds too, creating a special hush and adding a sense of otherworldliness to the places where it thrives and hides. 'Moss Witch' captures this perfectly.

Author Sara Maitland, a writer of novels, short stories and non-fiction, is no stranger to writing fairy tale and folklore inspired fiction (see her two most recent collections Far North & Other Dark Tales and On Becoming a Fairy Godmother). She is also currently working on a book about fairy stories and forests.

'Moss Witch' is published in When it Changed, an anthology edited by Geoff Ryman, and published by the brilliant Comma Press, a Manchester based independent publisher who have a talent for bringing wonderful books into being (I've read two of their other books this year Under the Dam, by David Constantine and Stone Tree, by Gyrðir Elíasson, which if you love haunting, well-crafted short fiction I'd highly recommend).

When it Changed is the result of a collaboration between writers and scientists 'Composed collaboratively – through a series of visits and conversations between leading authors and practicing scientists – it offers fictionalised glimpses into the far corners of current research'. Maitland effortlessly combines the scientific detail, I imagine she gleaned from her scientist, with magical prose.

I urge you to listen to 'Moss Witch' when you get a quiet moment. I've only really discovered the delight of listening to audio stories this year, and I find that especially when my eyes are too tired to read, but I'm still longing for a story to help me divide work from sleep, they are the perfect accompaniment to a bath (be sure to cleverly wrap your MP3 player though - I've already lost one to steam damage!).

You can download or listen to 'Moss Witch' and the four other finalists here.

The winner will be announced live from the awards ceremony tonight at 7.15pm on BBC Radio 4's Front Row.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Sara Maitland!


The photograph is of a tree in the woods by the house I grew up in.

Marina Warner podcast

Marina Warner's recent lecture ‘Figures in the Carpet: Magic and the 1001 Nights’, which I blogged about here, is now available as a podcast.

If, like me, you love books of hers, such as From the Beast to the Blonde and Phantasmagoria, then you'll really enjoy this (and if you haven't read those books you definitely should!). Warner has a wonderful way of bringing together all kinds of fascinating tidbits from the realms of history, culture and myth, and exploring the connections between them in an engaging and enlightening way.

In this lecture she examines the magic of the flying carpet, from its earliest association with Solomon, through its appearances in the Nights, and in its ongoing influence as a 'metaphor activated as fact'. She explores human fantasies of flight, and some of the other domestic flying vehicles of folklore (including beds and sofas), before settling on Freud's couch and the importance of its own 'magic carpet'.

You can listen to or download the podcast from the Queen Mary, University of London website here.


Photograph by Elke Bock 2003