part0018

Algernon Blackwood (1869–1951) is one of the most renowned exponents of weird fiction and surely the master of the weird wood. He turned to trees in many stories, but most notably in two of his great novellas, ‘The Willows’ (1907) and ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ (1912). These tales are striking for the way that trees appear as purposeful actors. In ‘The Willows’ two canoeists on an epic trip down the Danube take refuge on a river island, only to find themselves beset by trees, creeping menacingly closer as part of an unearthly force at work in this remote corner of Eastern Europe. ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’ takes place at the edge of England’s New Forest and depicts a man increasingly falling under the influence of the woods. Trees are represented in the story as conscious and communal beings in a way that anticipates recent research into the “wood wide web”: the complex network of roots, fungi and microorganisms that enables something like communication between forest trees. The forest in Blackwood’s stories has a profound influence on the human mind: it “might even”, we learn in ‘The Man Whom the Trees Loved’, “engulf human vitality into the immense whirlpool of its own vast dreaming life”.

‘Ancient Lights’ is one of many shorter “ten minute stories” that Blackwood published in newspapers. Here Blackwood takes us to West Sussex and the area around Chanctonbury Ring, a hill fort with a deep association with ghosts, magic and the devil (you have a better than average chance of seeing a UFO here too). The title refers to a long-established right under English common law by which a landowner can claim “the unobstructed passage of light and air from adjoining land”. It is this legal principle that threatens the future of a copse that comes between a red house and its view of the Downs. The woods, in true Blackwood style, have other ideas.