These Our Monsters: The English Heritage Book of New Folktale, Myth and Legend

‘Nobody believes you when you talk about the whispering … There’s a lot they don’t believe. Like when you say the river has very old creatures living in it, with great long jawbones and rainbow skin.’
From ‘The Hand Under the Stone’ by Sarah Hall

Ours has always been an island full of folklore. Even today, we look for mystery in the mundane and seek the thrills that only a well-spun story can provide. We create tales to help us to make sense of our changing world, we pass down family histories that blur the boundaries between fact and fiction – we tell each other stories, as we have done since the glow of our campfires lit the caves of prehistory.

In These Our Monsters, English Heritage brings together eight new stories by well-known contemporary authors inspired by the sites in our care. They have peered through the cracks in our castles and scoured the soil beneath our stone circles to find inspiration for this wonderful collection of reimagined myths and legends.