A detailed examination of the Grimms’ version of ‘Maid Maleen’, a dark and serious tale of loss and abandonment which, with its threatened prince and active princess, frequently undercuts the accumulated cliches of the fairy tale while reminding us that those stereotypes are not as common as the general reader often assumes.
Read MoreSeven Miles of Steel Thistles
A collection of my essays on fairy tales and folklore. The title is borrowed from an Irish fairy tale in which the hero gallops his pony over ‘seven miles of hill on fire, and seven miles of steel thistles, and seven miles of sea.’
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My essay on the fairytale ‘Maid Maleen’ appears in ‘Gramarye’
Jacqueline Simpson reviews ‘Seven Miles of Steel Thistles’
Good reviews are always lovely to receive, but sometimes you receive one which means more than most. This one, from Jacqueline Simpson, sometime President of the Folklore Society, Visiting Professor…
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A Conversation about Fairy Tales
Mary Hoffman: What was the first fairy tale you can remember?
Katherine Langrish: Probably Briar Rose, aka the Sleeping Beauty. I’d be about seven or eight and was sent to read the story of Briar Rose to the headmistress of my little school…
Read MoreRecent Work
The Weirdstone of Talybont
'I was in South Wales, standing on a real hill with a real stone in my hand, imaginatively inhabiting a children’s book I read for the first time in 1965, which has stayed with me ever since.'
All Shall Be Well
'I woke up to see a skinny little imp skipping around the room...'