What a joy it was to host the wonderful Sarah Clegg in the bookshop last week to tell us about her new book, ‘Perilous Enchantment: The True History of Faeries’. We could have carried on the question and answer session for hours! And what a treat to host it in the shop, it was magical.

In pursuit of the fae, in all their darkness and splendour, Clegg visits significant faerie sites across the world, including the Thirteenth Night celebrations of Iceland, where the elf fires are lit; the Eildon Hills in the Borders, in search of a beautiful enchantress; and an entrance to fairyland in the Apennine Mountains, among many others.

She tracks the fascinating history of fairies, from the pre-Christian creatures of classical myths to the stories of fairy royalty told in the medieval French courts; from the early modern period in which fairies became bound up with the witch trials, right through to their contemporary manifestation in both the sanitised cuteness of girlhood and in the darker realm of fantasy and romantasy.

‘Ambitious and wide-ranging, Sarah Clegg isn’t afraid to lead her reader into the more disturbing reaches of this subject to explore how the magical realm reflects our human joys and struggles. I loved it – highly readable, rigorously researched and underpinned by the writer’s personal passion for the subject’ – JESS KIDD