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A PAD IN THE STRAW
& Other Ghost Stories
by CHRISTOPHER WOODFORDE
With a Preface by Giles Woodforde
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A PAD IN THE STRAW
was first published sixty-two years ago in 1952. Long out of print, this new
edition retains Lord David Cecil's Foreword to the original volume but now
includes a Preface specially written by the author's son, Giles Woodforde, and
an Afterword by Richard Dalby — making it the definitive edition of this
oft-admired collection of 'strange tales for the connoisseur'.
Contains twenty stories: ‘A Pad in the Straw’, ‘Malcolm’, ‘The Mirror of Man’s Damnation’, ‘Colin,
Peter and Philip’, ‘Sacrilege at St. George's’, ‘Hugh’, ‘Expert Devilry’, ‘Jeremy’,
‘The Old Tithe Barn’, ‘The Chalk Pit’, ‘Michael’, ‘Goutté-de-Sang’,
‘Richard’, ‘The 'Doom' Window at Breckham’, ‘Robert and Andrew’, ‘Roderick’, ‘Lost
and Found’, ‘Tony, Ian and Co.’, ‘Ex Libris’, ‘Cushi.’ “We soon discovered that Dr Woodforde had a
natural flair for
storytelling, especially weird and mysterious ones involving the
supernatural,
subtly different to the typical ghost story. So frightening were some
of these
stories that they found us burrowing even deeper into our beds. Before
we left
the school we implored him to write down the tales." |
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Price: £17.50 Limited edition Jacketed Hardback
ISBN-13: 978-1-908274-28-1
Book
Dimensions: 210 × 148 mm
Publication Date: October 2013 SOLD OUT
A Pad in the Straw |
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We’re
pleased to announce the forthcoming paperback edition
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Publication date: Spring 2018
Full details and how to order will be posted soon
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A full-length review of A PAD IN THE STRAW by David
Harris in THE GHOSTS & SCHOLARS M.R. Newsletter (No: 23, March 2013)
A review by Mario Guslandi of Sundial's A PAD IN
THE STRAW posted at THIRTEEN O'CLOCK.
Also reviewed by Mark Andresen at THE PAN REVIEW.
(Both links will open in a separate window).
"A
recent review of A Pad in the Straw by Christopher
Woodforde (published by The Sundial Press) in Ghosts and
Scholars resulted
in a rush of orders and only two hundred copies have been printed! I
ordered my
copy via the website (www.sundialpress.co.uk) just after I returned
from
Cambridge and it arrived first class the following day. How about that
for
service?
It’s a handsome, well-produced, hard-backed volume (with an
illustrated dust-wrapper) exactly the same size as the current Sarob
publications. Yes, it is perfect bound but at £17.50 (p&p
included within the UK) I’m not
going to complain about that. The book contains the same twenty stories
and
prefatory note by Lord David Cecil as in the 1952 Dent original (lowest
price
on Abebooks, £85) as well as a preface by the author’s son, Giles
Woodforde,
and an afterword by Richard Dalby which is a most valuable addition.
Thus I
discovered Christopher’s family connection to the famous eighteenth
century
clerical diarist and his curacies in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, not far
from my
current home.
Although written for and told to the choristers of New
College, Oxford, the tales are not childish and they have a distinctly
antiquarian, Jamesian character … "
An
excerpt from
a review in the quarterly Newsletter issued (Oct/Nov 2012) by
A Ghostly Company |
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‘Christopher
Woodforde was born on 29 November 1907, and was one of the five children (four
sons and one daughter) of Dr R. E. H. Woodforde, a general practitioner in
Ashwell (Hertfordshire). He was educated at King’s School, Bruton, and
Cambridge University (Peterhouse). He was ordained in 1930, after study at
Wells Theological College, after which he held a number of curacies, including
King’s Lynn (1930–32), Louth with Welton-le-Wold (1932–34), and Drayton with
Hellesdon, Norwich (1934–36). Subsequently, he became a Rector in Somerset
(Exford in 1936, Axbridge in 1939), and Vicar of Steeple Morden
(Cambridgeshire) in 1945. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries
(FSA) on 14 January 1939 and resigned from the fellowship on 31 December 1957.’
From VIDIMUS the only on-line magazine devoted to
medieval stained glass.
To
read the full article please click here (link will open in a new tab or window).
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| | [The first edition jacket blurb.] |
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