Cathi Unsworth

In wartime superstition runs rife, but we've had to wait for Cathi Unsworth to draw out the strange links between spies, sorcerers and superstition in this, her latest and best novel. From the bones of almost unbelievable true-life events involving witchcraft and conspiracy in the mist-shrouded British countryside, Unsworth brings to life a Dennis Wheatley-esque cast of characters both real and imagined, and spins a superbly sinister mystery that had me hugging myself with delight.
​(Christopher Fowler 2017-11-02)

With an exquisite feel for the English countryside, a sure eye for a lavish occult ritual and a colourfully sketched collection of raffish, bohemian characters, That Old Black Magic is a carnival of dark delights… (Declan Hughes, Irish Times 2018-03-24)

That Old Black Magic blends fact and fiction for a well researched, evocative tale about one of the weirder outposts of second world war British intelligence. (Laura Wilson Guardian 2018-02-17)

Author Cathi Unsworth's latest book That Old Black Magic is out now on Serpent's Tail  - Order your copy here
The Audiobook read by Jon Glover is also out now –
Order your copy here
Or download from Audible here

                                                                                                    Site last updated: 19/9/2018

NEW AUDIO:
CATHI'S MIXTAPE ON
THE VOICE OF CASSANDRE

The Trans-Europe Express radio show the Voice of Cassandre asked Cathi to do a mixtape. No talk, just one hour of rocking good tunes, featuring The Tornados, Lydia Lunch, Barry Adamson, Gallon Drunk, Cesarians, Cardiacs and more HERE

FORTHCOMING EVENTS…

CATHI AT
BLOODY SCOTLAND
WITH NICK TRIPLOW
AND HARRY BRETT
SATURDAY 22 SEPTEMBER
ALLAN PARK SOUTH CHURCH, STIRLING 12.15AM

THE LEGACY OF BRIT NOIR AT BLOODY SCOTLAND
SATURDAY 22 SEPTEMBER 2018
ALLAN PARK SOUTH CHURCH, STIRLING
12.15AM-1.15PM TICKETS £8/£7 CONCS
TO BOOK IN ADVANCE GO HERE
Tough guys and tougher broads, gangland hoods in sharp suits and trails of cigarette smoke, cops on the take and the band on the run. Brit Noir dates back to the brutal, heady days of Get Carter and has never gone out of fashion.
Nick Triplow has documented the life of Jack Carter’s creator Ted Lewis and the Brit Noir phenomenon. He is joined by two authors whose novels ably carry on this rich tradition. Harry Brett’s Red Hot Front tells of gangsters in Great Yarmouth, while Cathi, who has also written about a certain similar place in East Anglia in Weirdo, will be talking about the Midlands/Fenlands settings of That Old Black Magic. With probably more than a passing nod to a certain Mr Raymond.
FOR MORE ON BLOODY SCOTLAND AND A FULL PROGRAMME OF EVENTS, PLEASE  GO HERE

CATHI AND PAUL WILLETTS
IN SPIES AND LIES AT WYMONDHAM WORDS, FRIDAY 19 OCTOBER 2018, WYMONDHAM LIBRARY

SPIES AND LIES
FRIDAY 19 OCTOBER, 7.30PM
WYMONDHAM LIBRARY, BACK LANE, WYMONDHAM NR18 0QB
TICKETS £6 IN ADVANCE FROM THE BOOK HIVE NORWICH OR KETTS BOOKS WYMONDHAM

Cathi will be talking about THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC with fellow Sohemian author PAUL WILLETTS,  biographer of Paul Raymond and Julian Maclaren-Ross, whose latest book KING CON is an almost-unbelievable true-life tale about a Jazz Age US imposter who strode the world in buckskin, pretending to be Native American Chief White Elk.
We'll be discussing why we are drawn to seek out forgotten histories and how these bizarre stories from the past can still make compulsive and relevant reading today.
The event opens this year's WYMONDHAM WORDS festival. For more information on the event and the rest of the eclectic and exciting line-up, go HERE

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 1: CATHI TALKS ABOUT BELLA AT KENTISH TOWN LIBRARY, 31 OCTOBER
FREE EVENT

KENTISH TOWN LIBRARY
262-266 KENTISH TOWN ROAD
LONDON NW5 2AA
7.30PM EVENT FREE!
Cathi will be giving an illustrated talk about the bizarre and compelling true story of the Hagley Woods Mystery, as recently featured in Fortean Times, that is the basis of THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC. When four young boys went foraging in Worcestershire woods on 18 April 1943, they found more than they bargained for in the hollow of an old elm tree – the bones of a woman whose true identity has never been established but continues to haunt the Clent Hills to this day. Was she a witch? Was she a spy? Why did she become known as Bella? And who spirited her remains away… Find out more on Samhain eve!

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL 2:
CATHI, SYD MOORE, BETH UNDERDOWN AND SALLY GARDNER TALK WITCHES
AND WEREWOLVES WITH LUCY POPESCU AT WATERSTONES GOWER ST, NOVEMBER 1, 6.30PM

WATERSTONES GOWER STREET
82 GOWER STREET, LONDON WC1E 6EQ
020 7637 1577
6.30PM £8 WITH GLASS OF WINE, TICKETS FROM HERE
Cathi once more joins the wonderful SYD MOORE along with fellow authors BETH UNDERDOWN and SALLY GARDNER with host LUCY POPESCU to talk about witches, werewolves, warlocks and wizards and how magic lore, fairy tales and real life occult mysteries have shaped our work.

NEW PUBLICATIONS…

CATHI IN SPIRITUS SOHO BY ROBERT RUBBISH

Cathi was delighted to be asked by Soho artist ROBERT RUBBISH to contribute the forward to his new book SPIRITUS SOHO, a culmination of his project to salute the Capital's most notorious and decadent quarter before the wrecking ball takes all. Robert's beautiful artworks (The Three Ages of Derek Raymond shown above) draw on his deep knowledge of Soho's history and the outsiders who made the place: "always up or down but never on the level," as Keith Waterhouse so beautifully put it. The book was launched at The French House, in the Bermuda Triangle area of Soho between Gerry's and The Coach and Horses where so many souls have disappeared before. Here are Robert and Cathi at the launch:

You can pick up a copy of SPIRITUS SOHO – and a limited edition print if you are feeling flush - directly from The French if you get there fast enough. Or you can order the book, priced £25 from HERE More about Robert and his work HERE

NEW! Read Cathi's feature on the Trail of Helen Duncan at The Revisionist

One of the major plot strands of That Old Black Magic is the trail of Scottish medium Helen Duncan, the last woman to be prosected in this country for Witchcraft at a sensational Old Baily trial in 1944. How did a 17th century law get evoked to persecute a woman for such a crime in the middle of World War II – and perhaps more importantly, why? Read Cathi's take on this still-controversial case HERE

CATHI IN THE LIFE OF A SONG

Two of Cathi's columns from Financial Times' regular Saturday music column and podcast THE LIFE OF A SONG are included in the wonderful anthology of the same name, edited by DAVID CHEAL and JAN DALLEY. Fifty songs that have permeated the public consciousness are considered in their many differing guises – songs that have been born, reborn and sometimes hideously mangled on their journies through time and space. Contributing essays on the strange stories behind JOHN LEYON'S Johnny Remember Me and NANCY SINATRA and LEE HAZELWOOD's Some Velvet Morning, Cathi is in great company, including PETER ASPDEN, HELEN BROWN, BERNADETTE McNULTY and IAN McCAN, with subjects ranging  from Amazing Grace, Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground and Wade in the Water to Enter Sandman, Smells Like Teen Spirit and I Believe in Father Christmas…
Published by Brewers/Financial Times the book is in bookshops now
priced £12.99
For more information, please go HERE

CATHI IN DEADLIER: 100 OF THE BEST CRIME STORIES WRITTEN BY WOMEN
EDITED BY SOPHIE HANNAH

Cathi is included in the new anthology DEADLIER: 100 OF THE BEST CRIME STORIES WRITTEN BY WOMEN, Edited by that mistress of the field SOPHIE HANNAH. By strange coincidence, the title of Cathi's contribution is also that of a Lee Hazlewood song, TROUBLE IS A LONESOME TOWN and it sits alongside such diverse names as DAPHNE DU MAURIER, MARGARET ATWOOD and VAL McDERMID - just the thing to cuddle up with on those long, dark, winter evenings…
Published by Head of Zeus, DEADLIER is in bookshops now priced £25

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY by Arthur La Bern 
London Books re-release of a classic London novel with an introduction by CATHI UNSWORTH

Cathi has been honoured to write the introduction for a new edition of Arthur La Bern's IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY  – the book from whence the 1947 Ealing classic film by Robert Hamer and starring Googie Withers came. Which is every bit as fantastic as its cinematic rendering. If you did Derek Raymond, awe awestruck by Alexander Baron and intoxicated by Patrick Hamilton, then Arthur La Bern is a writer you will want to know more about.   

Born into the Islington streets run by Darby Sabini and his gang, Arthur was a Fleet Street crime reporter and war correspondent who flew with the Fleet Air Arm in the Pacific during WWII. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, including GOODBYE PICCADILLY, FAREWELL LEICESTER SQUARE, which became Alfred Hitchcock's equally notorious FRENZY – which Arthur hated. He lived high on the hog and then fell from that distance, sleeping rough on Brighton beach towards the end of his days. Every experience filtered through to his hauntingly evocative descriptions of wide boys, working girls, hardbitten hacks and the coppers that chase them down, capturing vistas of a lost London and bringing them vividly back to life. 

IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY is available from LONDON BOOKS website, price £11.99. You can order a copy and  find out more about other LONDON BOOKS titles HERE

Cathi in London Fictions on
Lynne Reid Banks' The L-Shaped Room

Cathi is honoured and delighted to be included in the new compendium LONDON FICTIONS, co-edited by JERRY WHITE and ANDREW WHITEHEAD and published by FIVE LEAVES on
18 April 2013.

Cathi chose The L-Shaped Room, discovered while researching her 2010 novel Bad Penny Blues. The book, and Bryan Forbes subsequent movie adaptation, vividly evoke the lost bedsitter land of West London in post-War, pre-swinging London.

From Child of the Jago to Brick Lane, London has always inspired novelists, seeking to present a sense of the city, whether real or imagined. Here, writers and historians take you through some of the captivating novels, past and present which depict London from East End boys to West End girls, bed-sit land to docklands, immigrants to emigrants, encompassing all of the diversity of human life.


To order from Amazon, please go HERE

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WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM?