Men Only: The UK magazine, 1935-1963

Chris Harte has just published another of his comprehensive histories/bibliographies of a magazine. This time it is the UK magazine Men Only, which ran for 329 issues from 1935 to 1963. 

Contributors include  Michael Arlen, Hilaire Belloc, Ambrose Bierce, John Buchan, Karel Capek, Arthur C. Clarke, Rupert Croft-Cooke, Lord Dunsany, Negley Farson (Bram Stoker's nephew), Ronald Fraser, David Garnett, Louis Golding, James Hilton, Laurence Housman, Alan Hyder, Edgar Jepson, Gerald Kersh, Eric Linklater, Percy Lubbock, Andre Maurois, A. A. Milne, Christopher Morley, Eimar O'Duffy, J.B. Priestley, Maurice Richardson,  Rafael Sabatini, L.A.G. Strong, H.G. Wells, Charles Williams, Oscar Wilde, P.G, Wodehouse, Philip Wylie, and many others, famous or otherwise. (My list here is skewed towards authors that readers of Wormwoodiana might be interested in.) 

Of course a major item of interest is the long history of the magazine, which takes up twenty-some pages. Men Only Magazine 1935-1963: A History and Bibliography (Sports History Publishing, 2026), by Chris Harte, should be appearing shortly in the usual venues for ordering book.  The ISBN is: 9781898010234. Here is the cover:

Chris Harte has other magazine histories/bibliographies that I've written about before.

1.  The Captain

2.  The Badminton

3.  Fore's Sporting Notes & Sketches 

4.  Lilliput Magazine 

 

 

One New Book, One Forthcoming

In December, I was asked by the British Library "Tales of the Weird" imprint to write an Introduction to The Luck of the Town, by Marion Fox, scheduled for April 2026. The timing was short, but the introduction was finished in January and the book is now out.  The cover went through some variations, but the finished version, embossed, is quite nice. I copy it below, and also the rear cover, which gives a a good blurb for the book (written not by me, but by the editor at the British Library). Click on the images to make them larger. 

 

And another book to which I have contributed has just been announced for publication in January 2027, nicely in hardcover and a more affordable trade paperback. It's available for pre-order at the publisher's webpage. I've requested that they add a table of contents to the page.  My contribution is "A Checklist of the Published Writings of Richard Adams."  It is divided into five sections: Books; Stories; Nonfiction; Juvenilia; and Selected Interviews. I was surprised that no one had ever attempted such an Adams bibliography before. 

 

The Centenary of 'The Green Lacquer Pavilion' by Helen Beauclerk

  

The Green Lacquer Pavilion by Helen Beauclerk celebrates its centenary around now. The author was 32 when she completed the book in 1925, and it was published in the Spring lists of the following year. In 1924, she had met, and become the partner of, the artist Edmund Dulac, who illustrated the book. This graceful fantasy is written in a light pastiche of early 18^th century prose, somewhat modernised, and it is set at the cusp of the Queen Anne/Georgian period. Its framework is not dissimilar to a Thomas Love Peacock satire of a century later: a group of genteel eccentrics gather at a country house for conversation, fine dining and dalliance.

 On his journey there, we are privy to the thoughts of one guest, Mr Valentine Clare. He is “naturally of a speculative turn of mind” and thinks the house he is to visit holds a “spiritual mystery” , though he cannot quite define what this is. Taveridge Hall, near Guildford, Surrey, seems to him to be under a spell, “as though behind every door, concealed behind every curtain, or hidden in the grass of the garden, there was an enigma you could not understand”. This spell is enhanced by the presence of Miss Julia Cherrivale, whose acquaintance he hopes to cultivate. Among the party also is the saturnine Mr Horace Gilvry, “sage and philosopher”, a Luciferian “known for his great interest in astrology and all magical arts”, who believes there are spirits in trees and stones and flowers.

While his robust, horsey host and a similar guest talk politics and Mr Gilvry murmurs on arcane matters, Clare falls into a reverie in which he sees objects with a heightened sensibility: “the very room was turned to some dream chamber”. This is a prelude to a more dramatic vision, this time seen by all the party, when a Chinese lacquer screen in the drawing room opens out and becomes the pavilion of the title. This in turn gives onto an unfamiliar landscape, and the group are now beguiled into another world. Once in this domain, each of them meets adventures that seem, as E.F. Bleiler observed, especially suitable to their character, and in particular their foibles, whether rumbustious or delicate, bluff or visionary.

The author indulges in a fairly freewheeling exotic fantasy of the Arabian Nights type, involving pirates, a Sultan, a Grand Vizier, a King, Princess, a Sacred Phoenix, scheming courtiers and flourishes of magic. There is perhaps a hint of Lord Dunsany or of Ernest Bramah in this polished, semi-facetious, and somewhat distanced cavalcade. 

Critics didn’t quite know what to make of it. A contemporary review in The Spectator said: “An air of easy artifice suffuses the book, which provides much gently agreeable reading, and would make a most acceptable gift out of season, or birthday present at a reasonable price.” This is pleasant enough, but a bit diminishing. The New York Times appeared rather bewildered: “If everything were as good as Miss Beauclerk's style, “The Green Lacquer Pavilion” would be a notable book”. It was written with “the utmost grace and ease . . . But her subject matter is by no means so good, is sometimes bearable only because of the style. She has attempted romantic fantasy in the modern manner, . . . lightly freaked with satire and irony, and she has somehow not quite succeeded with it.”

Helen Beauclerk went on to write five more novels, of which the most noted is The Love of the Foolish Angel (1929), a fantasy about a fallen angel, again involving a Luciferian theme. The Green Lacquer Pavilion has some affinity in its rich style with such books as Ronald Fraser’s Flower Phantoms of the same year, Robert Nichols’ Under the Yew (1928), John Rosenberg’s The Desperate Art (1955), and similar rococo fantasies. It is a beautifully sustained conceit, as if Jane Austen had sent her characters to the court of the Chinese Emperor rather than Bath. The prose is perfectly balanced, the characters tart and persuasive, and the bold fantastical dimension is deftly introduced. It used to be quite common to see the title in shelves of old hardback fiction (it went into several editions), but it seems to be less visible now.

(Mark Valentine)

Tea and Gargoyles

   

Tea and Gargoyles is a seventh selection of essays from Tartarus Press, just announced. I start by discussing stories and novels that are ‘on the margins’ of the uncanny, which are often more interesting than more overt treatments, looking at several obscure or overlooked examples, as well as work by Robert Aickman, Walter de la Mare, and the witchcraft novels of Gladys Mitchell.   

The twenty-nine essays also explore 17^th century booksellers’ signs, a forgotten Edwardian poet of the fantastic, a mid-Victorian prophet and crystal-gazer, esoteric books and records of the Nineteen Seventies, the early literature of mah jongg books and the game’s links to a ring-tailed lemur, and liminal, otherworldly landscape.

There is an affectionate pastiche of the fiction of Barbara Pym, a celebration of imaginary books in fiction, and a treasury of odd facts and incidents found in passing in a wide miscellany of books. As usual, there are several reports of bookshop expeditions and the odd volumes encountered on these. 

About a dozen of the pieces are previously unpublished, and others have appeared only in small edition journals.

Tea and Gargoyles is first published in a limited hardcover edition of 350 copies.  

(Mark Valentine)

Farewell to Aardvark Books

One day, about seventeen years ago, I was on one of my second-hand book quests in the Marcher country between England and Wales when I saw a sign on the main road reading 'Aardvark Books', with an arrow pointing along a minor turning. It happened that not long before I had followed a similar enticement, only to end up at a warehouse selling (new) text books to schools, so I ignored this one, reasoning it was probably the same kind of thing. This was a mistake, leading to one of my several rueful book-collecting mottoes: 'Always Follow Signs to Books'. 

Because when I did, some months later, on another expedition, I discovered a very large second-hand bookshop in a converted barn with, it said (and it certainly looked it), some 50,000 books. On that visit, I remember swooping on some Algernon Blackwood, some E.F. Benson, some Michael Innes, and quite a lot else. No subsequent visit, it must be confessed, was quite as rich, as no doubt other collectors got wind of this new trove, but there were usually some titles to make a visit worthwhile, often unusual and obscure.

In any case, the book barn's setting, in deepest rural Herefordshire, was charming. Around the village churchyard was a remarkably serpentine topiary yew hedge, for all the world like some green dragon slumbering here in between ravaging the countryside. Above the little settlement was a mysterious, Machenesque hill, with a wooded grove on its crest, from which I always expected to see smoke from some secret shrine arising. The village is also a focus for artists and craftspeople, including a hand-printing fine press, a potter, a jeweller and a watercolourist. 

The bookshop's website explains its origin:  

'Aardvark Books was founded in January 2004 by Sheridan Swinson and the late Edward Tobin, two career publishing professionals who decided to start a book business that reflected their love of books, and their combined half-century of experience in the book trade. Begun in some disused pig sheds on the outskirts of Leominster in Herefordshire, Aardvark Books quickly moved  to Brampton Bryan where they found a home in one of the buildings on the Harley Estate, The Oxford Barn. In the autumn of 2007 they moved to their existing premises on the edge of the village in the old Manor Farm Buildings.'

The bookshop later added a cafe, serving good quality coffee, fine loose-leaf teas, soup, croques monsieur and highly tempting cakes. For both the books and the food, the book barn became an essential resort on any visit to these parts, a waystation on the way to Hay-on-Wye, and it has often featured in my essays on book-collecting tours in this region. When presenting our selections at the till, there would usually be the opportunity for a chat with the affable proprietor, Sheridan, about our choices or his own recent reading.

In February, though, came the announcement that he and his wife Sarah were to give up the business, and today (4 April) was the last day, going out with a big Easter sale, music, crafts stalls and visits from well-wishers. Bookshops and their proprietors often come to seem like old friends, even if we only see them a few times a year and pass the time of day for a few minutes. This is part of the reason why I often wistfully remember where bookshops used to be, and look out for them, as if they might somehow still be there.

There are, it seems, plans in train for new owners to take over the business in some form, perhaps from the end of this month, so it will be interesting to see how this develops, hopefully still involving books and food. In the meantime, all good wishes to the team at the Book Barn. And - remember to follow the signs!

Update:  hurrah! A new business, Elderwood Books, is to open at the book barn on 29 April 2026, continuing as a bookshop (new and second-hand) and cafe. 

(Mark Valentine)