Fifty Tales, or The Heart of the Matter

Stories are living things. They are viral.

They enter us through our eyes or our ears and they take up residence inside us. Sometimes they haunt us, sometimes they advise us, sometimes they amuse, perplex, gratify, contradict, intrigue, celebrate, terrify, challenge, arouse, confuse us. Some stories are distractions and diversions, others hover on the edge of revelation. Some have a short lifespan and are quickly forgotten, others linger inside us for a lifetime.

As a storyteller they’re my stock in trade.

But I’m choosy.

If I’m going to absorb a story, make it my own, and then pass it on to an audience, it’s got to be worth its salt. That’s why I’ve always told traditional narratives - stories from that winding track that leads from nursery rhyme to the great tales of creation and redemption, by way of ballads, riddles, folk-tales, wonder-tales, legends, epics and myths.

These stories have been shaped by countless voices and they’ve stood the test of time. They’re concentrations and repositories of human experience. They speak in the enigmatic picture-language of dreams. I’ve loved them since I was a boy.

It’s now more than forty years since I started telling stories for a living. Over that period I’ve told many, many tales. New stories are always being taken on. Old ones lie fallow.

But, among them, there are some that won’t rest. Once learned, they’ve never gone quiet. They keep returning. They’ve always got something to say.

All storytellers who’ve served their time have a similar accumulation of restless tales, always demanding to be told.

These are the stories at the heart of a repertoire.

In this book I’ve netted fifty of mine.

Each of them is a favourite. They represent my storytelling core.

They’re alive. They’re eager to escape. They shouldn’t be held down on the page for too long. They want to take wing on the tongue and the breath.

Buy this book and set them free.