Amy Jeffs – författare

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, January 2022A TIMES HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE YEARSHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEARA BBC HISTORY MAG BOOK OF THE YEARA DAILY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEARSoaked in mist and old magic, Storyland is a new illustrated mythology of Britain, set in its wildest landscapes.It begins between the Creation and Noah''s Flood, follows the footsteps of the earliest generation of giants from an age when the children of Cain and the progeny of fallen angels walked the earth, to the founding of Britain, England, Wales and Scotland, the birth of Christ, the wars between Britons, Saxons and Vikings, and closes with the arrival of the Normans.These are retellings of medieval tales of legend, landscape and the yearning to belong, inhabited with characters now half-remembered: Brutus, Albina, Scota, Arthur and Bladud among them. Told with narrative flair, embellished in stunning artworks and glossed with a rich and erudite commentary. We visit beautiful, sacred places that include prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and Wayland''s Smithy, spanning the length of Britain from the archipelago of Orkney to as far south as Cornwall in a vivid, beautiful tale of our land steeped in myth. In Storyland, Jeffs reimagines these myths of homeland, exile and migration, kinship, loyalty, betrayal, love and loss in a landscape brimming with wonder.PRAISE FOR STORYLAND''Expressive, bold and quite beautiful'' The Lady''[a] delight of a book'' Antonia Senior, The Times''ravishingly lovely'' The Times Ireland''[a] lively retelling of British myths'' Apollo Magazine

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Storyland and Wild, comes a sweeping new legendary of miracles, magic, human frailty and heroic strength. Illustrated with over thirty original paper cutouts by the author.''Jeffs writes beautifully, erring just on the right side of florid, and her linocut prints make for attractive illustrations . . . This gorgeous book should live on the bookshelves in every house that cares about the idea of Britain, what is was and where it came from'' The Times on Storyland''I have fallen so completely in love with this book; Storyland, by Amy Jeffs, just one of the finest, most covetable things around'' Katherine RundellSaints'' legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes'' suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws.In Saints, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on ''official'' lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends'' heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December.Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims. She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.

''Inspiring'' Waterstones''Thrilling'' Guardian''Marries words and images to create a special echo of this country''s rich past'' The Times

In Wild, Amy Jeffs journeys - on foot and through medieval texts - from landscapes of desolation to hope, offering the reader an insight into a world at once distant and profoundly close to home. The seven chapters, entitled Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe, Paradise, open with fiction and close with reflection. They blend reflections of travels through fen, forest and cave, with retelling of medieval texts that offer rich depictions of the natural world. From the Old English elegies to the englynion and immrama of the Celtic world these are stories that largely represent figures whose voices are not generally heard in the corpus of medieval literature: women, outcasts, animals.Illustrated with original wood engravings, evoking an atmospheric world of whales, wolves, caves, cuckoos and reeds, Wild: Tales From Early Medieval Britain will leave readers with a feeling of ''westendream'': delight in the wilderness.

Saints: Medieval Legends of Heroes Humans and Magic is now available!