Why Whitby? (From The Northern Echo)

Why Whitby?

10:26am Tuesday 30th December 2008

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Paul Magrs explains why he set his latest novel in Whitby.

GROWING up in County Durham, I was quite used to Whitby as a place for day trips. It was still a considerable distance away, up several very steep roads. I’d think of the drive as a going-back-in-time (I think, because of the fibre-glass dinosaurs they used to have nearby, at Flamingoland zoo.) But Whitby was like going back in time for a glimpse of the Victorian era. Even as quite a small child, I was aware of this dark glamour.

If it was fine we would sit on a dock eating fish and chips out of the paper – the whole family sitting there, watching the sunset. If it was poor weather, it didn’t matter. It even seemed to add to the experience. The abbey looked even more sinister; even more dredged up from the past.

We walked the many steps up to the top and then down to Robin Hood’s Bay, which was like some miniature toy-town sliding slowly down into the sea. Both places had good book shops, which was always a big consideration for me.

As an adult I’ve returned many times. And I was increasingly aware of the literary links – Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, and Lewis Carroll writing portions of Alice in Wonderland as he sat by the North Sea, and even the Bronte sisters trekking out for a rare sojourn. In my Brenda and Effie Mystery books there is something at the heart of Whitby that works on the imagination of its inhabitants and creates real magic. And I think that is true in real life, too – in the effect that the place has on people who visit there.

When you’re there it’s like walking among ghosts. Affable ghosts on holiday, but spooks nonetheless.

I always wanted to set a novel there, using the grand old hotels, the little guest houses, the tiny cafes. Something that involved magic and mysteries and some of that literary heritage, that Gothic past. The witches and ghouls of local legend, too. So, on visits in recent years I wandered and soaked it all up. I walked everywhere and visited all these curious places.

In the museum: a weather forecasting machine that works with the help of leeches on leashes, leaping up in glass chambers; the dead hand of a murderer used as a nasty candlabra; the skeleton of an icthyosaur festooned along one wall like a driedout Christmas tree... Wherever you look here, there’s something macabre.

A couple of years ago we visited during a blizzard. Early March and it was difficult just walking down the street. But it was still bracingly infused with magic. Like being swept up into some wintry fairy tale.

The town has become – as in the classic question that all writers are asked, sooner or later – the place I get my ideas from.

CONJUGAL RITES by Paul Magrs (Headline £19.99).

DARK things are stirring in Goth City, aka Whitby, and it is up to Brenda – the sister of Frankenstein’s male creation, and reluctant witch Effie to battle the forces of evil. Their old adversary Mr Danby is back up to his tricks again, Mrs Claus and her West Cliff hotel turns out to be a sinister hotspot and Brenda is lined up for a marriage that is monstrous in every way. Release your imagination and walk on the wacky side of both life and death in the company of two heroines who are as much at home scoffing cake at a local café as they are braving the gates of Hell conveniently located beneath Whitby Abbey. – Steve Craggs

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