Once upon a time …a fascinating book plonked through my letter box. The Fairy Tellers, a journey into the secret history of fairy-tales by award winning travel writerNicholas Jubber.I have a difficult relationship with fairy tales – they horrify me but at the same time delight. As a child they used to keep me awake at night – the magic, the ghoulishness, and then the sheer happiness. This fascinating history explains so much.

It appears that fairy-tales are records of historical phenomena and through them we can understand how Western Civilisation was formed. So  off I traipsed with Jubber wondering if I should peek at everything through my fingers. But no, he explores with verve the people who told the stories,  the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them.

Heavens, how Jubber and I travelled together through Southern Italy across the Medsiterranean, and then choked on the dusty Maghreb alleys, on into the Black Forest, peering around beneath its canopy, then on with the thermals into the depths of Siberia, and let’s not forget Lapland.

As I journied  with Nichola Jubber I came to understand the complicated relationshp between Western civilsation and the Eastern cultures which are perhaps our bedrock. Not just the cultures but  so too the lives of those who told these stories long before they arrived in our Christmas stockings, nicely packaged, and in some cases, sanitsed. (But they still scared the living daylights out of me)

Read it. I loved it. A monumental work, I felt. Bravo Nicholas Jubber. Another level of understanding attained and in the most accessible style.