The Mythago Cycle, Volume 1 by Robert Holdstock

In Praise of Robert Holdstock in The Guardian by David Barnett.The Guardian obituary by Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

Directions on how to get to the site are available here. Personal reminiscences and memories of Rob are collected on the Tributes section of the web site.Īfter his death, three acres of the Woodland Trust’s Victory Wood, along with an oak tree and a bench, were dedicated to Rob with love and affection from his family and friends. The Gallery page has a number of photos of Rob over the years. Robert Holdstock died in November 2009, just four months after the publication of Avilion, the long-awaited, and sadly final, return to Ryhope Wood.Ī full list of the honours Robert’s novels and stories have garnered is available on the Awards page. His story ‘ The Ragthorn’, written with friend and fellow author Garry Kilworth, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and the BSFA Award for Short Fiction. His interest in Celtic and Nordic mythology was a consistent theme throughout his fantasy and is most prominently reflected in the acclaimed Merlin Codex trilogy, consisting of Celtika, The Iron Grail and The Broken Kings, published between 20.Īmong other works, Holdstock co-wrote Tour of the Universe with Malcolm Edwards, for which rights were sold for a space shuttle simulation ride at the CN Tower in Toronto, and The Emerald Forest, based on John Boorman’s film of the same name. It and the subsequent ‘mythago’ novels (including Lavondyss, which won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1988) cemented his reputation as the definitive portrayer of the wild wood. It was described by Michael Moorcock as “the outstanding fantasy book of the 80s”. However, it is with fantasy that he is most closely associated.ġ984 saw the publication of Mythago Wood, winner of the BSFA and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel, and widely regarded as one of the key texts of modern fantasy. His first published story appeared in New Worlds magazine in 1968 and for the early part of his career he wrote science fiction, such as Eye Among the Blind and Where Times Winds Blow. Holdstock received an MSc in Medical Zoology and spent several years in the early 1970s in medical research, before becoming a full-time writer in 1976. In later years, he lived in London but escaped to the forest whenever possible.

Robert Holdstock was born in a remote corner of Kent in 1948, sharing his childhood years between the bleak Romney Marsh and the dense woodlands of the Kentish heartlands.

The Mythago Cycle, Volume 1 by Robert Holdstock