Fairy tales are not just fairy tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy Tellers, award-winning travel-writer Nicholas Jubber explores the surprising origins and people behind the world’s most influential magical tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them.

Venue: Cressing Temple Barns, Witham Road, Braintree, Cressing, Essex, CM77 8PD

Tickets: £10 / £8

Date and time: Saturday 25th June, 12.00 midday

Box Office: Book online or via Mercury Theatre 01206 573948 (10am – 8pm Tuesday to Saturday)

The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales by Nicholas Jubber

While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories – people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.

Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland.

From North Africa and Siberia, this book illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilisation and the ‘Eastern’ cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long lost fairy tellers.

Buy a copy of The Fairy Tellers from bookshop.org

About the Author

Nicholas Jubber has travelled in the Middle East, Central Asia, North and East Africa and across Europe. Along the way, he has worked as a teacher, carpet-washer and even had a stint as a tannery assistant. He has written three previous books, The Timbuktu School for Nomads, The Prester Quest (winner of the Dolman Travel Book Award) and Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah’s Beard (shortlisted for the Dolman Award).

He has written for numerous publications, including the Guardian, Observer, Globe and Mail, Irish Times and BBC History.