In Wild, the writer and medievalist Amy Jeffs blends fact and fiction to “evoke and contextualise [Britain’s] ancient imaginative landscape”. Broadly covering the years 600-1000, a period of “migration, conversion and belief in monsters, demons, angels and omens in the sky”, the book comprises seven themed chapters: Earth, Ocean, Forest, Beast, Fen, Catastrophe and Paradise. Each begins with a short story inspired by objects or texts that have survived from early medieval times, and are rooted in their surroundings, after which Jeffs takes a closer look at the sources.
The first chapter opens with a ghost story, The Lament of Hos, in which a woman rises from her earthy resting place to revisit the site of her violent demise; there she was supposed to meet her lover, Ertae, but instead encountered a group of men, “their breath all drink and eels”, who beat and killed her. The inspiration for this shimmering tale is an Old English poem The Wife’s Lament, which features in the Exeter Book, a 10th-century anthology of verse, often known as the Old English Elegies, which is one of the largest surviving collections of early medieval literature (several of the original poems feature in Wild’s appendix).
Jeffs is the narrator, providing a reading that is suffused with portent and otherworldliness. Listeners miss out on the author’s elegant wood engravings that adorn the print edition, though they gain a series of folksongs, written and performed by Jeffs, each of which adds a thrilling new dimension to these ancient fables.
• Wild: Tales from Medieval Britain is available from Riverrun, 3hr 40min.
Further listening
Shrines of Gaiety
Kate Atkinson, Penguin Audio, 16hr 3min
Jason Watkins reads this terrific portrait of London’s Soho between the wars, featuring a long cast of characters including Nellie Coker, a nightclub owner; Frobisher, a police inspector investigating Nellie’s business; and Gwendolen, a young librarian hired to search for some missing girls.
The Love Songs of WEB Du Bois
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, 4th Estate, 29hr 48min
This epic novel from the American historian and activist traces the history of an African American family from slavery to the present day. Adenrele Ojo, Karen Chilton and Prentice Onayemi read.
