Welcome to my substack! Here you’ll find a range of articles on the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more. My weekly ‘horror moments’ series on Thursday mornings will provide fun insights into horror-inflected scenes and themes in unexpected places, and a wide range of other articles will pop up on Monday afternoons.
Over the next few months you can expect:
The first batch of articles in my horror moments series — on Wallace & Gromit! (It’s a surprisingly horror-literate series)
Insights from my PhD on early modern magic and the stage
Deep dives into obscure figures from the history of storytelling
Recommendations of books and games
Regular quizzes and crosswords to test your knowledge of film, literature, and history
And more!
Question: which horror author is behind me in the portrait above? (Scroll all the way down for the answer).
About Me
On Saturday (20th July 2024) I graduated from Cambridge with a PhD in English looking at how magicians were depicted on the early modern stage.
As well as being a researcher, I am an award-winning writer whose recent play ‘Moderation’ followed the lives of social media moderators forced to see the worst things on the internet all day for a living. It transferred from an extended run at the Edinburgh Fringe to the Greenwich Theatre’s ‘pick of the Fringe season’ in October 2023.
I also recently collaborated with composer George Parris on an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Shadow’ which premiered at the Royal Academy of Music in January 2024. You can find out more about my writing and research here: rebekahkingwriter.com.
About the Substack
My grandfather began a blog on etymology in his 90s and wrote his last article two days before he passed away aged 94. In his honour, I want to practice the discipline of regularly writing about my passions, in my case the history of horror, theatre, magic, special effects, and more. Every Thursday morning, I will post a new ‘horror moment’ and a range of other articles, quizzes, reviews and more will pop up on Monday afternoons.
All of the articles are completely free, although paying to subscribe will help me carve out more time for this kind of writing. Apart from anything else, it’ll be great to write for a wider audience than the handful of academics who will read my PhD — although that’s here if you’re interested https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109036.
Thank you for subscribing!
Answer: It’s M.R. James. Did you get it right?
If you haven't read it previously, We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets might be a spiritual cousin to Moderation (which sounds amazing).
Ooh you got your PhD on my birthday 🥳 congratulations