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Tom Cox | |
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![]() Tom Cox on a cliff-top in East Devon | |
Nationality | British |
Genre | Nature, Humour, Fiction, Folklore, Music, Golf |
Years active | 1999 - present |
Notable awards | Shirley Jackson Award 2018 |
Tom Cox is a Nottinghamshire-born British author who, as of 2021, has published twelve books. Recurring themes in his writing include folklore, rambling, wildlife, psychedelic rock, cat ownership, local history, and golf. [1]
Cox began publishing a music fanzine as a teenager in the early 1990s, interviewing Ray Manzarek among others on his parents' home telephone. Between 1999 and 2000 he was the chief rock critic for The Guardian and wrote columns and features for other newspapers and magazines, before leaving print journalism in 2015 to write regular pieces about the countryside, folklore and many other subjects for his voluntary subscription website. [2] [3] During the 2000s and early 2010s he published a number of books about golfing, including Bring Me The Head Of Sergio Garcia, his account of his year as Britain's most inept golf professional, which was long listed for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year award. Cox has also published several books about his cats, including TheSunday Times bestseller The Good, the Bad & the Furry, and until 2016 ran the Twitter account 'My Sad Cat', which featured pictures of his cat The Bear.
His book 21st Century Yokel, published in October 2017, is described as "a nature book, but not quite like any you will have read before" and was crowdfunded in seven hours by Unbound. The book details Cox's time living in Devon and Norfolk, as well as stories about his grandparents in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. [4] [5] [6] The Guardian described it as "a rich, strange, oddly glorious brew" with elements of nature writing and memoir. [7]
Cox's fiction debut Help the Witch, a collection of ghost stories, was also crowdfunded via Unbound [8] and published in August 2018. [9] Cox moved to a remote house near Eyam in Derbyshire to work on the book, and was unable to leave the house by car for several months during the so-called Beast from the East. [10] This experience formed the basis of the title story, as well as Nearly Northern, a chapter in his next non-fiction book Ring the Hill (2019). The latter book is a successor to 21st Century Yokel and similarly features discursive anecdotes about rural life and rambling in Devon and Somerset.
Cox announced he was working on a full-length novel, Villager, in August 2020. [11] The novel was successfully crowdfunded by Unbound and was published in 2022. [12]
A boggart is a supernatural being from English folklore. The dialectologist Elizabeth Wright described the boggart as 'a generic name for an apparition'; folklorist Simon Young defines it as 'any ambivalent or evil solitary supernatural spirit'. Halifax folklorist Kai Roberts states that boggart ‘might have been used to refer to anything from a hilltop hobgoblin to a household faerie, from a headless apparition to a proto-typical poltergeist’. As these wide definitions suggest boggarts are to be found both in and out of doors, as a household spirit, or a malevolent spirit defined by local geography, a genius loci inhabiting topographical features. The 1867 book Lancashire Folklore by Harland and Wilkinson, makes a distinction between "House boggarts" and other types. Typical descriptions show boggarts to be malevolent. It is said that the boggart crawls into people's beds at night and puts a clammy hand on their faces. Sometimes he strips the bedsheets off them. The household boggart may follow a family wherever they flee. One Lancashire source reports the belief that a boggart should never be named: if the boggart was given a name, it could neither be reasoned with nor persuaded, but would become uncontrollable and destructive.
Worksop is a market town in the Bassetlaw District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is located 15 miles (24 km) south of Doncaster, 15 miles (24 km) south-east of Sheffield and 24 miles (39 km) north of Nottingham. Located close to Nottinghamshire's borders with South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, it is on the River Ryton and not far from the northern edge of Sherwood Forest. Other nearby towns include Chesterfield, Gainsborough, Mansfield and Retford. The population of the town was recorded at 44,733 in the 2021 Census.
The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers is an underground comic about a fictional trio of stoner characters, created by the American artist Gilbert Shelton. The Freak Brothers first appeared in The Rag, an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas, beginning in May 1968, and were regularly reprinted in underground papers around the United States and in other parts of the world. Later their adventures were published in a series of comic books.
Kikimora is a legendary creature, a female house spirit in Slavic mythology. Her role in the house is usually juxtaposed with that of the domovoy. The kikimora can either be a "bad" or a "good" spirit, which will depend on the behavior of the homeowner. In more recent times an image of kikimora as a female swamp spirit had developed.
Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. They are attributed with the abilities to transform into an animal, become invisible, and to gain vitality from the blood of their victims. Bram Stoker's Dracula may be a modern interpretation of the Strigoi through their historic links with vampirism.
Gilbert Shelton is an American cartoonist and a key member of the underground comix movement. He is the creator of the iconic underground characters The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, Fat Freddy's Cat, and Wonder Wart-Hog.
Ronald Edmund Hutton is an English historian specialising in early modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion, and modern paganism. A professor at the University of Bristol, Hutton has written over a dozen books, often appearing on British television and radio. He held a fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford, and is a Commissioner of English Heritage.
The Bell Witch or Bell Witch Haunting is a legend from Southern United States folklore, centered on the 19th-century Bell family of northwest Robertson County, Tennessee. Farmer John Bell Sr. resided with his family along the Red River in an area currently near the town of Adams. According to legend, from 1817 to 1821, his family and the local area came under attack by a mostly invisible entity that was able to speak, affect the physical environment, and shapeshift. Some accounts record the spirit also to have been clairvoyant and capable of crossing long distances with superhuman speed.
Joseph Henry Delaney was an English author. He was best known for his children's dark fantasy series, Spook's, inspired by the folklore, history and geography of Lancashire. The series has been published in 30 countries, achieving sales of over 4.5 million copies.
Tom McCarthy is an English writer and artist. In the wake of Brexit, he gained Swedish citizenship. His debut novel, Remainder, was published in 2005. McCarthy has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker, and was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Literature Prize by Yale University in 2013. He won a Believer Book Award for Remainder in 2008.
Spike and Tyke are fictional characters from the Tom and Jerry animated film series, created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Spike is portrayed as an English Bulldog, who is generally amiable and friendly, and a loving father to his son Tyke in several episodes. However, Spike's character also has a very stern and fierce side for occasions, such as when he is defending his son Tyke.
The Dorset Ooser is a wooden head that featured in the 19th-century folk culture of Melbury Osmond, a village in the southwestern English county of Dorset. The head was hollow, thus perhaps serving as a mask, and included a humanoid face with horns, a beard, and a hinged jaw which allowed the mouth to open and close. Although sometimes used to scare people during practical jokes, its main recorded purpose was as part of a local variant of the charivari custom known as "skimity riding" or "rough music", in which it was used to humiliate those who were deemed to have behaved in an immoral manner.
Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman is a novel by English writer Sylvia Townsend Warner, her first, published in 1926. It has been described as an early feminist classic.
Unbound, the online trading name of United Authors Publishing Ltd, is a privately held international crowdfunded publishing company. It is based in London, UK. The company was founded by John Mitchinson, director of research for the British television panel game QI; Justin Pollard, historian and QI researcher; and author Dan Kieran.
Guardians of Oz is a 2015 animated adventure film, directed by Alberto Mar and executive produced by Jorge Gutierrez. The film was produced by Ánima Estudios, Discreet Arts, and distributed by FilmSharks International. The film is the first English-language and flagship CG production for Ánima Estudios, as well as the studio's biggest production and is described as Mexico's biggest animated production. Mexico's take on the early 20th century Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum, it features an original story and new characters, and was released theatrically on 10 April 2015 in Mexico.
The 2017 Royal London One-Day Cup tournament was a limited overs cricket competition that forms part of the 2017 domestic cricket season in England and Wales. Matches were contested over 50 overs per side and had List A cricket status. All eighteen First-class counties competed in the tournament which ran from the end of April with the final taking place at Lord's on 1 July. Nottinghamshire won the tournament, defeating Surrey in the final. The defending champions were Warwickshire.
Wee Winnie Witch's Skinny: An Original African American Scare Tale is a 2004 picture book by Virginia Hamilton and illustrated by Barry Moser. It is about a witch, Wee Winnie, who terrifies Uncle Big Anthony but is then killed by Mamma Granny.
Matt Cain is a British writer and broadcaster. He is best known for the novels The Madonna of Bolton, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle, Becoming Ted and One Love.
The 2020 Bob Willis Trophy was a first-class cricket tournament held in the 2020 English cricket season, and the inaugural edition of the Bob Willis Trophy. It was separate from the County Championship, which was not held in 2020 due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. The eighteen county cricket teams were split into three regional groups of six, with the two group winners with the most points advancing to a final held at Lord's. The maximum number of overs bowled in a day was reduced from 96 to 90, and the team's first innings could be no longer than 120 overs.
The 2022 County Championship was the 122nd cricket County Championship season in England and Wales. The season began on 7 April and ended on 29 September 2022. Warwickshire were the defending champions.