Bardskull

One wandering soul. Three epic journeys. A boundless imagination

‘A mystical voyage ... a deep descent into Shaw’s inner self’ The Guardian

Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before. This is not a book about myth or narrative: rather, it is a sequence of incantations, a series of battles.

Each of the three journeys sees Shaw walk alone into a Dartmoor forest and wait. What arrive are stories – fragments of myth that he has carried within him for decades: the deep history of Dartmoor itself; the lives of distant family members; Arthurian legend; and tales from India, Persia, Lapland, the Caucasus and Siberia. But these stories and their tellers don’t arrive as the bearers of solace or easy wisdom. As with all quests, Shaw is entering a domain of traps and tests.

Bardskull can be read as a fable, as memoir, as auto-fiction or as an attempt to undomesticate myth. It is a magnificent, unclassifiable work of the imagination.

‘Shaw encourages and illuminates the mythic in our own lives’ Madeline Miller

‘A book that gives permission to think and feel’ Erica Wagner, Sunday Times

‘Terrifically strange and thrilling’ Melissa Harrison

‘The work of a true and transformative enchanter’ Rowan Williams

‘Shaw is an alchemist of unique power, vision and downright goodness. There is Shaw and there is everyone else’ Charles Foster

‘Not so much a book as an incantation. Like its author, this book is entirely unlike anything else around’ Paul Kingsnorth

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Published: Wilton Square (December 2025)

ISBN: 9781806770663