Unriddling the World

Hugh Lupton

Fifty Wonder Tales

‘Read and be enraptured’ Erica Wagner

Stories are living things. They are viral. They enter us through our eyes and our ears and they take up residence inside us.

Unriddling the World is a collection of fifty traditional narratives – stories from the winding track that leads from nursery rhyme to the great tales of creation and redemption, by way of ballads, riddles, folk tales, legends, epics and myths. They’ve been shaped by countless voices and they’ve stood the test of time. They are concentrations of human experience and they speak in the enigmatic picture-language of dreams.

These fifty ‘wonder tales’ form the heart of Hugh Lupton’s repertoire: from ‘The Stone Monkey’ to the ‘Oil of Mercy’, from ‘The Pottle of Brains’ to the ‘Pool of Dharma’, they are a gift from the past to the future, shaped for retelling by a master storyteller. They’re alive . . . and they’re waiting to be told again.

‘Not only a superbly rich anthology of stories, but a score for performance. These are tales that are orchestrated for the living voice, and the interaction of teller and hearer’ Rowan Williams

‘These tales, collected over a lifetime, are the matter of our deepest being, and in Lupton’s language we relearn what it is to be a part of the human community. Read and be enraptured by the deepest magic of all: the absolute truth of the mythworld that binds us beyond time, across cultures’ Erica Wagner

‘Hugh Lupton is our finest British storyteller, and this marvellous worldwide anthology abounds with tales of endurance and compassion, friendship and wit. It’s his outstanding and lasting legacy. Unriddling the World is my Desert Island book’ Kevin Crossley-Holland, author of the ‘Arthur’ trilogy

OUT NOV 2025. AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW

Hardback: 352pp

Published: Wilton Square (November 2025)

ISBN: 9781806770168