Stars Mossie Cassidy as Roland, Raffey Cassidy as Helen, William Rush as Nicholas, Stephen Hoyle as David, Toby Hadoke as Malebron and Fiona Clarke as Mrs Watson. Round, and round, his voice went, and through it came a noise. It was low and vibrant, like wind in a chimney. It grew louder, more taut, and the wall blurred, and the floor shook. The noise was in the fabric of the church: it pulsed with sound. Then he heard a heavy door open; and close; and the noise faded away. It was now too still in the church, and the footsteps were moving over the rubble in the passage downstairs. 'Who's that?' said Roland. The footsteps reached the stairs, and began to climb." The name Elidor originates in a Welsh folktale whose title is commonly translated as Elidor and the Golden Ball, described by Giraldus Cambrensis in Itinerarium Cambriae, a record of his 1188 journey across the country. Elidor was a priest who as a boy was led by dwarves to a castle of gold in a land that, while beautiful, was not illuminated by the full light of the sun. [5] This compares with Garner's description of the golden walls of Gorias contrasting with the dull sky of the land of Elidor.

Unfortunately, Roland's big mistake was in visualizing his own front door when he sought an opening into the Mound of Vandwy. The treasures act as a beacon for the forces of evil from Elidor and they soon come come round peeping through the letter box. Elidor has been translated into multiple languages and adapted for radio and television for CBBC in 1995. As one of the UK’s most significant and prolific children’s writers, Garner has won and been nominated for many awards, including winning the Carnegie Medal in 1968 for The Owl Service. In 2001 he was awarded an OBE.The darkness grew,' said Malebron. 'It is always there. We did not watch, and the power of night closed on Elidor. We had so much of ease that we did not mark the signs - a crop blighted, a spring failed, a man killed. Then it was too late - war, and siege, and betrayal, and the dying of the light.'[...] Having said this, much of the novel has humour and a sense of fun. Many years later, a reader inevitably has a different perspective rereading a favourite novel. It is a tribute to Alan Garner's writing that he can switch from powerful fantastical scenes to humdrum family life in a suburban home of yesteryear - and carry the reader with him. Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy. Reading the novel resulting from Alan Garner's script, it is possible to envisage how atmospheric the play must have been. The language is almost mystical in parts when read aloud, and with today's opportunities for excellence in cinematic special effects, it seems surprising that it has never been filmed. This Story was dedicated in our 1001 Stories Quest appeal in 2018 to raise funds for the capital redevelopment of The Story Museum

After a humorous episode in which the children are either excuciatingly bored, or squirming with embarrassment, we become aware that they are in real danger. The tension is cranked up unrelentingly as, pursued by dark forces, they,

I miss my old edition of Elidor but it seems to have vanished along with its wonderful illustrations. Elidor, that strange halfway-house book between Garner's more conventional children's fantasies and his truly powerful, timeshifting work in Owl Service and Red Shift.

There is a quote I really like, I was surprised it wasn't included in the Elidor quotes on goodreads. Elidor is a short novel, a favourite from late childhood. Timeless, visionary, a tale of magic and myth, of hope and depair, it was a dark antidote to the happy Blyton bubble. In Alan Garner's world, reality had teeth and an edgy urban feel. Parts of his world were dark, malevolent and twisted. Primal forces were at work here and there was an impending sense of doom. Elidor is a wild and empty kingdom on the point of being devoured by the forces of evil. Of four castles in the landscape, three have been lost to evil and the fourth is failing. The lame fiddler of Manchester is the lame King Malebron of Elidor and he charges Roland to help him to regain the three treasures which are held in the Mound of Vandwy. Oxford) شد آرزوی او برای دست یابی به عنوان استاد زبان یونانی دیری نپائید و در سال 1957 آکسفورد را رها کرد تا نویسنده شود. Little do the children know that chance didn't bring them there, but a prophecy hundreds of years old. One by one they realise that the church isn't all it seems, as the fabric of time and space opens and they are propelled into the dying and strange world of Elidor...And the conclusion of the novel is a masterpiece of terror, leaving the reader wanting more - yet dreading what it might portend. For there is never an easy, happy ending, in a pagan myth. GENRES Fiction ClassicFiction ModernClassics ContemporaryFiction Non-Fiction The Arts Biographies History Music Philosophy Religion Other Drama Shakespeare OtherDrama Other Poetry JuniorClassics Young Adult Classics Collections&Sets Unabridged As a result, the wild magic of one place is offset by the hard practicality of the other, just as the choices the characters have to make are based on balancing imaginative idealism with simple expediency. What’s more, whether in Elidor or Manchester, this is a dangerous world. There is no guarantee of a happy ending, no certainty of certainty, no cosy moral conclusion. The children are forced to rely on their own instincts and judgements. Drama Shakespeare Other Drama Other Poetry Junior Classics Young Adult Classics Collections& Sets Unabridged The book is very much concerned with Roland and his search for identity, meaning and purpose in his life; he agrees to go into the mound of Vandwy to recover the treasures of Elidor for Malebron; but he gets the courage for this from his sense of loyalty to others. His brother and sister are trapped in the mound, and he feels he has no choice but to rescue them. Hence any dedication to the cause of “Good” here is unconscious and bound up in the specific act of rescuing his loved ones. It is only later than Roland begins to conceive of himself as in some way allied with Malebron in the battle between light and dark forces in Elidor. Nevertheless a quest has been undertaken, and in very traditional terms; to go into the Magic place – the place of death, the dark tower, the underworld – and rescue the good that is trapped there. In this quest, Roland is successful. He rescues Helen from the equivalent of Elfland, just as his original in the ballad does. [13]

John Clute, "Elidor" in, Frank N. Magill ed., Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, Vol 1. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Press, Inc., 1983. ISBN 0-89356-450-8 (pp. 472–474). Elidor is a children's fantasy novel by the British author Alan Garner, published by Collins in 1965. Set primarily in modern Manchester, it features four English children who enter a fantasy world, fulfill a quest there, and return to find that the enemy has followed them into our world. Translations have been published in nine languages [2] and it has been adapted for television and radio. St. James Guide To Fantasy Writers, ed. David Pringle, London, St. James Press, 1996, ISBN 1-55862-205-5, (pp. 218-220). I enjoyed the story, it's full of imagination and no small amount of dark threat. Celyn enjoyed it too, though the passage of 50 years, combined with her own limited experience of the world, did require me to explain a number of things.Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.