An Evening with Luke Thompson

Luke Thompson will share his most recent book, A Cornish Bestiary, an illustrated compendium of Cornwall’s most curious creatures bringing together stories from natural history and folklore, broadside ballads and news reports, celebrating the wonderful history we share with the animals around us.

Did you hear about the Redruth girl who vomited snails?

Or how the saint of Gunwalloe saved his sister’s eye from a goose?

Can you cure warts with a slug, or whooping cough with spiders?

In A Cornish Bestiary you’ll find familiar faunal favourites like the red-eyed Owlman, ominous Black Dogs and the iconic Cornish Chough, alongside more reclusive specimens.

Luke is a writer, publisher and academic from Cornwall, whose work focuses on the relationships between humans and other animals, as well as on the literature of Cornwall, with books including Conversations with Other Animals (Ortac, 2024) and Treasures of Cornwall (Macmillan, 2023). His work has been shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Prize and has won an Awen Medal. Luke has also made some playful performative works, including a Phonetic Ouija Board and Psychic Test Cards, which have been performed across the UK, from the Met Office to the Belfast Book Festival. Luke teaches at Falmouth University and is an editor at Guillemot Press.

Part of Helston’s Wordplay for Winter programme - see www.trevowhelston.co.uk for the full list of events all around the town.