This weekend, we gathered at Baskerville Hall Hotel in Hay-on-Wye for our Annual General Meeting and dinner. The turnout was fantastic, with members coming from as far as New Jersey, USA, and Sydney, Australia.

A few highlights from the weekend were filmed and are already available to watch within The Friends’ Area, a new members-only section of this website (see earlier news item). These include: Robert Lloyd Parry performing his adaptation of M. R. James’ The Mezzotint, Jon Preece reading an abridged version of Arthur Machen’s The Shining Pyramid, and a video of the full-length AGM meeting hosted by our chairman, Ray Russell, which includes announcements about Faunus, plans for this website, a vote on next year’s AGM, and financial updates. The Treasurer’s Report can also be found within.

The Friends’ Area is available to everyone who has renewed their membership for 2025 or has just joined us. You can do either quickly and easily, right now.

After you have validated your membership, please allow a few days for your invitation email to arrive. If you have not received your invite, contact John Galantini via the Contact page.

We are delighted to announce that Faunus, our twice-yearly journal, will now be available to download in PDF format for the first time. In an exciting expansion of member benefits, every issue - dating all the way back to the very first edition published in 1998 — will be accessible through a brand-new members-only section of this website, allowing Friends to explore the full archive at their leisure.

Bringing this collection together has been a remarkable journey. In the process, we discovered that many of the early editions existed only in historic electronic formats that required complex file recovery, complete redesign, and thorough proof-reading. Thanks to the tireless dedication of Ray Russell and John Ricketts, these lost editions have now been faithfully reconstructed and are available for immediate download, alongside the entire back catalogue of Faunus.

Members will receive an email shortly with details on how to access this new section of the website. Named The Friends' Area, this space will not only house the Faunus archive but will also serve as a platform for digital exclusives, including essays, videos, and audio recordings.

We hope this new resource enhances your membership experience and look forward to sharing even more exclusive content in the future!

In addition to the free London walk on 20th February, Frank Molloy is leading an additional walk on the afternoon of Sunday 23rd February, in association with the Psychogeography Terminalia festival. Unlike the earlier walk, this is a ticketed event with a limited number of spaces that must be booked in advance from EventBrite.

Frank Kevin Molloy, esteemed London tour guide and fellow FoAM member, invites you to join a free, two-hour walk through the city, exploring the life of Arthur Machen. This guided tour will take place on Thursday, 20th February, beginning at 1pm. Participants will gather outside the iconic Dominion Theatre (W1T 7AQ), located beside Tottenham Court Road Station. The walk will meander through the historic districts of Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, concluding around 3pm at Farringdon Station, near a pub Machen once frequented. We hope you’ll join us on what promises to be a fascinating literary adventure!

Wordsworth Editions have released Between Two Worlds: The Weird Tales of Arthur Machen, a new collection showcasing the majority of Machen’s short horror fiction. An affordable, good-quality volume for fans of classic supernatural stories, the book is now available through their website, just in time for the season of giving!

The forty-ninth edition of Faunus has been released to all members, along with the latest Machenalia newsletter. Nick Wagstaff opens our summer edition with The Dorchester Players; an insightful look at the relationship between Arthur Machen and Thomas Hardy. In The Great God Pan and The Major Arcana Steve Parfitt uncovers tarot symbolism in one of Machen's most celebrated stories, which leads us nicely onto correspondence between A.E Waite and John Gawsworth, kindly provided by Godfrey Brangham. Adrian Dannatt pays tribute to his late friend, the artist Duncan Hannah, in An Agent for Curiosities: Duncan Hannah and Arthur Machen, and we continue serialising Machen's translation of The Way To Attain with a fourth instalment. Reviews in this edition include Apocolypse in England: A critical study of Frederick Carter, Weird Walk and Wild Marjoram Tea & Old Children.

We would like to thank all of our contributors.

To mark the publication of a new omnibus edition of Arthur Machen Horror Stories, Amersham Museum is hosting a talk by museum volunteer Steven Prizeman on the noted Welsh author’s works and his life in Amersham during the 1930s and ’40s. The event will take place on 17th September, from 7pm. Tickets are on sale now.

We are pleased to announce that our Annual General Meeting will return to the atmospheric Baskerville Hall Hotel, in Hay-on-Wye, from 7th to 9th March 2025, with the meeting and dinner taking place on the Saturday. For room reservations, call +44 01497 820 033 today to avoid disappointment.

Our 2024 general meeting took place at the historic Baskerville Hall Hotel in Hay-on-Wye. On the Friday evening, Robert Lloyd Parry delighted us with a candle-lit performance of M.R. James’ 'Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook.' The majority of Saturday was spent exploring Hay-on-Wye's many bookshops, before reconvening at the hotel for our annual general meeting, followed by a jovial book auction.

The evening concluded with a sumptuous three-course meal, after which John Probert paid tribute to our late friend and former secretary, Mark Samuels, by reading one of Mark’s own short stories, 'The Man Who Collected Machen'.

In the hotel bar, conversation flowed late into the evening as members from around the world bonded over pints of ‘Butty Bach’, a local real ale. There was even a spot of impromptu midnight stargazing before everyone called it a night. The historic Victorian venue provided a fitting ambiance for our weekend, especially during the recitals. Thank you to everyone who attended.

Saturday 4 March at the Fitzrovia Hotel, London W1.

March 2023 marks Arthur Machen's 160th birthday as well as the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Friends of Arthur Machen. We'll be marking these occasions by returning to London for our AGM and Annual Dinner. The venue will be the Portland Suite at the Fitzrovia Hotel, 20-28 Bolsover Street, London W1W 5NB. The hotel is in central London, has accommodation, a lounge bar, and lifts for access. It is near Oxford Circus and Great Portland Street Underground stations.

Please contact Jon Preece if you plan to attend. He will send you details of the dinner and current room rates at the Fitzrovia. More details will appear in the newsletter at the end of the year, but members travelling to London may well want to book ahead. We will need confirmed bookings for the Annual Dinner by 31 January 2023.

The 2022 AGM is now scheduled for Saturday 22nd October; the venue is to be The Three Salmons Hotel, 3 Porthycarne Street, Usk, NP15 1RY, tel 01291 672133. Expect the meeting in the afternoon, to be followed by the book auction, as announced in last Autumn's newsletter, all to be concluded with a dinner in the evening. Exact times of events to be announced.

Thank you for your patience.

The Friends of Arthur Machen met in York at The Grange Hotel, over the weekend of 7th March, 2020. We were fortunate that our AGM weekend was held before any Covid-19 restrictions were in place, which meant that more than thirty members attended from the UK, France and Norway. The committee were re-elected at the AGM, and we announced the winners of the Machen essay competition: John Harris, Ibrahim Ineke and Iain Smith. We were delighted to learn that Jon Preece has plans for the next AGM to be in Caerleon and already has venues in mind for the AGM and the annual dinner.

After a break for refreshments we embarked upon the book auction. As ever, we must thank members who brought along a wide range of books for us to sell, from fascinating paperback reprints to rare first editions. Especial thanks to Catherine Farmer and the Machen family who very generously donated a number of books, many of which were Arthur Machen's own copies of books by his old friend A.E. Waite. At the annual dinner in the evening we toasted Arthur Machen (of course), and his daughter, Janet, and absent friends. The highlight of the evening was the after-dinner talk by Tim Jarvis. As always, the company was excellent, and new and existing members are recommended to consider joining us in Caerleon next spring.

When Arthur Machen died, in 1947, he was buried with his wife Purefoy, who had predeceased him, in the Old Amersham Cemetery. As well as names and dates, the headstone bore both artwork and the legend: Omnia Exeunt in Mysterium - "all things pass into strangeness". A fitting motto, but the inscription has suffered more than seventy years of weather and lichen. In 2019 the Friends of Arthur Machen contracted for the stone to be cleaned and reincised by Creative Memorials. Cleaning has now been completed: reincision may have to wait until Covid19 has passed by.

We are delighted to announce that Catherine Farmer, Arthur Machen's grand-daughter, has agreed to become FoAM's patron. Like her mother, Janet, Catherine has long supported the Friends of Arthur Machen, and we are very pleased to formalise the relationship.

Edited by FoAM members Mark Valentine and Timothy J.Jarvis, this is a new publication by Hippocampus Press. The book contains 20 essays on Machen's work, some with the authority of the past but many of them new and written for this publication. Also contains a selection of Machen's own reflections on his literary career.

Edited by James Machin, this is a new publication by Strange Attractor, an anthology of the best of Faunus, drawing not only on the rarer and more obscure pieces by Machen himself, but on the rich veins of more recent reflection and scholarship to be found in our journal.