Fictional Follies

architecture, Fictional Follies, Folly, Tower

Stark’s Folly and The Girl Who Wasn’t There

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Luna and Aurora explore the crumbling folly tower.

Follies occasionally appear in literature, but seldom in works aimed at a younger readership. So it was hugely exciting to find that one of Britain’s best-loved writers of children’s fiction had featured a folly in a recent work. This year, a new work by the acclaimed writer Dame Jacqueline Wilson (100 plus books and counting) was published. The Girl Who Wasn’t There is a ghost story within a tale of family life and is beautifully illustrated by Rachael Dean. The reader is only a few pages in when young Luna and Aurora are first introduced to the dilapidated Stark’s Folly, somewhere on the south coast of England…

architecture, Fictional Follies, Gazebo, Summerhouse

Murder in the Gazebo

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In 1928 a new detective was introduced to readers. Her name was Maud Silver and she was as fond of knitting and quoting Tennyson as she was of solving crimes. She was the creation of Patricia Wentworth, who would go on to write thirty-two books featuring Miss Silver, including The Gazebo, which was published in the United States in 1956 and in the United Kingdom in 1958. Having called this post ‘Murder in the Gazebo’ it is a little late for a spoiler alert, and as you have no doubt guessed the garden building is the setting for key scenes, including the death at the heart of the novel.