Show Notes

‘The Angel In The Marble’ is an example of a kind of story that has haunted and fascinated me since early childhood and which, until writing this, I had never quite expressed in words. It’s one of those ‘stormy night’ stories we find in the darker corners of books of fairytales in which someone is lost in a deep wood and so follows the single light shining from a nearby cabin; wandering, unknowingly, even further from the road. It’s a story about two strangers, not desiring company and having their own personal reasons for solitude, who nevertheless meet on common ground and must reveal and complete one another’s stories. I see this as a trope very near to the heart of horror and dark literature and I’ve witnessed it play out time and again in such places as Pinter’s The Caretaker and No Man’s Land, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and, more recently, the 2008 Marek Losey film The Hide, which is probably the best contemporary example I can name.