Helen B nagged me to buy the book but I still havn’t got round to reading it

I Capture The Castle
Directed by Tim Fywell and starring Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Sinéad Cusack and Tara Fitzgerald. The book on which it was based was written by Dodie Smith (who also wrote the children’s classic One Hundred And One Dalmations). Helen B nagged me to buy the book but I still havn’t got round to reading it. The film was very well photographed but a little too sentimental, a bit confusing in parts, and could have been shorter.

The Wicker Man
Cult movie directed by Robin Hardy, screenplay by Anthony Schaffer. A 1970s film with an underlying mood of menace (there is no actual “horror” portrayed, everything is implied until the last scene…). Starring Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee and Britt Ekland. A police officer visits a remote Scottish island to investigate a disappearance – and finds a society still in the pre-Christian era. Despite the lack of special effects and the slightly kitsch look of the 1970s, the film is genuinely creepy. It also has a personal meaning for me…

When I was aged sixteen I travelled alone to the Hebridean island of Barra, a train journey that took two days and a ferry crossing of seven hours. It was the first time I had been away from home (I had lived a sheltered life!). At that time I was very interested in castles, and wanted to see the medieval castle built on a rock in the middle of a bay (the island’s only village is on the shore of this bay, the village being called, not surprisingly Castlebay). I found a completely isolated community that spoke gaelic as a first language, was still Catholic in religion (most of Scotland is extreme Protestant) and seemed to have no concept of time. There were no trees on the island, and all the time I was there a fierce wind blew (which contrasted strangely with the hot August sun – despite being continually cold while on the island, I returned home badly sunburned). The ferry only called at Barra once every three or four days, and after a boat trip over to look at the castle, there was nothing for me to do (no shops, no restaurants, no places of interest) apart from walk about the island with its beautiful rugged landscapes and empty golden beaches. Every time I see The Wicker Man I am reminded of the island’s crashing waves, bad food, oppressive isolation – and the sense that your every move was being watched.