Events Last Year






		A record of our events from 2009. Click here for information about future events planned for 2010 and beyond. The 2009 Christmas Social Friday 11th December 2009 The Bram Stoker Birthday Dinner Saturday 7th November 2009 Mark Gatiss received the Hamilton Deane Award for Crooked House Brian J. Showers received the Children of the Night Award for The Bleeding Horse, and Other Short Stories The Dinner was held in the "Judges Court" at Browns restaurant in London, a preserved former courtroom, hence the presence of the wig! Autumn Meeting *An Evening With Robert Lloyd Parry* Saturday 10th October 2009 After an excellent buffet, we dimmed the lights and settled down for an evening devoted to Robert’s interpretation of M. R. James. Robert’s Nunkie Theatre Company was about to release a DVD of his shows and we were privileged to watch a rough cut version of The Mezzotint. Even as a rough cut this was highly enjoyable, and gave us a flavour of what the final edited version would be like. This was followed by a question and answer session with Robert and the DVD’s producer Steve Featherstone, moderated by our Chair Julia Kruk. It was immediately apparent that Robert does not simply read the story – he tells it! M. R. James wrote both for the reader and the listener, and Robert’s portrayal and delivery had everyone engrossed within moments. Robert discovered M. R. James at an early age, and both have the distinction of having worked at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Robert was the winner of our Hamilton Deane Award last year, and he is about to embark on another touring production towards the end of 2009. The DVD entitled A Pleasing Terror comprises Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook and The Mezzotint and is now available here. Whitby Weekend Friday 11th - Monday 14th September 2009 Society members once again visited Whitby for a pleasant weekend excursion into the literary Gothic, in particular to trace the footsteps of Mina, Lucy and the Count. The weekend began with a dinner amongst opulent surroundings at Bagdale Hall, an atmospheric Tudor manor house. The next morning, we began our tour with the Bram Stoker Memorial Seat, which was erected in 1980 by Scarborough Borough Council and the Society to mark the 68th anniversary of Stoker's death. From the bench, you can look directly across the harbour as Stoker did, to the churchyard with its 199 steps up from the town, to the ruins of Whitby Abbey, and to Tate Hill Sands where the Demeter crashed ashore. After photographing the blue plaque that marks 6 Royal Crescent, where Stoker stayed with his family during one of his longer excursions, we visited Tate Hill Pier, and then climbed the 199 steps to the cliff-top churchyard and looked down on the red roofs of the old town, before exploring the beautiful Gothic ruins of the Benedictine Abbey. On Sunday a group of intrepid explorers braved the 7.5 mile coastal hike to Robin Hood's Bay. Mina described in her journal how she and Lucy had "severe tea at Robin Hood's Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow-window right over the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand". The Society preferred to indulge in pints in The Bay Hotel pub before exploring the rock pools on the sandy beach and the cobbled streets lined with second-hand book shops. That evening we visited The Magpie Café, a celebrated fish restaurant, and listened to the entries submitted to the short story competition. There are not many creative souls that can spin a yarn using a set of requisite words that included "dishwasher", "kipper" and "penetrate" but the stories told ranged from humorous to the haunting to the horridly macabre. The weekend was brimming with friendly conversation, good food and sunny weather, although compared to Romania, Whitby was found to be severely lacking in Dracula merchandise! Summer Meeting *A Gothic London Walk and Quiz* Saturday 13th June 2009 We started the day with a "Trail of Terror" around the streets of Soho and Piccadilly, led by our experienced and knowledgeable guide, Jean Haynes. She coped admirably with the crowds, and the noise of the traffic, to point out numerous places of interest in a comparatively small area of London’s West End, from Piccadilly up through Soho and finishing at Oxford Circus. Buildings and locations lived in – albeit briefly – by authors such as Mary Shelley, Charles Maturin and Ann Radcliffe were brought to our attention, as well as other locations associated with their Gothic creations. There were around fifteen of us following Jean in and out of the streets and alleys. There were many more members, however, who joined us in the evening for our Quiz! Back at the function room of The Blue Posts pub, we arranged ourselves into teams for what turned out to be a challenging, varied and enthusiastically received quiz. There were film and trivia questions, a music round, and people and picture rounds. Also general Gothic literary questions, and some relating to the Society’s own history. And it was great fun! The team of "Bernard’s Best" were the winners, with "The Honours List" coming a very close second. We will certainly be resurrecting this very successful ‘Quiz Night’ format in the future! *Our Tour in Romania* 20th - 31st May 2009 Maintaining the six yearly cycle on from 1997 and 2003, we returned to the Society's founding roots with another trip to Romania for 2009. As always, we visited the essential Dracula related sites in Transylvania, both relating to Bram Stoker's fictional Count Dracula, and the real historical Vlad Tepes Dracula, the Impaler. Some images of the trip relating to both Draculas are in our Photo Zone. We also visited areas to the west and south of Romania, which was new territory for us. We climbed over ancient ruined citadels, and braved the rickety ladders within the towers of medieval fortified churches. A splendid time was had by all! A new Dracula-related highlight was our very first visit to Lugoj, the birthplace of the immortal Bela Lugosi, who took his stage name from the town. Sadly, there is no "blue plaque" or equivalent thereof marking his birthplace. The town does not acknowledge Bela as one of its famous sons, largely because he was actually Hungarian by birth. Lugoj (Lugos) was in Hungary at the time! Here's to our next trip, which should now be in 2015! A Special Event An Evening with Elizabeth Miller Saturday 2nd May 2009 Spring Meeting & AGM *A Grand Gothic Auction* Saturday 4th April 2009 March Meeting An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe Saturday 7th March 2009 We gathered again in the "Theatre Bar" of The Victoria pub to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe (January 19th, 1809) at our March Literary Meeting. Members read from a wide variety of Poe’s short stories and poems. An in-character reading of Roderick Usher's last minutes captivated the entire room, recreating the edgy energy of Usher in his doomed house with his buried-alive sister - "Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!” The Angel of the Odd was read, one of Poe's lighter tales, although of course still darkly edged with grotesque humour. The most entertaining moment of the evening, however, was definitely the reading of The Raven as a “duet”, complete with two cuddly soft toy ravens enthusiastically joining in! (You had to be there.......) The readings were interspersed with viewings of movie clips, including two of the three Poe-inspired segments from Tales of Terror, a 1962 film directed by Roger Corman. This fabulous 60s kitsch featured The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, and The Black Cat. Another excellent episode was a version of The Cask of Amontillado with English actor Freddie Jones playing the doomed Fortunato with a sombre dignity. There was also an entertaining piece from Canadian TV which featured the “Poe Toaster", an unnamed admirer who leaves gifts of roses and cognac on Poe’s grave in Baltimore, Maryland every year on the anniversary of his death. A good night was had by all - even minus the roses and cognac! A Special Event An Evening with Leslie S. Klinger Friday 16th January 2009 Members and guests were given the chance to meet one of the Society's more high profile members from across the Atlantic, Les Klinger, at a special Society event. Les was over in the UK for a brief tour, promoting his new book, as well as attending the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s annual Dinner. Les is considered to be one of the world’s foremost authorities on those twin icons of the Victorian era, Sherlock Holmes and Dracula. He is the editor of the three-volume collection of the short stories and novels, The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, and has just recently published a similar, meticulously detailed, in-depth examination of Stoker’s Dracula. What could be a more fitting backdrop for Leslie than the ornate Victorian "Theatre Bar" of The Victoria pub in Paddington? Les talked about his passion for "playing the game" – approaching Dracula as if the events of the novel were actually true, rather than a supernatural Gothic fiction imagined entirely by Bram Stoker. However you feel about this approach, Les’s research, combined with his extensive knowledge of the period, makes him an exciting and stimulating speaker. Copies of his book, The New Annotated Dracula, were on sale on the night, and members were eager to get their copies signed by the man himself. We hope it won’t be too long before Leslie returns to the UK again – and visits his fellow Dracula Society members. New Year Meeting *Film Evening* Saturday 10th January 2009 Our first meeting of the year was the traditional film evening. Held at the "George in the Strand" as last year, this time we were presented with a real treat for those with a taste for the truly bizarre! Following the sombre sad announcement of the passing of our co-founder Bruce Wightman, two days previously, the mood was completely reversed by a screening of Zinda Laash, a long-lost Pakistani film based (even more loosely than usual) on Dracula. Also known as The Living Corpse and, inevitably, Dracula in Pakistan, this version of the story begins with the twist that the vampire is not in this case of supernatural origin, but the creation of science. A professor creates an "elixir of life", which actually transforms him into a vampire. One of the many delights of this film is the at times hysterically inappropriate music score, which plunders from a huge number of different sources. The seduction of the "Jonathan Harker" equivalent character, this time by a singe "bride", has to be seen to be believed! The film is set in the then contemporary 1960s, and has a wonderful period kitsch feel throughout. People keep breaking into "Bollywood" style song and dance routines for no apparent reason, and the scenes in the "Golden Crown" with a female dancer in an early 1960s style t-shirt and cut-offs gyrating in front of the ogling male drinkers certainly convinced this viewer that Pakistan must have been a lot more Westernised then than it is now! A delight for all.