THE FIRST AND LAST LETTER

It’s my fault that the Eldritch Blog has gone quiet but I blame the virus. Well, it gets blamed for everything else.

To try to breathe some life back into the blog, let me tell you about THE FIRST AND LAST LETTER, one of the best-received stories in the first ELDRITCH COLLECTION, THE EVE OF ST ELIGIUS. It is based on actual events on the Smalls Lighthouse, off the coast of Pembrokeshire. These are recounted in the form of an epistolary piece of fiction, so I won’t repeat them here. Suffice it to say that 220 years ago what happened was directly responsible for the Trinity House policy of having lighthouses manned by two rather than three keepers. This policy continued right up to the beginning of the present Millennium, when automation took over.

THE FIRST AND LAST LETTER appeared a few years before the collection, and FRANCIS LYNCH asked me if he could use it for the key scene in his opera, FOR THOSE IN PERIL. This scene can be HEARD in rehearsal (it was subsequently performed in Illinois) and its SCORE can also be seen.