The Hollow Vale: Poetry of the Fabled Gable of Roman Britain: Concerning the Wenderbeast, Father Thorn, King Arthur and Other Curiosities
Edition: New revised edition, 2026
Series: Part of Poetry of the Fabled Gable of Roman Britain (within The Tharion Cycle)
Author: Alexander Paul Burton
Publisher: Tremolo A Tiempo Design House
ISBN: 978-1-0694886-9-5
Distribution: IngramSpark UK, Gardners, Browns Books, currently listed at Blackwell's
Format: Illustrated paperback with hand-drawn maps and decorative elements
Genre: Lyric fiction, mythic poetry, Arthurian and post-Roman West Country folklore, LGBTQ+ literary
Information
This new revised edition brings together the most requested pieces from Burton's Poetry of the Fabled Gable cycle into one companion volume. In the Wenderbeast sequence, a gentle-witted hog of stubborn pride carries the secret texts of the Daughters of Avalon across a dying West Country, pursued by men who see only a Yuletide feast, seeking refuge on the granite wilds of Bodmin Moor. In the Father Thorn material, a simple farmhand with ancient blood makes his divinely purposed journey from the treacherous marshlands of Cynsedgemar and the ancient hills of Tharion to the luminous halls of Avaloniae, on a quest to free Sulis, Bath's pre-Roman deity. The Arthurian pieces gather Cornish, Somerset, and Dumnonian legend into lyric fragments that treat King Arthur not as court romance but as the last flicker of a native tradition being extinguished. Rooted in the real geographies of Bath, Glastonbury Tor, Bodmin Moor, and the Somerset Levels, this book is a lyric preservation project, holding open the memory of a Britain that remembers itself before conquest, before forgetting, before silence.
Comparable titles:
Kevin Crossley-Holland's Arthur trilogy for the Arthurian lyric register; Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset for the post-Roman Dumnonian setting handled seriously; Alice Oswald's Memorial for the compressed mythic-poetic voice; Ted Hughes' Tales from Ovid for the mythic reworking tradition; Robert Macfarlane's Underland for the place-memory lyric mode; Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon for the Glastonbury-Avalon-Sulis tradition and its feminist reworking.
Author's Somerset connection: Born in Bridgwater, raised near Glastonbury, schooled at Crispin School in Street. Bath, Glastonbury Tor, and the Somerset Levels are the landscape of the author's upbringing. The Sulis and Avalon material is grounded in the specific pre-Roman archaeology of the West Country that the author was raised inside, not researched from a distance.
Why this edition now: This is the revised 2026 edition, drawing together the previously separate Fabled Gable pieces into a single companion volume with new material and updated lyric passes. Sits naturally alongside the standalone Hollow Vale novel and the Great Wyrms of Somerset volume as the third pillar of the West Country cycle.
Press and trade record (project-level):
BBC News coverage of the Hollow Vale project launch, Pride month 2025
Somerset Live feature, April 2025
The Somerset Leveller coverage, June 2026, for the county library donation programme
The Table Read Magazine feature reviews, 2025 and 2026
Pressat and ResponseSource national distribution
Foyles and Blackwell's active listings across the Hollow Vale titles
Browns Books educational supply listings
Listing/Wholesale
Confirmed library acquisitions at Bridgwater Library, Taunton Library, and Somerset schools (Westover Green Primary, Catcott Primary, and an autism specialist school)
Part of a wider multi-title library donation programme extending to Vancouver Island Regional Library, Greater Victoria Public Library, and libraries in Niagara and Sudbury
Author verification: Authors Guild member, ISNI 0000 0005 3018 6907, ORCID 0009-0009-7526-9753. Deposits with Library and Archives Canada, Swiss National Library (e-Helvetica), Zenodo DOI series.
Contact: Author available for UK press, bookseller events, and library visits by Zoom from Toronto, and for in-person events in London and Somerset with reasonable notice.
