‘I have fallen so completely in love with this book… just one of the finest, most covetable things around’ Katherine Rundell

Best-selling historian and author Amy Jeffs, musician Natalie Brice and illustrator Gwen Burns have created Old Songs, a reimagining of ten traditional British ballads. Each artist applied her primary trade: word, music and image respectively, but each also influenced the others’ work.

In this live performance, Amy will offer historical insights and readings from the stories, while Gwen will showcase animations created from the illustrations and Natalie will lead them both in mesmerising sung renditions of the earliest known melodies of the ballads themselves. Old Songs fuses short stories, histories, lyrics and illustrations in an enthralling reimagining of traditional folk ballads. Sunday Times Bestselling historian Amy Jeffs and Illustrator Gwen Burns combine forces to create a rich compendium, singing of travel, mystery, magic and the essential urges of humanity.

Featuring iterations of fairy tales and sinister descendants of Greek myths and bible stories, as well as a cast of lesser-known characters with names like Tam Lim, Child Wynd and Maisery, Old Songs threads a tapestry of Britain’s landscape, history and cultures. At the base of hills we can visit to this day, elf queens kidnap hapless poets and carry them through rivers of blood; and at the foot of a tree whose offspring still stand in the forests of Northumberland, a girl mimes combing the hairless head of a dragon who was once her brother.

Dr Amy Jeffs is an author, artist and medievalist. During her PhD in Art History at the University of Cambridge, she co-convened a project researching medieval badges and pilgrim souvenirs at the British Museum. She then worked in the British Library’s department of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern manuscripts. Now a Somerset-based author, she illustrates her books with print and paper cutout. Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain was published in 2021. It was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Waterstones Book of the Month, as well as being shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year. Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain was published in 2022. Its audiobook, illustrated with 7 original songs, was named Audiobook of the Week by the Guardian and the Times.

Amy will be discussing her work with Bookshop manager Paul Armfield on the following night Friday 19th.