The Chalice

The magical Glastonbury Tor has been a lifelong obsession for Diane Ffitch. But as the atmosphere of the place becomes soured by bitterness, violence and death. Diane is convinced she is being warned of impending disaster. Could there be an anti-Grail in existence - the Dark Chalice?

'The compulsion of Rickman's writing makes Glastonbury a place of dark and uneasy beauty.'

Daily Express

'Crisp, ironic prose, excellent dialogue... not to mention a real sense of mounting evil...'

Time Out

'...also a novel of character in the English tradition. The principals are Juanita Carey, owner of a New Age bookshop in which she no longer believes; her unrequited lover Jim Battle, a retired building society branch-manager, now landscape painter with a slight drink problem; Joe Powys, writer of a popular book on the occult and Diane Ffitch, rebellious scion of a hard-edged Tory dynasty whose refuge from a congenitally-overweight body and a loveless childhood is to fantasize about having been Dion Fortune last time round. A somewhat eccentric crew, but no worse than you'll find in the pages of Iris Murdoch or Muriel Spark and as well drawn.'

Chris Gilmore, Interzone

Actually, what I was trying for was... well, a darkly-entertaining thriller of course... but also (stupidly ambitious) a kind of popular, postmodern update of John Cowper Powys's huge classic, A Glastonbury Romance.

Powys's themes included the clash of Christianity and paganism, spirituality and the commercial world, in 1930s Glastonbury - the 'holyest erthe' in England, the one-time Druid centre where Joseph of Arimathea is said to have brought the Holy Grail and perhaps the boy Jesus, too.

Well, not much has changed in Glastonbury.

Geoffrey Ashe, the great Arthurian scholar, who lives there - in the most inspiring location possible - had once told me (during the making of a radio programme on the Grail) that this was indeed a powerful place, but not always in the ways you would expect, and that people who flocked to Glastonbury expecting peace and love and harmony were more likely to find financial ruin and a broken marriage.

So what if there was an anti-Grail... a Dark Chalice?

What was especially fascinating was how so many of the events in The Chalice actually happened in the year up to publication... and how well-received the book's been in the town itself, where people are always claiming to recognise the characters. Strange.