A few more words about witches and witchcraft

The article about a very good definition of a witch was created to highlight a short but spot-on passage from an otherwise irrelevant novel. 

This article contains a few more short quotations about witches. This time around they consist of yet more wise words from writers who have a lot to say about witches and witchcraft and whose books have inspired many articles.

A few thoughts from Robin Jarvis
Robin Jarvis's Witching Legacy series succeeds his Whitby Witches series. Although the Legacy books don't inspire long articles the way their predecessors did, they do contain a few good and thought-provoking statements about witches.

The Power of Dark, the first book in the new series, has this definition of a witch:

“...witches exist...people with special gifts, special powers, special responsibilities. They can see and do things that other folks can’t.”

The Devil's Paintbox, the second book, has this to say about what being a modern-day witch entails:

“It's part of being a witch...It’ll turn your life inside out and sometimes you lose those dearest to you. They can't handle what you really are, but if you try to stifle it, pretend you're somethin' you’re not, you’ll make yourself miserable.”

These extracts  sound like something that Terry Pratchett  might have written!

The mystery of the most popular posts

Blogger has some features that provide useful information to blog owners and blog readers.

One of these is the Popular Posts widget. I have configured it to display thumbnails of the top ten posts in descending order of the number of all-time views that they have had.

I monitor the Popular Posts to check for changes: some entries move up, some move down, some appear, some disappear and some of the latter group re-appear. 

It will obviously take a while before the more recent posts build up enough views to qualify for inclusion; I would expect the list to consist of the oldest posts, but it contains some relative newcomers.

The top two positions have always been held by the article about Princess Margaret and the one about Maria Callas and the Duchess of Windsor. This is not really surprising: royals and celebrities are of interest to a great many people.

It is completely unexpected but very gratifying to see two Curse or Coincidence articles involving writers in the list: they are much more representative of this blog than the royal posts are. I wonder why Mary Webb and Kathleen Raine rather than the Brontë family got in though!

I have been wondering for years why the article on Aryan Supremacy has always been popular enough to qualify! 

The article about Rudyard Kipling's New Year Resolutions has been moving steadily upwards and is currently in sixth position. This seems strange to me: it is not one of the oldest posts and I would not have expected it to be anything like so popular. 

The article about Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling and the Isle of Wight appeared in the list for the first time recently. It is another mystery why this particular article should have suddenly attracted so many readers.

The two Kipling articles have risen through the ranks at the expense of Nicholas Stuart Gray's named witches; all three have made the top ten in the past, but currently only one remains. 

More about Leslie Charteris's Saint books

The previous article about Leslie Charteris's Saint books goes into detail about what made these books so attractive to me when I first encountered them.  

Such articles are often part of the Defence Against the Dark Arts series, but there are some aspects of the Saint books that disqualify them: there is more to them than just exciting adventures and harmless humour, and it isn't all good.  

This article mentions a few more of the attractions and covers some of the negative elements.

Passive education
Judging by the effect that they had on me, the Saint books probably educated many of their readers.  Although I didn't appreciate this at the time, I now realise that the large amount of background information that I passively absorbed helped to expand my horizons and increase my geographical and general knowledge. I learned something about the luxury lifestyles of the very rich for example, including the names of some elite hotels and expensive cigars! 

The Saint and London
Although they didn't meant much to me when I first read the books, I particularly like the references to London streets, venues and other features that some of them contain. Leslie Charteris must have known the city well, and the details that he gives add interest and authenticity to his stories. 

One London street reference comes literally very close to home. I was delighted to see the name of the rather obscure little side street where I now live mentioned in one story: the Saint walks down it to get something to eat, and meets his old adversary Chief Inspector Teal! I wonder whether Leslie Charteris actually visited my street in person.

There are many references to London taxi cabs in the Saint stories: