A History of the Vampire in Popular Culture and Murder: The Biography
Friday, 26th November 2021, 19:00 - 21:00
About this event
Shrewsbury Library, Castle Gates, SY1 2AS Tickets: Full £10 Friends £8 U18 £6
SFL 2021 is delighted that these two accomplished writers have agreed to come to this year's Festival. It will be a bizarre and fascinating evening.
VIOLET FENN has always been fascinated by history and human behaviour. She specialises in light-hearted and entertainingly straightforward investigations into the changing cultural attitudes towards sex and mortality. Her first book was Sex and Sexuality in Victorian Britain. Tonight, Violet will be talking about her second book, A History of the Vampire in Popular Culture. 
Our enduring love of vampires - the bad boys (and girls) of paranormal fantasy - has persisted for centuries. Despite being bloodthirsty, heartless killers, vampire stories commonly carry erotic overtones that are missing from other paranormal or horror stories.
Even when monstrous teeth are sinking into pale, helpless throats - especially then - vampires are sexy. But why? In A History Of The Vampire In Popular Culture, author Violet Fenn takes the reader through the history of vampires in ‘fact’ and fiction, their origins in mythology and literature and their enduring appeal on TV and film. We’ll delve into the sexuality - and sexism - of vampire lore, as well as how modern audiences still hunger for a pair of sharp fangs in the middle of the night.
Violet lives in Shropshire with her children, a menagerie of pets and a lot of beautiful yet ultimately pointless clutter. She firmly believes that black is the happiest colour, properly ground coffee is a basic human right and that there is no such thing as too much red lipstick. She was once turned down for a job as an undertaker's assistant for being 'too interested in death’. Her third book, Secrets & Scandals in Regency Britain, will be published by Pen & Sword early next year.
KATE MORGAN qualified as a solicitor in 2008. She worked as a senior in-house lawyer in the water industry for a number of years and is currently a company secretary. Kate's first book Murder: The Biography was published in April 2021.
Totally gripping and brilliantly told, Murder: The Biography is a gruesome and utterly captivating portrait of the legal history of murder. The stories and the people involved in the history of murder are stranger, darker and more compulsive than any crime fiction. Dr Percy Bateman, the incompetent GP whose violent disregard for his patient changed the law on manslaughter. Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in England in the 1950s, played a crucial role in changes to the law around provocation in murder cases. And Archibald Kinloch, the deranged Scottish aristocrat whose fratricidal frenzy paved the way for the defence of diminished responsibility. These, and many more, are the people – victims, killers, lawyers and judges, who unwittingly shaped the history of that most grisly and storied of laws.
Come and listen to lawyer and writer Kate Morgan as she takes us on a dark and macabre journey as she explores the strange stories and mysterious cases that have contributed to UK murder law. The big corporate killers; the vengeful spouses; the sloppy doctors; the abused partners; the shoddy employers; each story a crime and each crime a precedent that has contributed to the law’s dark, murky and, at times, shocking standing.