Yorkshire's Onward Christian Soldiers writer celebrated in new show

Yorkshire clergyman Sabine Baring-Gould was a Victorian superstar who wrote Onward Christian Soldiers for a Whitsun Sunday School parade in his parish in 1865.
But his incredible life was filled with other amazing achievements which have been largely forgotten, until now.
A new touring show - about to get its official world premier in his former Wakefield parish of Horbury - will tell how he he was a top five best-selling novelist; the writer of what is still the go-to book on werewolves and inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula. He was aaa storyteller of the Norse Myths of Iceland and even featured in a Sherlock Holmes novel as the detective’s godfather.
In real life he married Horbury mill worker Grace Taylor, after educating her in society etiquette, inspiring George Bernard Shaw's  bestseller Pygmalion, which later became the Hollywood musical My Fair Lady.
But the curate said the most important thing he ever did was to save a huge collection of folk songs from, Devon and Cornwall, where he was originally from.
Some of those songs, interweaved with anecdotes from his own astonishing life and stories from his books will mark the centenary of his death in a new touring show called Ghosts, Werewolves and Countryfolk.
It stars six-time BBC Folk Awards nominee Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes, of award-winning Show of Hands and Yorkshire-based Daphne’s Flight, and is narrated by John Palmer, director of the critically-acclaimed Vaughan Williams anniversary From Pub to Pulpit Cathedral tour.
The premier will be at Horbury Working Members Club on Friday, May 17, 7pm to 9pm, before it goes on a 25-date national tour. For Horbury tickets visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ghosts-werewolves-country-folk-songs-stories-of-sabine-baring-gould-tickets-863167335737?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
For more about the 2024 Whit weekend events in Horbury visit https://horburychurch.com/activities/whitwalk/