Aberystwyth Uni Professor Matthew Francis reads extract of new novel, 'Nocturne with Gaslamps'

Watch Aberystwyth Uni Professor Matthew Francis reads extract of new novel, 'Nocturne with Gaslamps' - Tindle News on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Hello, I'm Matthew Francis, author of Knocked Home with Gas Lamps, published by Neamtree

00:06Press.

00:07Here's an extract from my book.

00:14Hastings awoke in the dark.

00:16That is, he experienced many of the phenomena he usually associated with waking, a lucidity

00:20of thought, the rush of memories from the previous day, the bodily sensations that told

00:25him he was lying in a bed with the covers pulled up over him and his head on a soft

00:29pillow.

00:30But this was like no waking he had known in his life.

00:32It was not the dark of a bedroom with curtains drawn and doors closed that allows the faintest

00:37suspicion of light to leak through the cracks round the edges, but a dark that eliminated

00:41all the world except the parts of it he was in contact with.

00:45The space around him might be a cupboard, a field, the dome of St Paul's Cathedral,

00:50or an endless void with no solid surface to stand on should he be unwise enough to leave

00:54the safety of the bed.

00:57And this uncertainty made him doubt the memories and sensations he had woken up with.

01:01Was he Hastings Wimbery?

01:03And had he ever moved through a world that contained Flora Burlap, Cassie Pine, Lavidia's

01:09Theatre, horses, handsome cabs, steam engines, gas lamps, top hats, horsehair chairs, mutton

01:16shops, pints of porter, the endlessly varied paraphernalia of life?

01:21It took only a little darkness to rid the world of all of it, and most of himself too.