Book fairies share fairy tales to celebrate Drake & Morgan’s new Folklore menu…

Prepare to be spellbound as you drink in the mythology of Britain…

The Book Fairies of London have been celebrating the launch of the new Autumn menu from Drake & Morgan today! The menu theme is Folklore, so we are sharing some great reads to match this wonderful theme.

Here are some of the books the fairies hid today!

The Hedgerow Handbook by Adele Nozebar

“This book is for everyone who understands the simplicity of living in the moment, and who can appreciate a nice hedge when they see one…”

Drake and Morgan restaurant book fairies celebrate new Folklore menu - Finsbury Square

The hedgerow is one of the most iconic and distinctive features of the British countryside, so familiar that we often take it for granted. Take a closer look, though, and you’ll see that the diversity and variety of plant species that form hedgerows, and the animals and insects that they shelter, are a complete world of delight.

Angelica to ash, bird cherry to borage, pineapple weed to plantain and wild garlic to wimberries, The Hedgerow Handbook is a directory of our best known and most useful hedgerow plants, each entry botanically illustrated in colour to help you identify the plant or flower, along with its history and folklore, and its culinary and medicinal uses, from the traditional to the unusual.

The ultimate guide for nature-lovers and foragers alike, discover how you can transform wild and natural hedgerow ingredients into fresh and delicious recipes. From Elderflower Champagne and Blackberry Sorbet to Wild Raspberry and Meadowsweet Jam, the hedgerow has more possibilities than you could ever imagine.

The Fairy Tellers by Nicholas Jubber

“I was one of those children in thrall to fairyland, and I stayed there longer than I probably should have done…”

Drake and Morgan restaurant book fairies celebrate new Folklore menu - King's Cross

Fairy-Tales are not just fairy-tales: they are records of historical phenomena, telling us something about how Western civilisation was formed. In The Fairy-Tellers’ Trail, award-winning travel-writer Nick Jubber explores their secret history of fairy-tales: the people who told them, the landscapes that forged them, and the cultures that formed them.

While there are certain names inextricably entwined with the concept of a fairy-tale, such as the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, the most significant tellers are long buried under the more celebrated figures who have taken the credit for their stories – people like the Syrian storyteller Youhenna Diab and the Wild Sisters of Cassel. Without them we would never have heard of Aladdin, his Magic Lamp or the adventures of Hansel and Gretel.

Tracking these stories to their sources carries us through the steaming cities of Southern Italy and across the Mediterranean to the dust-clogged alleys of the Maghreb, under the fretting leaves of the Black Forest, deep into the tundra of Siberia and across the snowy hills of Lapland.

From North Africa and Siberia, this book illuminates the complicated relationship between Western civilization and the ‘Eastern’ cultures it borrowed from, and the strange lives of our long lost fairy-tellers.

Lore of the Land by Samantha Dolan

“A storm arrives at the exact second when a girl learns she’ll never be free…”

Drake and Morgan restaurant book fairies celebrate new Folklore menu - Manchester

Unearth the secrets of our natural world with The Lore of the Land, a richly illustrated compendium of folklore and wisdom from the land, skies and seas.

From thundering rivers to shady groves, flickering marshes to lightless caves, and from snow-capped mountains to the depths of the ocean, discover the folklore of Earth’s wildest places. Stories and spirits abound in these land – and seascapes, where traditional wisdom and mysterious magics have intertwined over centuries.

Each of the six chapters covers a different natural landscape, revealing the worldwide folklore surrounding Woodlands, Seas & Oceans, Wetlands, Mountains, Rivers & Streams and Hills & Caves. Beginning with tales from cultures spanning the globe, each chapter then dives into the legends of how these places were formed, their place in the human imagination and their natural and otherworldly denizens.

Learn how the forests hold up the sky in Maori tradition; how in Ireland, seaweed was once thought to predict the weather; and that the ancient Greeks believed Mount Etna housed the fiery forge of the gods. All this and more is accompanied by beautiful artwork based on real folklore, uncovering the secrets of our natural world as never before.