Exorcising Angels

Book excerpt: During the London Blitz, a veteran from World War One goes in search of the author Arthur Machen. He has some questions to ask him… “What did I really see in the trenches?” “Were those angels?” “Who am I?” The answers, when they come, challenge everything he has ever believed to be true. When Arthur Machen's "The Bowmen" was published in 1915, many English readers believed his tale of heavenly archers defeating the advancing German troops of WWI to be true. Here, Tim Lebbon & Simon Clark pay homage to Machen with their novella Exorcising Angels, set against the backdrop of The Blitz of WWII, when (in the words of the Bishop of London) all of Great Britain needed to pray a "plea to the Heavenly Father for divine protection against these Swastikad angels of Death."