Book Review: The Cottingley Secret
The Cottingley Secret Hazel Gaynor Harper Collins, 2017 (I own a copy courtesy of the publisher) Though I watched the movie Fairy Tale: A True Story (1997) many times as a child, it wasn't until the news of this book coming out did I think to check if the story of Frances and Elsie and the Cottingley fairies really was based on a true story. In 1917, Frances Griffiths and her cousin Elsie Wright stunned the world by photographing themselves in the company of fairies down at the 'beck' (an old word for stream) at the back of Elsie's family home in Cottingley, Yorkshire. These photographs soon came to the attention of the local Theosophical Society, and were certified as genuine by a Mr Snelling-- an expert in photography. They also came to the attention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes books, who went on to publish these photographs alongside two articles which he wrote for The Strand , as well as a book called The Coming of the Fairie...