📚New book for 2025 – Hemlock and Honey from Hedgehog Press
Please click on title in menu bar on home page
📚My new books 2024 📚
I am delighted to announce the upcoming publication of two  new book
Toccata & Fugue + Harp – a new collection from Hedgehog Poetry Press
To purchase a signed copy please use the PayPal link below, remembering to give your full postal address
https://paypal.me/RoyallMargaret?country.x=GB&locale.x=en_GBw
Uk price with p&p is £12.50 Europe zones 1-3 price is £15.50
For US, Canada and other destinations please contact me: margaretroyall@icloud.com or DM on social links below.
For alternative payment methods please email me margaretroyall@icloud.com or DM me on X/Twitter @RoyallMargaret or Facebook @MargaretRoyall
Also available on Amazon from August 13th
Toccata and Fugue with Harp – details
In many ways a follow on from my successful memoir of childhood this addresses the question of what exerts the greatest influence on us as we grow from child to adult, posing the rhetorical question, is it nature or nurture. Poems and short fiction look back on the post-war childhood joys and constraints of growing up in the 1940s, 50s and 60s in a loving but strictly religious family on the chilly Lincolnshire East coast.
Part One – Toccata deals with post war childhood memories, some stressful, some hilarious, unflinchingly criticising the negative side of religious indoctrination and parental expectations.
Part Two – Intermezzo deals with the effects of this upbringing, the struggle to break free from it and seeks to explain how my view of life and society was affected and changed.
Part Three – Fugue gives a glimpse into present life, showcasing my love of nature, music and exploring art, each poem or sequence being linked to a favourite piece of music and an artist’s colour.
Reviews for Toccata and Fugue with Harp
Damien B Donnelly, poet, editor, podcast producer
- How to compose a life in a single collection. Here, in the shadow of childhood strings, the walls humwith myth, magic, post-war tremors and religious oppression. Margaret’s ghost of youth, in search of escape, stomps its feet, speaks of the need to repress, to rage and most of all, to revolt. These are songs of the confessional, the confrontational, poems examining the child caught under the thumb, learning what to do with freedom when it’s found and later, as adult, learning about loss and the cost of scars. This is a bitter sweet cacophony that swings and sways from sermons to seductions, a Lincolnshire lass looking from the vase of yesterday’s rose, time travelling on the flap of a butterfly’s wing – fragile, frightening, finite, memories unspooling between Rachmaninoff and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Scores of truths, tastes and touches, notes that times has taken, tamed, and sometimes turned from hurt to a semblance of halcyon.
Damien B Donnelly, poet, editor and podcast producer: deuxiemepeaupoetry.com, eatthestorms.com
- I was delighted to delve into Toccata and Fugue which lives up to the title with its musical tone throughout. Margaret Royall skilfully wraps her memories in gorgeous imagery and sound echoes. Precious Jewellery, inspired by the colour amber and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, held my immediate attention with its ingenious experimental form. Royall takes the reader back to her childhood and beyond. The collection is split into two parts making it easy to dip in and out of at any one time. Highly recommend this for any poetry lover’s bookshelf.
Patricia M Osborne Poet and Novelist https//:whitewingsbooks
- In Toccata and Fugue, Margaret Royall presents an inspiring collection
of poetry that impressively describes the marvels and challenges of a
fulfilled life in music and colours. These lovely poems are Margaret’s
heartfelt invitation to join her on her exciting journey from a postwar
childhood shaped by religion to the fascinating charisma in the third
age. Toccata and Fugue deserves a place on everyone’s nightstand.
Dr Antje Bothin (PhD MSc)
Writer/ Poet/ Translator / German Tutor / S M Advocate/ /Information Expert
- Toccata and Fugue is a memoir told through a series of anecdotes, in which we as readers are allowed the freedom to fill in the spaces. In these poems Margaret Royall takes us vividly back in time. She shows us scenes from her childhood and youth, along with a few from later years, giving us glimpses not just of what she sees and remembers of what happened then, but also hints of how past events and relationships may have influenced who the poet later became and the choices she made. Dripping on toast, beach-side holidays, the scent of Pears soap and Devon Violets perfume, alongside images of caring, anxious, god-fearing parents trying to navigate a complex, changing world themselves, conjure up a 1950s childhood and beyond. Composed with the energy and humour of toccata and the interwoven themes of fugue, this collection offers a rewarding poetic insight into a life that seems both familiar and unfamiliar in the present day – and perhaps turned out quite differently than it once seemed it might.
Phil Vernon Peacebuilding and international development advisor, poet, author (www..philvernon.net)
Owl Fetish – a slim chapbook from Dreich, shortlisted in the Chapbook Slims competition 2023.
This is something totally different from me, a fantasy about becoming an owl and encountering life in the wild, hunting and observing the creatures living around me: fox, squirrel, badger, butterfly and even watching the rituals of a white witch! The poetry is highly imagistic, fanciful, referencing also myth and legend associated with woodland creatures. Hopefully a fun read, something that departs from my previous writing.
Margaret Jean Royall
N.B Updates on publication dates and pre-orders will be posted here as this information becomes available. All three books are due out summer 2024.
Other poetry in various anthologies
In addition I have short stories and poetry in anthologies by Crumps Barn Studio, published in 2022/23/24 . Available on Amazon & all good bookshops, as Kindle editions too.
- Home Ground an anthology of poetry and stories of mystery and magic in a familiar setting Feb 2024
- The Wild Night Sky, an anthology of poetry and stories about space, new worlds and earth Feb 2023
- Festival of Cats, a pocketbook of poems and anecdotes about cats and their role in our lives.January 2023
- Spooky Ambiguous, an anthology of spooky stories, ghosts, fangs and fairytales July 2022
Previous books from 2017- 2021
Immersed in Blue’ came out 5th Dec 2021 , published by the wonderful Impspired 📚
Immersed in Blue
.
Memoir ‘The Road To Cleethorpes Pier by Margaret Royall’ 2020
https://margaretroyall.com/the-road-to-cleethorpes-pier/
Paperback: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Cleethorpes-Pier-memoir-prose/dp/1999870573 £8.99
Kindle: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Road-Cleethorpes-Pier-touching-childhood-ebook/dp/B08776HTMB Price £0.99
Signed Author Copy of paperbacks available from myself £10.60 via https://paypal.me/MargaretRoyall?locale.x=en_GB
*Use family/friends option and please give your postal address
PLEASE EMAIL ME TO ASK ABOUT PAYING BY BACS OR CHEQUE OR FOR POSTAGE OUTSIDE THE UK
email: margaretroyall@icloud.com
My Second Collection ‘Where Flora Sings’ 2020
Signed Author Copy of paperback Where Flora Sings is available from myself £12.60 via https://paypal.me/MargaretRoyall?locale.x=en_GB
*Use family/friends option and please give your postal address
To read more about the book https://margaretroyall.com/where-flora-sings/
https://margaretroyall.com/where-flora-sings/
New Poetry Pamphlet ‘Earth Magicke’ 2021
New poetry pamphlet ‘Earth Magicke’ coming 25th April 2021
Signed Author Copy of paperback £7.60 is available from myself via https://paypal.me/MargaretRoyall?locale.x=en_GB
To pay by another means or for postage outside the U.K. please email me at
margaretroyall@icloud.com
Margaret Royall 