Things Near and Far

A struggling writer. A city of hidden worlds. A life shaped by memory, poverty, and wonder.

In Things Near and Far, celebrated Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machen looks back upon the experiences that shaped his imagination and his long, uncertain path toward a literary life.

Beginning with luminous memories of his childhood landscape in Wales, Machen recalls ancient roads, wooded hills, family stories, and the haunting beauty of Caerleon. These distant recollections gradually give way to the realities of his early adulthood, when ambition brought him to London but offered little security.

Living in poverty and searching for meaningful work, Machen accepts unusual literary assignments, including cataloging a remarkable collection of books devoted to alchemy, magic, spiritualism, secret societies, and forbidden knowledge. His encounters with occult literature—and later with the mysterious world surrounding the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—feed the imagination that would define his supernatural fiction.

Yet this is also the intimate story of an artist learning how to endure. Machen reflects on rejection, loneliness, creative frustration, modest pleasures, unexpected journeys, and the stubborn desire to continue writing when success appears impossibly distant.

At once nostalgic, humorous, mystical, and deeply personal, Things Near and Far offers a fascinating portrait of the mind behind The Great God Pan, The Three Impostors, and some of the most influential supernatural literature of the modern era.

Narrated by John Young, this reflective memoir invites listeners into Arthur Machen’s remembered Wales, shadowed London streets, and lifelong search for wonder within the ordinary.