Fi Phillips

165 years old today! Although he died in 1912, his name lives on as the creator of Dracula , a figure that, like Frankenstein's monster, has become entrenched in our cultural memory. I read the book as a young teenager and scared myself witless for a few weeks afterwards. Every tap at my window was a vampire intent on drinking my blood (of course it was actually a moth drawn by the glow of my nightlight). That shadowy figure staggering down an alleyway in the city where I lived was surely another blood-sucking villain (no, just a drunk on a mid-day binge). What many people do not realise is how prolific a writer Bram Stoker was, the author of many other novels (The Jewel of Seven Stars, The Lair of the White Worm, to name but a couple), short stories and non fiction. We see the mark of his classic vampire character in so many of our novels and films. The current trend for young adult vampire romance owes a great deal to this Irish writer. Bela Lugosi in 1931's Dr...

There used to be a time when the appearance of a monster was a reason to run away screaming or at the very least hide behind the sofa. Daleks trundled around with their half-throttled calls of  'exterminate'. Werewolves ripped off their own skin then the throats of their victims. Vampires just wouldn't take no for an answer. They gave us nightmares and made cellars the worse place to be. The darkness became peopled with demons and graveyards were rife with zombies. But somewhere over the last decade or so, our attitude to monsters has changed. We want to understand them. We want to explain their bad behaviour. Ultimately, we want to love them. Of course this 'relating' to the monster started much earlier than this century in the novel ' Frankenstein ' written by Mary Shelley. If you read this book within a book within a book, you will come to the conclusion that the true monster is Frankenstein himself. His creation simply tries to survive and through ...