The writer who found inspiration in the folklore tale of the Treacle Walker

Alan Garner speaks to David Barnett about his Booker Prize longlisted novel and how he discovered the Treacle Walker, a person who can heal anything but jealousy

Alan Garner’s ‘Treacle Walker’ is a decade in the making (David Heke)

It’s the question every author dreads: “where do you get your ideas?” Yet, it was the query that set Alan Garner on the road almost a decade ago to his latest work of fiction, Treacle Walker, published this week.

Garner had a birthday this month – “Ah, 87, wind-turned age,” he says, quoting Dylan Thomas, when I wish him the best at the start of our Zoom call. Garner has excellent recall; he quotes chunks of his own books at me throughout the interview, despite claiming that “once a thing’s finished I tend to forget it; if you want to talk about The Weirdstone of Brisingamen you’ll have me at a disadvantage, but Treacle Walker is still in my head.”

Weirdstone was Garner’s first novel, published in 1960. Ostensibly a fantasy novel for children, it told the tale of Colin and Susan, who are staying with family friends in Garner’s native Alderley Edge, Cheshire, and get drawn into an ages-old battle between the forces of darkness, led by the wizard Nastrond, and the good magician Cadellin Silverbrow. It spawned two sequels: 1963’s The Moon of Gomrath, and – after quite a gap – the concluding part of the trilogy, Boneland, in 2012.