Yorkshire's Onward Christian Soldiers writer celebrated in new show from songs about a sister dying Watch Video

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✓ Published: 29-Apr-2024

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Yorkshire clergyman Sabine Baring-Gould was a Victorian superstar who wrote Onward Christian Soldiers for a Whitsun Sunday School parade in his parish in 1865.<br/>But his incredible life was filled with other amazing achievements which have been largely forgotten, until now.<br/>A new touring show- about to get its official world premier in his former Wakefield parish of Horbury - will tell how he he was a top five best-selling novelist; the writer of what is still the go-to book on werewolves and inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula.He was aaa storyteller of the Norse Myths of Iceland and even featured in a Sherlock Holmes novel as the detective’s godfather. <br/>In real life he married Horbury mill worker Grace Taylor, after educating her in society etiquette, inspiring George Bernard Shaw's  bestseller Pygmalion, which later became the Hollywood musical My Fair Lady.<br/>But the curate said the most important thing he ever did was to save a huge collection of folk songs from, Devon and Cornwall, where he was originally from.<br/> Some of those songs, interweaved with anecdotes from his own astonishing life and stories from his books willmark the centenary of his death in a new touring show called Ghosts, Werewolves and Countryfolk.<br/>It stars six-time BBC Folk Awards nominee Jim Causley and Miranda Sykes, of award-winning Show of Hands and Yorkshire-based Daphne’s Flight, and is narrated by John Palmer, director of the critically-acclaimed Vaughan Williams anniversary From Pub to Pulpit Cathedral tour.<br/>The premier will be at Horbury Working Members Club on Friday, May 17, 7pm to 9pm, beforeit goes on a 25-date national tour. For Horbury tickets visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ghosts-werewolves-country-folk-songs-stories-of-sabine-baring-gould-tickets-863167335737?aff=ebdssbdestsearch<br/>For more about the 2024 Whit weekend events in Horbury visit https://horburychurch.com/activities/whitwalk/