Anyone who likes reading “gothic” stories or seeing gothic films will, I think, find this book interesting. It covers several areas, as follows:

• Architecture, including the pointed arch and labyrinths.

• The location, such as the village.

• The Gothic Compass, which includes directions and also “cosmic horror” (oo-er!).
  North • South • East • West • Planetary & Cosmic Horror

• And Monsters, including the tentacle.
  Scale • Splices • The Tentacle • Formless • Us

Being a Thames and Hudson publication it is, of course, wonderfully illustrated.

I should think this book provides some interesting background to reading and viewing anything in the gothic genre. As such, I believe it could be useful reading for teachers of English at Key Stage 3, in which the aims for reading include the following:

Pupils should be taught to:

• develop an appreciation and love of reading, and read increasingly challenging material independently through:

  • reading a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, including in particular whole books, short stories, poems and plays with a wide coverage of genres, historical periods, forms and authors, including high-quality works from English literature, both pre-1914 and contemporary, including prose, poetry and drama; Shakespeare (2 plays) and seminal world literature

  • …

• understand increasingly challenging texts through:

  • learning new vocabulary, relating it explicitly to known vocabulary and understanding it with the help of context and dictionaries

  • making inferences and referring to evidence in the text

  • knowing the purpose, audience for and context of the writing and drawing on this knowledge to support comprehension

  • checking their understanding to make sure that what they have read makes sense

• read critically through:

  • knowing how language, including figurative language, vocabulary choice, grammar, text structure and organisational features, presents meaning

  • recognising a range of poetic conventions and understanding how these have been used

  • studying setting, plot, and characterisation, and the effects of these

(Reproduced under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Here’s the link for it on the Thames and Hudson website:

Gothic: An Illustrated History