This issue begins with the second part of Warner’s unfinished sequel to The Corner That Held Them, the first part having appeared in the Sylvia Townsend Warner Journal 2020:1. The Corner That Held Them theme continues with Adam Piette’s article on the relation between the Black Death and European fascism in the novel and then, less directly, with two pieces by Warner related to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The first is a previously unpublished story, ‘Hamlet in England’, to which Warner was probably referring when she recalled that in 1941, when she began the novel, she ‘had tried the beginning which remains as Hamlet in England’. The second piece, ‘Footsteps on the Battlements’, is a sceptical, humorous assessment of recent performances of the play on stage and screen. It first appeared in A Theatre Today Miscellany in 1948, the year in which The Corner That Held Them was published.
The later than planned date of this double issue (which comprises the second Journal of 2020 and the first of 2021) reflects some of the problems of production associated with our twenty-first-century years of pandemic. We hope to be back on our regular schedule with the following numbers of the Journal.