Sunday Times bestselling author Sarah Clegg has spent her career digging out weird folklore hidden in history. Now, she’s on a mission to change the modern perception of fairies with her latest book Perilous Enchantment, celebrating fairies’ deliciously dark history.

We spoke with the author about her favourite blood-drenched medieval fairy, how the often-dismissed genre of ‘romantasy’ is giving historical folklore new life, and how medieval female authors used fairies as an escapist tool.

Get tickets for Sarah Clegg’s BridLit event on Saturday 7 November 2026 here.

Could you tell us a little about Perilous Enchantment?

This book is a history of fairies, from their origins in ancient pagan gods and creatures like nymphs, pans, and elves, right the way down to the present day, and the idea of them as twee, twinkly Tinkerbells, or the terrifyingly sexual fairies of romantasy. It tracks how they’ve shifted through the centuries, and why we’ve learned to be charmed by, terrified of, and seduced by them.

Have you always been aware of this darker side of fairies, or did it emerge as you began researching the book?

I was very aware of it as a child. My parents had a book on the shelves in their library, Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries, which would make you feel just a little bit grown-up pulling off the shelf yourself. It takes a lot of fairy folklore, especially that written by Catherine Briggs, who’s an incredible fairy folklorist, and presents it as if it’s real, while also drawing these terrifying images of horrible fairies.

There’s an image in there that I encourage everyone to go and look up: the Redcap, who looks like a nightmarish little goblin creature who dyes his hat red with the blood of his victims. There are fairies who will drown you, fairies who will prophesy your death, fairies that roam through the countryside in a vast band through the sky. The illustrations are terrifying and brilliant, and the whole thing had me hooked when I was little.

Then I started writing about monsters and demons for my previous two books, and I was aware that fairies kept fluttering around the edges. Every time I’d write about some kind of terrifying witch or nightmarish demon, at some point fairies would start sticking their oar in, always  terrifying and frightening and wonderful. I just had to write a book about them.

>What is it about fairies that has made them so enduring in our culture and storytelling?

I think one of the things is that they are so adaptable. More than really most other supernatural creatures, they have this capacity to shift and adapt themselves to whatever new trend or interest is coming along.

When, in the Middle Ages, people wanted characters in their stories that were blood and glitter and sex and violence, then fairies were there. And it turns out it didn’t take too many shifts to also portray them as ethereal and beautiful and frightening, but broadly good. Then it didn’t take too many shifts from that to get them into something childish and whimsical and innocent.

They just seem to have this capacity for change.

And I think one of the reasons for that might be that they come from this vast plethora of different beings, all merging into each other. They’re pans, they’re nymphs, they’re elves, they’re fates. Fairies are very much fates. It means that whatever place you want them to take in your story, you can pull on that thread of them and enhance it enormously.

One of the best things about fairies is that they’re the clay with which people moulded their fears and their desires, and then mushed them together in different combinations to make some of the best stories.

Fairies seem to be having a moment in modern romantasy, especially in series like A Court of Thorns and Roses. What do you make of this return to their more seductive, dangerous side?

Fairies were seductive, terrifying figures long before they were twee and whimsical.

The fairies of the Middle Ages are incredibly seductive, and the medieval romances they’re part of are so similar to romantasy. They’re these vast, spiralling narratives, absolutely chock-full of violence and sex and excitement and adventure, and everyone’s trying to turn the thrills up as far as they’ll go in a way that’s really fun to read. They’re also chock-full of seductive fairies.

So I am delighted that we’re getting back to that again. I couldn’t be happier. I think the courts of the Middle Ages would have eaten up A Court of Thorns and Roses with a spoon. They would have loved it.

What’s also exciting is how much modern romantasy draws on older folklore. You can trace a lot of the fairy side of it back to the urban fantasy movement of the 1990s, when writers like Terri Windling and Pamela Dean were writing books about fairies in modern cities. They had a real knowledge of folklore. Their books would often include a complete nineteenth-century ballad, like Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer. They were so excited for you to learn about fairies.

They lead very directly to Holly Black, who speaks of these writers as her inspirations. And then Holly Black to the sexual fairies of romantasy is barely a step at all.

I love the fact that I went to a fairy ball in Los Angeles and heard people dressed as fairies talking about Tam Lin — the ballad of a man who’s been kidnapped by the fairies and needs to be rescued from the evil fairy queen by a young mortal girl.

People are embracing this folklore. And what I always say about folklore is that when you tell a story, you will always change it. Even if you think you’re not, you’ll adapt it to what you’re interested in. You’ll bring out different pieces. That’s part of the joy of folklore: it’s always changing and shifting, and we’re always getting new things.

Is there a particular period in the history of fairies that you find most compelling?

I think it’s actually the fairies of the Middle Ages, partly because they were the ones that most surprised me. They have this wild freedom to them, especially sexually. With fairies, all bets are off. What’s amazing is that there doesn’t seem to be any judgment attached to it, or no really serious judgment.

You get a fairy who will have sex seven times under a tree with a mortal man she’s just met, and afterwards be like, “Don’t tell my husband.” Very frequently, the fairies are married to someone else and the mortals are married to someone else, and they’re still hooking up.

There’s an amazing medieval idea that if you sleep with a fairy, then you don’t lose your virginity, which you could take full advantage of. There is this darkness and danger to them. If you’re going to have a relationship with a fairy, you definitely need to keep your wits about you. You need to behave. You need to obey what the fairy is saying and telling you to do. The power imbalance is actually very similar to romantasy, and the clear sign that people were enjoying the power imbalance and the fantasy of it is also very clear in the Middle Ages.

What’s more, it’s a genre that we know had women writers. A lot of the writers are anonymous, but we know there were women writing, people like Marie de France, who’s incredible. She tells the story Yonec, about a woman in an abusive marriage who uses a fairy lover to try to escape. It wasn’t what I was expecting when I turned to medieval fairies: to find women writing about issues that really impacted them. It was joyous.

Finally, what would you say to someone who thinks fairies aren’t for them?

There is almost certainly a fairy out there for you somewhere. They’ve been through so many different shifts. So many people have picked them up and played with them in so many different genres and in so many different ways.

If you don’t like romantasy, there’ll still be a fairy for you. If you don’t want it twee and childish, there’s definitely still fairies for you. If you want pure whimsy, with no sex and no violence, there are fairies for you. If you want them breaking every single societal rule that’s going, and then some, there are fairies. If you want them not breaking any social rules whatsoever, always being good and behaving themselves, there are fairies for you.

Fairies have changed so much. There have been centuries and centuries of people telling stories about them in so many different ways. You’ll be able to find one.

Want to hear more? Join us for an afternoon with Sarah Clegg on Saturday 7 November 2026 here.