The Green Children of Woolpit

[John Clark] gathers up the dust of centuries, tosses theories on the scales, adds appropriate filters, and, in a worthily nit-picking feat of all-round scholarship, rounds out the context for these mystery children and their subsequent fate in a way that no prior researcher has done. The text is as interesting for its intense questioning of elements as for the fascinating story itself.

The Green Children of Woolpit is a comprehensive, meticulously referenced and fascinating delve into this most-beguiling of stories, for which John Clark should be highly commended. Crucially, it’s also very readable.

This is an extensively researched and referenced study… It is a fascinating, and despite its deep scholarship, an accessible account of how stories and legends develop and are interpreted and exploited through antiquarian studies and modern re-workings.

Above all, we are confronted with the power of a well-told story. That’s what William and Ralph did in the 12th century—and what Clark does for his readers in the 21st. I recommend this book not only as an example of rigorous research—worthy of the most diligent scholar or the most obsessive detective—but also as a way to keep the story—and above all, the mystery—alive.

…no one has ever known more about the Green Children than [John Clark]… The Green Children of Woolpit is a synthesis of history (academic and popular) with folklore, Fortean studies, and science fiction. There is nothing that Clark has not read in his search for the cultural reception of this story…

Clark applies methodical precision to his material: he analyzes every claim and counterclaim. But despite the density of his research, his prose retains a lightness and ease that makes the book a hugely enjoyable read, ensuring its accessibility to a wide readership. While the story of the green children receives a forensic handling, Clark’s enjoyment of it, in all its metamorphic complexity, shines through.

The Green Children of Woolpit is a fascinating and well-researched piece of scholarship that will be of interest to a wide range of readers… Clark’s interdisciplinary background seems crucial to his nuanced analysis of the tale in its historical, cultural, linguistic, and geographical context. Moreover, the book proves interesting as much for Clark’s examination of previous analyses of the legend as it does for his exploration of the Green Children’s story.

Clark’s exhaustive scholarship examines not only the two medieval accounts of the ‘Green Children’ but also the numerous later retellings and (mis)translations of their appearance in a twelfth-century Suffolk village. The result is a meticulous yet highly readable study, built upon the research of decades.

The Green Children of Woolpit is a meticulously researched and thoughtfully presented contribution to scholarly discourse on this intriguing medieval mystery.

The real brilliance of this book is its even-handed approach to the various theories it explores… its willingness to consider all possibilities within the wider context of the folklore that forms the tale’s foundation and current state without requiring that any particular viewpoint be wholly dismissed.

John Clark was for many years curator of the medieval collections at the Museum of London. Since retiring in 2009, he has continued research, lecturing and writing on topics including the history and archaeology of medieval London, medieval folklore and legends and their relationship to ‘real’ history, and medieval horses and horse equipment.