Alongside M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood and Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen wrote powerful, chilling and thought-provoking stories. His supernatural tales draw their power from the long nights and dark lanes of the Welsh countryside that raised him, surrounded as he was by the remains of Roman forts and Iron Age archeology. His 1914 story, 'The Bowmen' is the source of the legend of the Angel of Mons, where a supernatural bowman covered the retreat of soldiers in the first world war.