Children of The Wicker Man

<p><strong>Justin has always been conflicted over the exalted claims made about <em>The Wicker Man</em>, his father’s magnum opus: for him, the film destroyed his family.</strong> He has no photographs of Robin Hardy in his house. His brother Dominic, whom Robin abandoned as a baby, has been more distanced. Their father’s film is a set of fragmented stories: benighted production, brutal editing, critical reception, financial failure, and later revival.</p><p>Then, at the height of the Covid pandemic, Justin receives a letter from a woman he’s never met. She has found a cache of Robin’s personal papers that have been sitting untouched in the attic of Justin’s childhood home since the 1970s. Would he like them?</p><p>Using these newly uncovered sources, along with the Hardy family’s own letters and photographs, <em>Children of The Wicker Man</em> investigates what Robin Hardy’s creative contribution to <em>The Wicker Man</em> was, and considers who was truly sacrificed. In the process, the brothers discover an unlikely heroine: Justin’s mother Caroline, who bankrupted herself paying loans to her husband and the film, only for him to leave when it flopped. For all women behind artist husbands, this book reveals a series of heroines: the mothers of the children of <em>The Wicker Man</em>.</p>