This may come as surprise to many but Valentine’s Day is infact the most celebrated holiday around the world after New Years Day!

Valentinus was an early Christian saint who was imprisoned by the Romans for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry. His letter to the his jailers daughter signed “From Your Valentine” prior to his execution is for what he will be best remembered.

The English ambient-electronica-neoclassical act In the Nursery, centred on the twins Klive and Nigel Humberstone, have been making mesmerising, intelligent and often sinister music for over three decades. They have a particular affinity for soundtracks, but also like to experiment, as demonstrated by their latest project, The Calling, which sees them collaborate with best-selling crime author Simon Beckett to create a musical exploration of his grisly ‘Hunter’ series of novels.

After the recent deluge of bloodsuckers, from Twilight to True Blood, even the most fervent fang fan could be forgiven for feeling a little vamped out. If so, the new film Midnight Son could be just the fresh plasma you need, a gritty indie horror flick with brains and heart as well as guts, this is a nasty, clever twisted love story that makes Bella and Edward look anaemic by comparison.

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Edgar Allan Poe – the 19th Century author whose Romantic visions of melancholy and madness helped define Gothic – here at Alchemy. So it was exciting to hear the news that the B-movie legend Roger Corman, who made his name adapting Poe, is planning to revisit the author’s work. Corman’s been in the film business for sixty years now, during which time he’s directed more than fifty features and produced well over 300 more. While he’s best known for shooting his films faster and cheaper than the competition, Corman’s also noted for fostering young talent. Directors such as James Cameron and Francis Ford Coppola and stars like Jack Nicholson and Robert de Niro were given breaks and learnt their respective crafts on Corman productions.

For over 35years we have offered a unique service manufacturing a vast array of items that are not necessarily alternative! We can create ‘Whatever you want when you want it’ The beauty of working with Alchemy is that we are totally in house from concept, design and manufacture, specialising in merchandise for any occasion or event.

New year, new you or so the mantra goes. It’s all connected to the custom of making a new year’s resolution, which dates back to ancient times when both the Babylonians and the Romans made promises to their respective gods. These days, our commitments are more about self-improvement than appeasing deities.

If you didn’t get one for Christmas, chances are you might well be on the look out for a new calendar. If you’re looking for something saucy, yet a little different, then how about the latest tastefully erotic calendar from the Polish company Lindner? Of course, there’s nothing new about improbable businesses promoting themselves with sexy calendars, with Italian tyre company Pirelli setting the fashion with their iconic version way back in 1964. What makes Lindner’s unusual, is that they’re a coffin manufacturer.

You could be forgiven for thinking that 2012 was a pretty poor year for heavy metal, particularly here in its British birthplace. London hosted the Olympics, with the filmmaker Danny Boyle directing the opening and closing ceremonies, designed to highlight the best of British culture and tradition. Of course the soundtrack was crucial, and Boyle carefully picked a selection of timeless British music and song, from hymns, to TV themes tunes and pop songs, and even some classic punk. The only obvious style conspicuous by its absence was heavy metal. But metal’s used to being regarded as beneath contempt by the media’s accepted arbiters of taste. For many metal fans, being perennially out-of-fashion has become a mark of pride.

Morbid culture vultures visiting the capital over the next few weeks will be spoilt for choice, with not one but two exhibitions dedicated to the only certain thing that awaits us all. The Wellcome Collection on Euston Road offers Death: A Self Portrait which is open until February 24th, while the Museum of London (near St Paul’s Cathedral) is hosting a special exhibition dedicated to Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men which runs until April 14th.

Perhaps all good magicians should be controversial. The English illusionist and sceptic Derren Brown, certainly is, specialising in boggling minds with clever psychological tricks that have a habit of telling us more about how our brains are wired than is strictly comfortable. His recent two part TV special, ‘Fear and Faith’, is a good example. In the first part, Derren claimed to have developed a miracle pill that could control fear, giving it to a selection of subjects, who all agreed that it worked. It was, of course a placebo – a sugar pill with no medical effects – and any results his subjects experienced was all purely in their minds.