Tales from the White Hart is a 1957 collection of short stories by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, in the "club tales" style.
Thirteen of the fifteen stories originally appeared across a number of different publications; some had no connection to the White Hart in their original version. "Silence Please" was the title of two distinct stories; the version in the book has a different plot from the original magazine version. "Moving Spirit" and "The Defenestration of Ermintrude Inch" were first published in this book.
The White Hart is a pub (modelled on the White Horse, New Fetter Lane, just north of Fleet Street, once the weekly rendezvous of science fiction fans in London till the mid-1950s, when they moved to the Globe pub in Hatton Garden)[1] where a character named Harry Purvis tells a series of tall tales. Incidental characters inhabiting the White Hart include science fiction writers Samuel Youd (also known as John Christopher), John Wyndham (John Beynon), and Clarke himself in addition to the narrative voice as his pseudonym Charles Willis.
The style and nature of the stories was inspired by the Jorkens stories of the writer Lord Dunsany, whom Clarke admired and with whom he corresponded, a fact humorously acknowledged by Clarke in his introduction to the first Jorkens omnibus volume.[2]