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(October 2, 2007) Peter Bell writes to tell me of a reference to MRJ in the latest issue of Faunus, the journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen: "...in a collection of correspondence between Machen and publisher John Lane. It is in a letter dated 15 November 1895, in which he [Machen] agrees to remove an 'offensive word' (entrails!) from 'The Three Impostors' and praises the publication of M.P. Shiel's 'Prince Zaleski' ('very admirable - a most curious and charming work'). Concerning Lane's 'Keynote' series, Machen adds 'Have you seen "The Scrapbook of Canon Alberic" in the National Review by M.R. James? He should write a "Keynote"'." This ties in with the known fact that Machen wrote MRJ a fan letter on reading "Canon Alberic", as quoted in Michael Cox's M.R. James: An Informal Portrait (pp.135-136: "...I have seen nothing for a very long time that is half as good as the 'Scrapbook'"). Unfortunately MRJ seems not to have had such a high opinion of Machen's stories.

(September 29, 2007) Night of the Demon (the film based, of course, on "Casting the Runes") will be on BBC2, Sunday night (Sept. 30th), starting at 12.10am. This is some consolation for the news that DD Home Entertainment's planned two-disc DVD release of Night of the Demon (see below) has been postponed, possibly temporarily. As I understand it, the situation is that the owners of DDHE went into liquidation but have since been bought, so there is every reason to think, or at least to hope, that DDHE's schedule will be resumed in due course.

(September 28, 2007) This is getting beyond a joke: as if we didn't have enough to content us with the on-going releases of M.R. James audiobooks from Craftsman and Fantom Films, on October 1st, BBC Audiobooks is issuing Volume One of Ghost Stories by M.R. James, read by Derek Jacobi. The five unabridged stories on the two CDs of Volume One (it'll also be available to purchase as a download from BBC Audio Zone, etc.) are an idiosyncratic but not unappealing choice: "Rats", "A View from a Hill", "A School Story", "The Ash-Tree" and "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance". I've just finished listening to my review copy, and I have nothing but praise for Derek Jacobi's readings, which are first-class throughout, with good, varied characterisations and hardly any errors. As usual with all these MRJ releases, there's a lack of anything substantial in the way of an accompanying booklet (though what there is - a four-page leaflet - is fine as far as it goes), but otherwise I'd be hard put to criticise Ghost Stories, except, perhaps, to grumble a little about the fact that one of the stories is split between the two discs.

(September 22, 2007) Ash-Tree Press have announced that work is commencing on a new edition of the long out-of-print A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings of M.R. James. "We emphasise," they say, "that it will be a NEW edition, and not a straight reprint of the volume issued in 2001 [see my review here]. There are some additions we wish to make, some minor errors that we wish to correct, and some design details to which we'll be giving our attention. It is our plan to have the new edition available... at the end of October/beginning of November: but there is a lot of work to do yet. We do not expect the price of the new edition to be more than the original edition... We will also consider the feasibility of a paperback edition in due course, should demand for a lower priced volume prove that worth considering (but... a paperback binding on so large a book is not a particularly attractive idea to us)." For a variety of reasons, not least Ash-Tree's changeover to a new printer, the reprint of A Pleasing Terror has been delayed. Chris Roden tells me that: "if things go well through the new year period", the book could be out around mid-2008.

(September 17, 2007) The second and final volume of Craftsman Audio Books' The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James has now been re-scheduled for October. "We are anxious to release it as soon as possible but, as with Volume One, we need to be satisfied that we have done the very best job possible," writes Craftman's Tim Cook. For Volume One, see below and my review in G&S Newsletter 12.

(September 13, 2007) Not a G&S Newsletter subscriber but thinking of becoming one? This is a good time to take the plunge as I'm running a special offer for the rest of the year, whereby all new subscribers will receive a free extra Haunted Library booklet (see the Current and Back Issues page for more details). A further incentive might be the fact that it's looking increasingly likely that I won't be including selections from future Newsletters on the web site, or at best the selections will consist only of the reviews section of the magazine (but don't worry - nothing else on the site is changing or disappearing).

(September 11, 2007) The Fabric of Sin, the next volume in Phil Rickman's series of Merrily Watkins supernatural/crime novels (or what I like to call "Earth Mysteries fiction"), will be published on September 27th. M.R. James will feature in the book: it all connects with his visit in 1917 to the important Templar site at Garway in Herefordshire, after which he wrote in a letter to Gwendolen McBryde, "We must have offended something or somebody at Garway... Next time we shall know better". The Press Release for The Fabric of Sin asks: "what happened here to intimidate even the great Edwardian ghost-story writer M.R. James"? In mentioning The Fabric of Sin here before, I haven't previously noted the fact that the Ghosts & Scholars web site and its web mistress feature in the book! At one point, Merrily Watkins' admirable daughter Jane e-mails 'me' to ask advice on possible MRJ/Templar links, and gets a helpful reply from 'me'! (Phil Rickman gave me an advance look at this reply to make sure he'd got the 'voice' right.) The book begins with MRJ's famous quote: "Do I believe in ghosts...? I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me". There will be a full review in the G&S Newsletter, but I'm a big Rickman fan so I'm going to sneak a read of the review copy first before getting it off to the reviewer!

(September 7, 2007) To celebrate their sixtieth anniversary this year, the Folio Society is issuing some special books including a new edition of The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James (i.e. the text of the 1931 volume). The introduction will be by Penelope Fitzgerald, so I assume it's taken from her Penguin collection, The Haunted Dolls' House and Other Stories (2000). The illustrations by Francis Mosley, however, will be brand new - there will be twelve full-page etchings, and Mosley has also provided the cover illustration. Like all Folio Society books it's sure to be a beautiful production. A leaflet has been sent out about it to members, with reproductions of some of the etchings ("Mr Humphreys", "Rats"...), and quotes from Ruth Rendell and H.P. Lovecraft. (Thanks to Betty Nicholls)

(September 1, 2007) The Times today (September 1) features an article by Susan Hill in which she discusses what constitutes a ghost story. It's a tie-in with a ghost story competition being run by The Times and Vintage Classics (the prize is a night for two in a haunted hotel and publication in the newspaper). On MRJ, Susan Hill rightly says: "I doubt if even a few of the most famous stories of the form's master, M.R. James, should actually be called ghost stories because, although they contain many unpleasant things, those things are not what you and I would call ghosts". She then goes on to define ghosts and ghostly tales, possibly slightly more narrowly than most of us would (e.g. a ghost must be of a dead person or animal). One comment of hers is bound to cause controversy: "Are there any good contemporary ghost stories? Not many". As well as this article there is a related page on The Times web site, in which there is a very odd selection of "Our Favourite Ghost Stories". One of them is "The Ash-Tree", and an extensive quotation from it is given; but is this actually a ghost story? Certainly not within Susan Hill's narrow definition, and I don't think it is either. (Thanks to Andrew Mills)

(August 29, 2007) Following on from A View from a Hill in 2005 and Number 13 in 2006, it doesn't look as though there'll be an M.R. James adaptation on BBC4 TV this coming Christmas. I contacted BBC4 to ask about the situation, and received this explanation: "We understand that our Christmas ghost stories have been very popular over the last two years and we are continuing to develop other ghost story dramas (including M R James) for BBC Four. However, we haven't finally apportioned all of our drama budgets for the year but there's a big list of projects we would like to pursue for the channel and a limit to the funds available to do this with. So, I am afraid, it is likely, but not 100% certain, that we will want to rest the ghost story this year".

(August 25, 2007) Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James, the collection of articles which S.T. Joshi and I have edited for Hippocampus Press, is now out. The book contains just under thirty articles, mostly reprints, ranging in date from 1927 to 2004; a number of them hard-to-find items. There are also four new papers by Jim Rockhill, Scott Connors, John Alfred Taylor and Steven J. Mariconda; while S.T. Joshi's fairly brief but fascinating introduction covers the reaction to MRJ's ghost stories, with quotes from contemporary reviews - some of them new to me. A contents listing can be seen on the Hippocampus site, along with an excellent review by Reggie Oliver of the book.

(August 25, 2007) The Scarifyers is a weekly three-part serial which begins on digital radio BBC7 tonight (August 25) at 6pm, repeated at midnight. The Radio Times describes it thus: "Terry Molloy (aka Davros) plays a professor and writer of supernatural stories who gets drawn into a part-criminal part-spooky nightmare..." Who might the writer, one "Professor Dunning", be inspired by? Well, the on-line BBC7 Newsletter makes it clear, with this quote from The Scarifyers' author, Simon Barnard: "Dunning takes his name from the central character in M.R. James 'Casting the Runes,' and Dunning is kind of based upon James. The play opens with him reading his students a ghost story at Christmas, for example. The difference is that Prof. Dunning is actually the world's worst horror author. Scarifyers is set in the 1930s because that was such a rich period for supernatural goings-on. The inter-war period was rife with spiritualism. Satanist Aleister Crowley was making headlines, Harry Price (the 'Ghost Detective') was conducting experiments into the supernatural and people actually believed this stuff. If you're going to write a supernatural series, then the 1930s is when to set it." I understand The Scarifyers has been available for some time on disc. (Thanks to Austin Day, Daniel McGachey and David Longhorn)

Robert Lloyd Parry's Nunkie Theatre Company site has been updated with his performance schedule from October to January. Following on from his much-applauded A Pleasing Terror: Two Ghost Stories by M.R. James (for reviews on the G&S site see here and here), which he's been performing since the end of 2005, Robert will now be presenting Oh, Whistle...: Two Ghost Stories by M.R. James, with "The Ash-Tree" as well as the title tale. This premieres in October and can be seen all over the country, although the emphasis as before is on East Anglian venues. A Pleasing Terror hasn't been completely dropped either: Robert will be taking it to the World Fantasy Convention in Saratoga Springs, New York, at the beginning of November.

The latest issue of the G&S Newsletter (#12) is out. This is the largest yet (48 pages) and features a full analysis - nearly six pages long - of the results of the Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Survey. For more on the issue and how to buy it, see the "Current and Back Issues" page. I've also uploaded selections from it, including the Survey results, reviews, and a nice full-colour illustration (not in the hard-cover version) by Douglas Walters.

A new dramatisation of MRJ's story "A Warning to the Curious" is coming soon; the production company (Wild Herb Films) hopes to have a feature length film completed by January. For a preview of it on YouTube, see here. (Thanks to Jay Jay Elliott)

I've received the second volume in Fantom Films' series of audio-CD readings, M.R. James: Tales of the Supernatural. The two discs this time include "The Ash-Tree", "Canon Alberic's Scrap-book", "The Tractate Middoth" and "A View from a Hill", read by Ian Fairbairn and Gareth David-Lloyd (who both featured on the first volume), along with Phil Reynolds. Phil Reynolds gives especially good value with an excellent rendering of "The Tractate Middoth", and the criticisms I had of errors in Volume One certainly apply much less to this tale and to Ian Fairbairn's two readings ("The Ash-Tree" and "Canon Alberic"). Sadly I can't say the same about Gareth David-Lloyd's "A View from a Hill", which is full of mis-readings and omissions (some, at least, of which I'm assured were deliberate - but why?). The accompanying leaflet is an improvement on Volume One's: it's still only four pages long, but now it contains a one-page section on M.R. James (info on whom was noticeable only by its absence in the first leaflet - see below and also my review in G&S Newsletter 12). It serves its purpose well in introducing MRJ to those who've never heard of him, although there is one statement concerning his teaching at Eton and King's which, while not actually wrong, tends to lead to misunderstandings (yes, MRJ taught there but only very briefly for a couple of periods in his early life - he was an administrator, not a teacher). According to Dexter O'Neill of Fantom, they have been recording further stories for future volumes, with Murray Melvin reading "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" and "The Mezzotint"; and Phil Reynolds returning to read "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral". Dexter says: "We are looking to release the next volume... in October. My distributors are very keen for me to continue and produce another five volumes next year."

On August 27, Network DVD released a Region 2 DVD of Lawrence Gordon Clark's 1979 ITV dramatisation of Casting the Runes (starring Iain Cuthbertson and Jan Francis). There are two notable extras, the first being Clive Dunn's 1995 Anglia ITV documentary, A Pleasant Terror: The Life and Ghosts of M.R. James (see my G&S 21 review here); and the second, the short version of Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance made for ITV schools programming in the mid-1970s. Network quite rightly describe the latter as, "Possibly one of the rarest of the still-existing M.R. James adaptations"; they could also have added that it's one of the best - better than Casting the Runes. Meanwhile there is now some doubt as to whether the announced two-disc set of Night of the Demon and the 1979 Casting the Runes, due from DD Home Entertainment in September (see below), will see the light of day. (Thanks to Daniel McGachey and Miles Stribling)

Passing mentions of MRJ are always good to see, and there's a nice one in the Radio Times for July 28 - August 3. Stuart Maconie's regular column consists mainly of a review of the recent DVD release of the old kids' TV show, Ace of Wands, but it begins: "A couple of years back I was talking to Mark Gatiss from the League of Gentlemen (and much more) about our shared love of what we might call arcane entertainment, from Sherlock Holmes and MR James to The Tomorrow People". Mark Gatiss is, of course, not the only member of the League of Gentlemen to have an interest in MRJ.

O/T. Call myself an antiquary? Well, a sometime ecclesiologist, at any rate! In the '70s and '80s I produced a whole series of booklets devoted to a particular aspect of church furnishing. Now someone has revamped and expanded one of my county surveys, adding in gorgeous colour photographs of each of the examples described; and the resulting book has just been published. I thought this would be a good opportunity therefore to put a new section on the Pardoe web site. Here you can find more information on the book and how to buy a copy, and I've also added to the site the full text of two of my other booklets on the subject. Mary Ann Allen, or possibly Jane Bradshawe, would be proud (see Mary Ann's ghost story, "Hold Fast")!

In the July/August edition of Current Archaeology (#210), there was an article by Kevin Leahy entitled: "A warning to the curious: digging an Anglo-Saxon cemetery". Its subject was the cemetery at Cleatham in Lincolnshire, and the author begins by explaining his use of the title and also pointing out that there are even worse fates than Mr Paxton's: "As I near the end of my museum career and retirement beckons, it is time to pass on some words of wisdom to the next generation: don't dig an Anglo-Saxon cremation cemetery. While the man who excavated the Anglo-Saxon burial in M R James' A Warning to the Curious came to a sticky end, at least he did not have to spend 18 years writing up his excavation".

Issue #225 of Fortean Times was a UFO special and included a long article on Desmond Leslie, the author of Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953) - though in some quarters he's more famous as the man who punched Bernard Levin on national TV! Desmond Leslie was the son of Shane Leslie, best known as the author of Shane Leslie's Ghost Book. Shane Leslie was also a ghost story writer, as well as a friend of M.R. James. In 1966, he wrote an appreciative essay about MRJ, which is about to be reprinted in Hippocampus's Warnings to the Curious. In addition to the Desmond Leslie article, Fortean Times 225 contains a "Fortean Traveller" piece about Castle Leslie, the very haunted Leslie family residence in Ireland, which mentions Shane Leslie several times and has a sidebar on the Ghost Book.

A 50th anniversary two-disc DVD set (region 2) of Night of the Demon (Curse of the Demon) is being released in September by DD Home Entertainment. As well as both the UK and US versions of the film, the discs will include a new mini-documentary and a very welcome extra: the TV version of "Casting the Runes" which Lawrence Gordon Clark did for ITV in 1979. Coincidentally Daniel McGachey has been planning a reappraisal of the Clark "Casting the Runes" (rightly or wrongly a much maligned dramatisation), which should make a timely appearance in G&S Newsletter 13.

Ash-Tree Press is planning to reprint Julia Briggs' Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (1977), which - in the long chapter, "No Mere Antiquary: M.R. James" - provides one of the better analyses of MRJ's fiction. No publication date has yet been set.

I mentioned previously that the May 2007 issue of Fortean Times (#222) included a letter in which Nigel Filby recalled "a picture - I think it was in the Independent a few years ago - of [M.R. James] giving a speech in a university's grounds, towards the end of his life. A throng of people had gathered, but near the forefront of the photograph was a figure dressed in clothes out of character with the time period. The question was raised: could James have been haunted by his own, personal, ghost or was there some sort of tampering involved which gave that impression?" My response was published in the July FT (#224). This is what I say:

Nigel Filby, in his letter headed "A personal ghost?" (FT222:73) describes a photograph taken, he thought, at a speech given by M.R. James in "a university's grounds", showing a figure "dressed in clothes out of character with the time period", which - it was suggested - might be James's "own, personal, ghost". In fact, the photograph was taken at the opening of a pavilion in Luxmoore's Garden at Eton College on June 3, 1933. James was Provost of Eton then and was officiating at the ceremony. The mysterious figure, with long white hair and wearing a frock coat, was identified at the time by James - with tongue firmly in cheek, I think - as H.E. Luxmoore himself: "a capital back view of Luxmoore has come out in the photograph of the function in his garden," he wrote in a contemporary letter. Luxmoore had been James's tutor at Eton, a life-long friend and a major influence on him, and James was distraught at his death seven years earlier, in 1926. Other people also thought the figure bore a close resemblance to the somewhat eccentric-looking Luxmoore. A. MacNaughten in Haunted Berkshire (1986) mentions the wife of an Eton master who "at once recognised the very familiar figure of Mr Luxmoore, standing a little aside from the official group - evidently quite unmistakable with his characteristically hunched shoulders and wearing a short cape, as was evidently his regular custom". No corporeal personage ever came forward to identify himself as the gentleman in question, so - who knows? - it may indeed have been Luxmoore's ghost, but if it was, he was probably haunting the garden he so loved, rather than his friend M.R. James.

The Guardian's Martin Wainwright has sent me a copy of his charming little book A Gleaming Landscape: A Hundred Years of the Guardian's Country Diary, because of an unexpected (to me, at least) M.R. James connection. One of the contributors to the Diary was MRJ's great friend and correspondent, Gwen(dolen) McBryde. The book contains five entries by Gwen, ranging in date from 1941 to 1958, and in subject matter from farming to fishing and to bees and quilt-making. She had a rather nice turn of phrase at times. Here she is on caterpillars: "Woolly bear caterpillars are to be seen hurrying across roads or toiling over rough ground in a great state of mind, looking for a suitable shelter in which to spin a cocoon"; and on fireworks: "Catherine wheels spun and spluttered and rockets went up with a moan. All around you little demons rose from the ground, cracking, whirling, hopping. Some even emerged from the pond". In one of Martin Wainwright's chapter introductions there is half a page or so on Gwen, "who lived in a supposedly much-haunted farmhouse in Herefordshire to the delight of her friend M.R. James". But it's not accurate to say that Gwen's daughter Jane McBryde "was the inspiration - and first audience - for many of his mysteries": that really only applies to The Five Jars. A Gleaming Landscape was published by Aurum Press in 2006, and there will be a second volume out in October, dealing with the wartime diaries. Gwen McBryde will also feature in that.

Volume 13 (2007) of Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, contains an article by Shane McCorristine entitled: "Academia, Avocation and Ludicity in the Supernatural Fiction of M.R. James". You can read the text as a pdf file here. What is ludicity? McCorristine explains: "Ludicity, or ludic activity, (from the Latin 'ludo': I play) has been described as an intrinsically motivated phenomenon engaged in by individuals or groups of individuals for its own sake, that is, regardless of any utilitarian or profiting purpose... Ludic terrorism, a concept based upon the relationship between avocation and the ludic impulse inherent in debates revolving around the transvaluation of work, forms a central fulcrum in James's thematics as a dramatic interiorisation of fear deep within the vocational and 'civilised' sphere of modern 'workaday existence'". MRJ, McCorristine says: "...conceived the antiquarian genre of ghost stories as an opportunity to deal with the supernatural in a context of a ludic terrorism allied to free time and the frisson of entertaining nightmares... The major common thread that directs James's work, the paradigmatic motto, 'a warning to the curious', is undoubtedly a ludic component - playfully threatening the academic character, daring him not to engage in his everyday practices of researching and collecting relics and old books; the 'warning to the curious' appears as a darkly humorous postscript rather than a genuine introductory threat". Summing up his thesis, McCorristine notes that: "Despite his aversion to literary modernism, James's supernatural output as a whole can be seen as a self-reflexive corpus which arose out of, and playfully interrogated, the avocational attributes of the academic system in which he was such a prestigious and successful player".

A new article has been added to Brian Showers' web site. "A Void which cannot be filled up: The Obituaries of Mr. J.S. Le Fanu, Esq" begins and ends by quoting some of the things which M.R. James said about Le Fanu, who, as he opined, "succeeds in inspiring a mysterious terror better than any other writer". This is only the first part of the full article, which can be read on the Le Fanu Studies site.

The first volume of the two-volume The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James is now out from Craftsman Audio Books and I've received my review/complimentary copy. This release will contain unabridged audio recordings of all of the completed ghost stories of M.R. James - thirty-four in total. Volume One consists of eight discs (plus a bonus data disc) with a total of eight-and-a-half hours' listening. The discs also feature specially commissioned music by the East Anglian composer Leigh Odlin. Reggie Oliver has provided the introductory material, and the reader is David Collings (the voice of the great Monkey!). There are fourteen stories in Volume One, and since they're in roughly chronological order that means the whole of Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and all but the final tale ("Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance") in More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary are included. It's a slightly odd division, but no doubt there was a good practical reason for leaving "Mr Humphreys" until Volume Two. David Collings' readings are absolutely first class and I've detected only the most minimal and insignificant of accidental errors. The accompanying two-page leaflet contains a brief foreword by Reggie Oliver, which is something of a let-down until one realises that the material which one might expect to be in a booklet is actually on the data CD (in pdf format). Here you get contributor profiles, a full breakdown of the discs' contents, and an excellent article by Reggie entitled "The Scholar and the Story Teller" (part one). This is a reprint (abbreviated and expanded in parts) of the article cum review of the same title in All Hallows 41 (February 2006), which I praised at the time. Volume Two of The Complete Ghost Stories of M.R. James will be out in June and will contain the remaining twenty stories (among them the never-before-recorded "The Fenstanton Witch"). I'll be reviewing Volume One in G&S Newsletter 12, so all I'll add for now is that so far I'm very impressed. The price (over £70 for the two volumes) is quite high, but it's not at all unreasonable for what you get.

I've received a review copy of Fantom Films' M.R. James: Tales of the Supernatural, Volume One, which was released in April. It consists of a two audio-CD set (140 minutes of listening) containing readings of selected MRJ stories. Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto in BBC TV's Dr Who spin-off, Torchwood) is the reader of "Casting the Runes" and "There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard"; Ian Fairbairn reads "Number 13" and "Rats"; and there is a guest appearance by Geoffrey (Catweazle) Bayldon narrating "Lost Hearts". All of the readers do a perfectly acceptable job overall, though some are better than others and I have a few criticisms, about which I shall have a little more to say when I review the discs in G&S Newsletter 12. The stories are accompanied by specially composed music by Ben Wright, and there is extra MP3 and PDF content on the discs (an interview with Geoffrey Bayldon, and the texts of the stories respectively). At just £12.99, Volume One of Tales of the Supernatural is excellent value for money even if the accompanying minimal leaflet is a disappointment. Volume Two (including "A View from a Hill" and "The Ash-Tree") will follow in the summer.

A review by Brian Showers of Robert Lloyd Parry's A Pleasing Terror, when it took place in Wicklow, is on The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies web site. See the Nunkie Theatre site for information on future performances. As well as Brian's A Pleasing Terror review, you should also check out the rest of The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies site. For instance, on the television reviews page is a review of BBC4's Number 13 (and also, incidentally, a review of the US series Carnivale, the best genre TV drama serial ever, in my opinion).

Rafe McGregor sends in a date for your diary: "Paul Chapman, a historical writer, is hosting his second ghost story evening at The Minster Inn, in York, on 1 December, 2007. There is no competition, but participants bring along a ghost story in the style of MRJ and read it out (10-15 minutes as a guideline for length). He has reserved a private room and a small buffet is provided along with the bar close by, of course. Apparently the evening went very well last year, with six stories being read, and there will be more this year." If you have any queries about the event, the contact e-mail address is: Jamesianstoryeve@aol.com

It's been quite a long time since the last issue of All Hallows, the Ghost Story Society's journal, but the latest edition (#42) makes up for it in size, at an enormous 328 pages, with no fewer than twenty-four stories, along with articles and the regular sections of news, media news, reviews, letters and Ramsey Campbell's column. It's obviously going to take a very long time for me to read this AH from cover to cover, and I haven't even made a start on the fiction, which doubtless includes some Jamesian examples. I have, though, had a quick look through for MRJ-related material, and it's fair to say that there isn't a great deal this time. The most obvious at first glance are the late John Stewart's superb illustrations for "The Ash-Tree" and "Between Sunset and Moonrise" (R.H. Malden), reprinted from Ghosts & Scholars issues 1 and 2. But not to be missed is Brian Showers' excellent and detailed review of Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon. The review cleverly incorporates an interview which Brian conducted with the author of the book, Tony Earnshaw. (For the G&S Newsletter review of Beating the Devil, see here.) Roger Dobson in his "Film News and Notes" devotes a full page to coverage of Radio 4's A Good Read early last year, when Christopher Frayling selected Ghost Stories of an Antiquary as his 'good read'. There is also an interesting note from Jacqueline Simpson in the lettercolumn, concerning MRJ's attitude to Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. However, easily the most controversial MRJ-related quote is this one from Brian Showers' huge interview with E.F. Bleiler. Bleiler says: "I knew of M.R. James's 'The Experiment' and 'A Vignette' long before they were 'discovered'. I could have put them into an anthology and boasted of reprinting 'lost stories'. But I felt they were inferior work and best bypassed." Thank goodness Hugh Lamb and Richard Dalby chose to leave their readers to decide for themselves whether these two tales were worth reprinting. As is now agreed, "A Vignette" is of considerable importance; while "The Experiment" has a lot more going for it than appears on first reading (and it's far from MRJ's weakest tale).

The Collector's Library is issuing a Complete Ghost Stories by M.R. James hardback volume. According to the Amazon UK page on it, the publication date will be September 6, 2007, and the price will be £6.99. The volume will include "The Experiment", "The Malice of Inanimate Objects" and "A Vignette", as well as the contents of the Collected Ghost Stories; also a brief biography of MRJ, a further reading list, and an Afterword by David Stuart Davies. The synopsis on the Amazon page claims that this is the "first collected edition of M.R. James's 'Complete Ghost Stories'", which is definitely going a bit far: someone clearly hasn't heard of Ash-Tree Press! But my informant, Austin Day, tells me that Collector's Library editions are usually "beautifully crafted and small enough to slip in a pocket" - at 640 pages it'll need quite a large pocket.

The February issue of Clive Ward's bi-monthly Newsletter for A Ghostly Company is loaded with Jamesian material. There are two reviews, by Stephen Martin & Tony Dignam and by Clive, of Robert Lloyd Parry's peripatetic performances of A Pleasing Terror: Two Ghost Stories by M.R. James (for reviews on the G&S site see here and here). The reviewers are all very complimentary: Martin & Dignam liken the experience (at the Lantern Theatre, Sheffield) to "being transported back in time to a meeting of the Chit-Chat Society with [MRJ's] undergraduates and friends"; while Clive, who admits that he seems "to be gaining an unfair reputation for being just a little bit critical", sums up his opinion of the performance in the Old Hall Hotel, Buxton, in a word: "Brilliant!". "[I]t was James 'drawn from the life'," he says; "Here we have a gentleman [Parry] who has studied his subject thoroughly, and the results were quite startling... naturally I never knew James any more than did the actor portraying him, but I felt that this was the closest I was ever likely to get". Clive is back to his old critical self in another review, though - this one of BBC4's Number 13 dramatisation (see below). Unlike me, he did enjoy the adaptation more than A View from a Hill (which he criticises at length in G&S Newsletter 11), but he disliked some of the changes to the original story, singling out especially the (much-hated by all) appearance of the leather-clad glove ("Now, I wasn't sure what sort of nocturnal party was going on in the hotel room here, but [I] might have been tempted to join it, personally!" - and who could blame him?). "It just reinforces my view," he concludes, "that the people producing these efforts don't have a clue what makes a James story tick."

The next World Fantasy Convention will be held in Saratoga Springs, New York, from November 1-4. This year the subject matter will be "Ghosts and Revenants, Memory, History, and Folklore", and among the panel discussions the organisers expect to hold one on "M.R. James and His Successors". The guests at the convention will include Barbara and Christopher Roden, Kim Newman, and Lisa Tuttle, all of whom could usefully contribute to such a panel, so it should be interesting.

Alan Murdie's regular "Ghostwatch" column in the March 2007 Fortean Times (#220) is sub-headed: "Alan Murdie discovers that the ghost stories of MR James might have been influenced by tales of hauntings in the Suffolk village where he grew up". The subject of the article is, of course, Great Livermere: "a contender," Murdie states, "for the title of the 'most haunted village in England'". He lists no fewer than fourteen ghosts reported in Livermere, sadly none of them especially Jamesian, although there is a black dog and I rather like the "pair of phantom horses ploughing a field". The information is taken from Beryl Dyson's 2001 book Great Livermere: A Parish with Ghosts (see my review in G&S 33) and her Friends, Romans and Ghosts of 2004; Murdie reports that she is currently working on a third book, Great Livermere: A Community of Spirits. "The last decade," notes Murdie, "has seen much speculation on how James's childhood in the village shaped his stories," and he goes on to mention "A Vignette", which possibly records a real supernatural experience of MRJ's at Livermere. There are a couple of errors in the article: "Eton School", and the statement that the MRJ plaque in the church was erected by "admirers in the Ghost Story Society" (and many others, in fact!). But it's an interesting piece, nicely illustrated with photographs of Livermere church and the MRJ plaque (and it gets a cover credit!).

Ronan Farrell has sent in this link. It's to a site with three downloads of audio versions of "Casting the Runes", including the 1947 one in CBS's "Escape" series.

Dave Carson has produced a 16" by 20" black & white print illustrating the beach scene from "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", which is available from deviantART in various formats. It's a very good, subtle and eerie depiction of the scene, owing something to the scary dream sequence in Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You (the only good scene in that adaptation in my opinion, but that's beside the point!). For info on Dave's recent M.R. James t-shirt, see below.

The script of Lynne Truss's Jamesian tale "The Proceedings of that Night" can now be read on her web site. This splendid little story was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2003, and I reviewed it in G&S Newsletter 6, where I said how much I enjoyed "the multiplicity of references to MRJ's characters and places (a Professor Karswell who lives at Middoth Priory, and a Mr Eldred), stories and style". I added that I hoped it would be "published in print somewhere", so I've got my wish! (Thanks to David Longhorn for letting me know.)

Sarah Greenan writes: "I thought you might be interested to know that a version of Ralph Harrington's article 'M.R. James: supernaturalism, Christianity, and moral accountability', which was referred to in your news section in November [see below], has been published in The Tablet (the weekly Catholic magazine) for 30th December 2006, under the title 'Storyteller haunted by Christian Conscience'. This shortened version of the original paper emphasises James's 'sympathy with and understanding of Catholicism' and closes by referring to Dennistoun, at the conclusion of 'Canon Alberic's Scrap-book' arranging for the '"saying of Mass and the singing of dirges" for Alberic de Mauleon's rest' which is described as an act 'motivated by Christian humanity and a respect for the religious practices of a society other than his own'. Harrington suggests that this 'may be taken as representative of James' own inclinations' and the 'clear stream of Christian compassion' which runs through the 'dark landscapes of the ghost stories'." Ralph Harrington adds: "I was about to alert you to the version of my 'Christianity and Moral Accountability' article which has appeared in The Tablet, but I see a correspondent has beaten me to it! The article is only available for subscribers at the moment, so I wanted to let you know that if anyone has difficulty getting hold of a copy they should get in touch with me via the contact page on my website and I will e-mail the article text to them."

Following on from their generally successful version of A View from a Hill at Christmas 2005 (see Daniel McGachey's G&S Newsletter review of it here), BBC4 produced another new M.R. James TV adaptation for 2006: Number 13. I think it's a shame they didn't go for another previously unadapted story (Number 13 was part of the "Mystery and Imagination" series back in the sixties), but they picked a good tale. It starred Greg Wise as Anderson, and the writer was Justin Hopper (Peter Harness, who wrote A View from a Hill, was busy with another project but hopes to do some more MRJ adaptations in future years). The drama aired on December 22nd at 10.30-11.10pm (repeated on the 23rd). There is some information about Number 13 on the BBC Press Office site here. (Thanks to D. Taylor and Daniel McGachey) I've given your comments a separate page here. (And see Daniel McGachey's review in G&S Newsletter 12.)

Thanks to Daniel McGachey I've now seen Number 13. The three most memorable images from MRJ's original story are the room and door which are and aren't there (with corresponding alterations to the dimensions of room number 12); the dancing shadow on the opposite wall outside the window; and the arm that claws at Jensen's shoulder in the corridor. In the dramatisation, the room changes and the appearance of the door to number 13 are there (the whole thing would be pointless without them!), but (as Reggie Oliver notes on the Comments page here) the arm "clad in ragged yellowish linen and the bare skin where it could be seen had long grey hair upon it" is rather dully portrayed as neatly gloved in black leather. And worse still, the dancing shadow (the scene I remember best from the old "Mystery and Imagination" version) is gone, replaced by a not very sinister walking shadow in Mr Anderson's own room. So, with these disappointments, did I dislike the new Number 13 as much as Reggie does? Well, not really, although I can see his point. It looks very good, with some well-chosen Winchester settings. Most of the changes to the original plot are understandable and quite well thought through (including the new ending), although the Bosch painting, the Matthew Hopkins hokum and the unnecessary woman are all hard to justify. The acting is fine, but instead of the likeable, very normal scholar in the story, Anderson's character is entirely unsympathetic (the prissy, repressed Oxford don), while poor old David Burke (admirable as the innkeeper) is forced to come out with some awkward exposition at one point. Considered on its own terms Number 13 is fair enough, with a pleasant build-up of an atmosphere of antiquarian unease. I'd say I liked it about as much as A View from a Hill, but I do agree with Reggie that the writer and director just don't get the depth and sophistication of MRJ.

Mark Valentine writes: "I just caught part of a BBC Radio 3 arts programme yesterday evening [December 21st] around maybe 10pm-ish where Jonathan Miller and A.S. Byatt were blethering on about ghost stories in a singularly ill-informed way, apropos of the new BBC TV 4 MRJ dramatisation. Miller said people were no longer attracted to the uncanny, and belittled M.R. James while praising Henry James and, more surprisingly, Blackwood. Byatt started by fawning on Miller ('as Jonathan has just so brilliantly described') and then gave a fairly incoherent summary of 'The Willows' which she said was set in 'Northern Europe', whatever that means - Middle, surely". This was Night Waves at 9.30pm, and I'm not sorry I missed it, although I doubt whether my opinion of Miller could get much lower!

The December edition of Clive Ward's Newsletter of A Ghostly Company contained a good write-up by Tony Laverick of the Madingley Hall course on "The Ghost Stories of M.R. James" (see below). "The aims of the course," he says, "were to study in depth some of the ghost stories of M.R. James, to place his stories in the context of ghost stories in English Literature and to consider James's characteristics as a short-story writer. The stories examined in depth were Canon Alberic's Scrap-book, Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, The Mezzotint, The Ash-Tree, Lost Hearts, and Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad." Tony comments: "I am unfamiliar with literary analysis but found this approach to James's work interesting, despite the slight intellectual overload! Tales or short stories? Levels of narrative... Plot development and verisimilitude... Antiquarian and scholarly detail... Historical perspectives... Tangential horror and crescendos... Singularity and poetic structure... and much more...". After watching Jonathan Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You, "Miller's film received a savaging in the discussion which followed" (which elicits an editorial "Hooray" from Clive Ward - a man with a low tolerance of pretentiousness!). "Many of the people on the course," Tony adds, "were Madingley 'regulars', and to some extent it was an interesting academic exercise for them and any subject would have sufficed. A fair few had not heard of MRJ before applying and one person was a devout sceptic who found the supernatural element unconvincing but eventually conceded that the stories were well written... [M]ost people at Madingley knew nothing of the 'James Gang' - Malden, Swain, et al - and were not devotees of supernatural literature. I think that two others subscribed to Ghosts & Scholars..." Elsewhere in the Ghostly Company Newsletter, Steve Martin suggests that MRJ might have been influenced by Augustus Hare's 'true' account of the Croglin Vampire, seeing as how "James wrote three stories that involved vampires". Tina Rath would doubtless disagree with that number - see her article "M.R. James and the Vampires" in G&S Newsletter 10.

Matt Carless has e-mailed about his new reading group called Fireside Frights at Yahoo! Groups.: "We read and discuss the best in classic ghost and horror short fiction from across the centuries. These are stories to be read by a blazing fire, with the curtains drawn and the doors securely locked. Each week we feature an author and recommended short story as essential reading. Vote in our monthly poll for your favourite authors to be featured as an upcoming Author of the Week". So this sounds like a good opportunity to discuss MRJ, among others. The address of the group is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FiresideFrights/.

Terror 2006 was the name of a season of dramatisations at The Sticking Place in the Union Theatre, Southwark (London), from October 25th to November 25th. They marked the 70th anniversary of the death of MRJ with several plays. The Disappearance was adapted by Daragh Carville (from "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance"); while William Stewart tackled The Rose Garden for Natural Perspectives Theatre Company. Over Halloween there was also Sean McCann's version of There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard. "No other theatre or literary group will be commemorating the work of M.R. James in such a high profile way", they said. For some photographs of The Disappearance and The Rose Garden see here. Katherine Haynes has sent in a review of The Disappearance and The Rose Garden, which I've added to the Events Reviews page.

Mark Valentine tells me that: "Issue XXXVI of Caerdroia, the journal of mazes & labyrinths, includes an article by David Ellis on 'Mazes and Mysteries', which discusses mystery stories based on mazes. 'Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance' is briefly discussed early in the article, and David Ellis suggests that MRJ intends to hint at the experience of Harris, in the Hampton Court maze, in Three Men in a Boat: 'James summoned up recollections of the good humour of Jerome's anecdote in order to sharpen the contrast with the markedly different mood of the maze into which he led his own readers'. Later, Ellis jocularly suggests a character in Mary Fitt's murder mystery Mizmaze (1959), who has read a book on mazes, might have read the one being compiled by Lady Wardrop!"

It looks as though the residential course on "The Ghost Stories of M.R. James", held at Madingley Hall (near Cambridge) from November 3rd to 5th, 2006, went very well. Nancy Gregory reports: "There were twenty of us and we all liked our tutor, Adrian Barlow. We looked closely at six or seven of the famous stories, skimmed over others, looked also at James's other writings such as Abbeys and Suffolk and Norfolk, reflected on his picture of a don's life, considered the difference between the stories written while he was at King's and those written later on, compared him with Sheridan Le Fanu and other writers, and, as well as completing a coursebook (insisted upon by the powers that be), even tried our hands at writing 'our own' MRJ story! We also watched DVDs of the TV versions of Oh Whistle... and some others. No one liked them very much! Some of the group had always been MRJ fans, some hardly knew him and one, I think, was somewhat hostile! But we all got on well, most people spoke at least a little, and no one hogged the entire discussion."

"The Late, Great King of the English Ghost Story" is the title of an article cum review of S.T. Joshi's MRJ volumes, Count Magnus and The Haunted Dolls' House, which appeared in the October 31 edition of the Wall Street Journal. The writer, John J. Miller, is very enthusiastic about MRJ and sums up his appeal well, emphasising the malevolence of his ghosts, and suggesting that perhaps we like weird tales because they "provide a welcome reassurance that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in materialist philosophies". Miller says, as do so many others, that MRJ's scholarship is "virtually forgotten" except among specialists: a check of the web, particularly in these post-Da Vinci Code days, shows that, if anything, this is getting less and less true, though I suppose it depends on how one defines "specialist". Unfortunately Miller's article is only available on-line for a fee or to on-line WSJ subscribers. (Thanks to S.T. Joshi)

The aim of English Heretic is "to help people decode and realise the alchemical ciphers and conspiratorial interplay of the buildings and landscapes around them" by providing "a comprehensive set of resources" for "inner landscape investigators". The stories of M.R. James would seem to offer some potential in this area and, sure enough, earlier this year English Heretic produced its third publication, Wyrd Tales, which contains an article called "Future Cult at Burnstow? An occult blueprint for the Temple of Sariel based on M.R. James' 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You'". In it, the author, Andy Sharp, starts by looking at the geography of Felixstowe - the Burnstow of the story. Then, after a brief description of a couple of other writers' ideas concerning "Oh, Whistle", he goes on to posit "some more esoteric occult sources... as hypothetical inspirations for the story". Could James, he asks, "have been using the 'whistle' as the key to a Jamesian Mythos or Cultus?... Certainly there are enough ciphers, sigils and intersections between reality and fiction in James's work to warrant such an investigation". Andy Sharp is either unaware of or ignores the standard explanations for the "FUR/FLA/FLE/BIS whistle inscription, and instead proposes first a connection with the cardinal compass points; and second, by some removal of letters, a hidden reference to Sariel, a Talmudic angel of death. It's all a bit tenuous as it stands, and yet strangely compelling, so that I'm glad to hear there are plans to tackle other MRJ stories in a similar fashion. Wyrd Tales comes with an accompanying CD including a track of ambient music inspired by "Oh, Whistle", made with recordings taken on location at Felixstowe. Whatever one thinks of the article, the music - with its evocative flute playing - undeniably works in invoking a wonderfully sinister and very appropriate atmosphere.

Ralph Harrington, whose "Ghosts, trains and trams: the technologies of transport in the ghost stories of M.R. James" has been listed in my links section for some time, has added a new essay to his web site: "M.R. James: supernaturalism, Christianity, and moral accountability". In it the author suggests that MRJ's stories "reveal a profound Christian morality, a deeply ethical commitment to scholarship, a wide and humane learning, and, not least, a knowledgeable and sympathetic respect for Catholicism". He discusses at greatest length (and very interestingly) the question of MRJ's perceived anti-Catholicism and concludes that too much emphasis has been laid on it by recent authors. Ralph Harrington also gave a seminar paper on MRJ at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Oxford on October 16th, the title of the paper being: "'So jarred were all my nerves': supernatural shock and traumatic terror in the ghost stories of M.R. James". This is on his web site here. His main thesis is that: "From a modern perspective, James's summary of the ghost's sphere of activity coincides suggestively with some of the characteristic parameters of traumatic experience: terror, madness, the uncovering of what is hidden. His outline of the roles available to the ghost echoes modern clinical definitions of trauma..." In discussing this as it relates to the ghost stories, Harrington is drawn inexorably to the question of whether MRJ himself suffered "unacknowledged and unarticulated tensions and anxieties", perhaps even depression particularly over the loss of various friends. Quoting appositely from "John Humphreys", Harrington finishes: "this passage can credibly be read as a remarkably powerful and accurate description of what would today be recognized as an acute anxiety attack or an episode of severe clinical depression. Its presence in James's writings suggests that his sense of the power of traumatic experience and of its potential effects upon the mind and body was perhaps based upon a more direct experience of the 'jolts' of life than we might imagine". I wouldn't disagree with that: careful reading of the ghost stories reveals either personal experience of such emotions (especially panic fear) or a very empathic attitude towards those who suffer from them. I should perhaps warn you before you read the article that certain statements about the world of supernatural fiction criticism, especially as it relates to Lovecraft, are controversial to say the least!

For the James fan who has everything, here's something new: Dave Carson, the brilliant artist and erstwhile contributor to G&S, is producing an M.R. James t-shirt! This "Ghost Shirt for Christmas" has a superbly spooky cowled figure as its focus, with "M.R. James" written above and "Quis est iste qui venit" below, all backed by old text and runes. It looks great. Go to Dave's cthulhuart.com page to see and order it.

In April 2006, Coachwhip Publications issued a reprint of The Story of a Troll-Hunt (1904) by M.R. James's great friend, James McBryde. It's in a very affordable paperback format, and includes MRJ's touching introduction. The first (and, until now, only) reprint of Troll-Hunt was the Ghost Story Press's in 1994, but that's long out of print. "McBryde's artistry is phenomenal," says the Coachwhip web site description, "foreshadowing the loose humorous skill of Dr Seuss" (a surprising but not inaccurate comparison). It adds: "The story is handwritten, seemingly requiring the attention of a cryptographer, but this edition includes a translation of the whimsical writing". For those unfamiliar with Troll-Hunt, it's an amusing cartoon account of an expedition to Denmark by three Cambridge friends, one of them MRJ, "with the object of bringing back a live specimen of a Troll for the Fitzwilliam Museum". The book can also be ordered from Amazon and Amazon UK.

The first ever reprint of M.R. James's very amusing memoirs, Eton and King's: Recollections, Mostly Trivial (1926), came out at the end of 2005 from Ash-Tree Press. I'm extremely pleased with its smart and stylish appearance. As the dust-jacket blurb says: "Displaying the wry humour so evident in his fiction... While Eton and King's is somewhat less than a traditional autobiographical study, the book does reveal some of James's beliefs, interests, and way of thinking, all of which found expression, to some extent, in his ghost stories". The book also contains an introduction by Rosemary and Darroll Pardoe, our full index, and an appendix with MRJ's 1932 article from The Times: "New and Old at Cambridge". I'm biased, of course, but I can't speak too highly of this volume. Buy it before it goes out of print (it has a slightly smaller print-run than is usual with Ash-Tree); yes, even if you have the original edition.

Eddie Brazil has e-mailed to tell me that: "[I have] set up a gallery to show my paintings and photographs [including] my visions of James's ghosts... I hope eventually to do all the stories. Also some of my other 'Jamesian styled' stuff is showcased, which ranges from ruined churches to weird tombs and foggy days". You can find the gallery here.

News for this page is always welcome: e-mail me.
Please also let me know about any broken links, etc.

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