For the text of the on-line version of The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter, follow these links:
Issue 1 (March 2002).
Issue 2 (September 2002).
Selections from Issue 3 (January 2003).
Selections from Issue 4 (August 2003).
Selections from Issue 5 (February 2004).
Selections from Issue 6 (September 2004).
Selections from Issue 7 (March 2005).
Selections from Issue 8 (September 2005).
Selections from Issue 9 (March 2006).
Selections from Issue 10 (September 2006).
Selections from Issue 11 (March 2007).
Selections from Issue 12 (September 2007).
Click here for details of how to order or subscribe to the hard-copy version of the Newsletter.
Click here for the latest "Events Reviews".
Sorry for the long silence, due to health and computer problems. I'm afraid I'll no longer be updating this news section except when major Jamesian events occur or when time is of the essence. The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter, however, is continuing to come out a couple of times a year, as usual. For news of the latest issue (currently number 18) see here.
And watch this space for an announcement early next year about a new G&S Jamesian story competition (open to all), with the winning entries (if there are enough good ones) being published as a hardcover from a well-thought-of small press.
A "modern re-working" by Neil Cross of "Oh,
Whistle", Whistle and I'll Come to You, was broadcast on BBC2
TV on Christmas Eve. Starring John Hurt as Parkin (sic), it was notable
for not having a whistle!!! In fact so much of the original story was left
out or altered that it hardly had any claim to be an adaptation. Instead
of a young bachelor, "Parkin" was an old married man who had just
put his wife (Gemma Jones) into a home. The "Quis est iste..."
inscription was on a ring (and it was pretty irrelevant anyway), there was
no Templar preceptory, and no figure with a horrible face of crumpled linen.
There was a dream sequence of sorts and what might just pass as a pursuit
by a personage on the beach, but this looked more like a "displaced
Bedouin" (thank you Chico Kidd for that perfect description!) than
a scary spectre in fluttering draperies. I thought I detected more references
to Jonathan Miller's old TV adaptation than to "Oh, Whistle" itself.
But did the new Whistle and I'll Come to You work as an independent
supernatural drama, regardless of its supposed inspiration? Hardly at all:
I found one small part of one scene quite scary.
One final note: There are a couple of new and updated entries in the links section on the G&S Home Page, but I haven't made any serious attempt to check all the links and remove the ones (I've no doubt there are some) which no longer work. So if you've encountered problems with any entries in the section, please let me know.
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e-mail: pardos@globalnet.co.uk