I've always been a fan of ghost stories, one of the first Puffin books I chose through the Puffin School Book Club (those little catalogues given out at primary school) was "Ghosts, Spooks and Spectres" edited by Charles Molin.
M.R.James has been a mainstay of the BBC's A Ghost Story For Christmas series, running from the 1970s in black and white (Michael Hordern climbing over groynes) to the recent adaptations by Mark Gatiss. I prefer the classics, but I've always got time for an M.R.James adaptation.
It had stories ranging from the classic (Monkey's Paw) to the comic (Canterville Ghost) and folk tales about boggins. And even though there aren't any M.R.James stories in there, I quickly discovered them too and devoured them.
M.R.James has been a mainstay of the BBC's A Ghost Story For Christmas series, running from the 1970s in black and white (Michael Hordern climbing over groynes) to the recent adaptations by Mark Gatiss. I prefer the classics, but I've always got time for an M.R.James adaptation.
This Christmas has Gatiss' version of "Count Magnus", a spooky story set in Sweden where an antiquarian (all of James' stories feature erudite but foolish antiquarians) is fated to meet his doom. Friday 23rd December at 10pm on BBC2.
Gatiss made a documentary about M.R.James in which the writer was played by Roger Lloyd Parry, an actor who has produced his own live readings of James' ghost stories. One is being livestreamed for a £5 donation on Christmas Eve at 7pm, you can get tickets from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-treasure-of-abbot-thomas-a-ghost-story-by-m-r-james-tickets-395013123887
Saturday March 12th 1938: the first ever dramatisation of an M.R.James ghost story on the radio:
Plus:
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