M.R. James At Xmas

During the Christmas holidays, my friend and I would take a walk up the the local library.  There we would look for books on horror and the supernatural; movie anthologies, Arthur C Clarke type unexplained   mysteries, that sort of thing.

It was there one Xmas that I first came across the gothic horror author M.R. James.  His stories appealed to me at first because of their length - ten to twenty pages were easily enough to hold me for a while.  Then I became captivated by the stories themselves.  They would take me to the kind of places I'd seen in Hammer Horror films, dark antiquarian locations where time held many secrets.  Secrets that were unearthed and upturned with horrifying consequences - these were often cautionary tales: beware of the past, somethings are best left alone.

Then there was the adaptations onto television.  The best of these were the series of nightly readings on BBC2 by Robert Powell at Xmas 1986, "Classic Ghost Stories, by M.R. James".

(Dec 25) The Mezzotint. 

(Dec 26) The Ash Tree. 

(Dec 28) Wailing Well. 

(Dec 29) Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad.

(Dec 30) The Rose Garden.

The tradition continues today.  You can find M.R. James on the BBC somewhere over the Xmas period, be it on BBC Radio 7 or sometimes on BBC Four - a few years ago we were treated to a dedicated documentary on the man himself.