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Post by dem bones on Nov 18, 2015 10:47:53 GMT
As with so much of our magazine coverage, it starts with a stub post. 'Review' to follow ASAP.Haunted Library Publication # 91 Rosemary Pardoe (ed.) - The Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter #28 (Haunted Library, Oct. 2015) Cover: Jim Pitts The Ash TreeBack Cover: Peter Bell Photographs of the strange natural phenomena which inspired RagnarokRosemary Pardoe - Editorial Rosemary Pardoe & Rick Kennett - News
Peter Bell - Ragnarok Tina Rath - Incident In The Harvest Field
Daniel McGachey - M. R. James on Radio & Television: Additional entries Helen Grant & Peter Bell - M. R. James and the Modern Ghost Story. Two Reports on a One Day Symposium. Rosemary Pardoe - Notes & Queries; The Date of Merfield Hall/ House Letters: Clive Ward, Norman Darwen
Reviews: David Harris - James Doig's Friends Of the Dead Roger Johnson - Reggie Oliver's The Sea Of Blood
Reviews of Unwritten Books: Ian Bunting - L. T. C. Rolt's Further Disturbances: Twelve More Stories of the SupernaturalImportant The ordering information provided on the (otherwise excellent) Ghosts & Scholars website is in need of an update. Via the current issue of the newsletter, we learn that: For further info/ to order contact dandrpardoe ATgmail.com.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 5, 2015 19:30:01 GMT
Two stories of blood sacrifice, one grisly and terrifying, the other low-key, subtle. Both deadly effective. Peter Bell - Ragnarok: "To what purpose was this spider-world on a dung-heap. It appeared terribly like a metaphor for the world."While wandering the Cumbrian wilds, Blake, a keen amateur antiquarian (what else?), chances upon a lonesome church built upon a Viking shrine, remnants of which - notably a huge stone cross adorned with worrying carvings - are much in evidence. Finding the door jammed open, Blake investigates the gloomy and oppressive interior. The Eastern wall is dominated by a stained glass window depicting the resurrection interpreted as Boschian nightmare, and the pulpit does not bear thinking about. Hugely relieved to be back in the open, Blake's journey to the nearest pub takes him past the revolting carcass of a sheep dumped atop a spider-infested slurry pit, and Yottenfews Hall, a former asylum closed this past twenty years following some dreadful scandal, which, according to one surly Angel Inn regular, is now only used for "conferences." Blake's gravest mistake is to continue his exploration the following day .... Tina Rath - Incident In The Harvest Field: An ingenious fictional - or is it? - elaboration on a brief and curious report in a Sussex newspaper, concerning the further activities of the Mothersole and Ager womenfolk (see Stewart Evans, M. R. James and Local Names, in G&S MR James Newsletter #27). James Channell, schoolmaster, bravely, if reluctantly, intervenes when a twenty-strong mob of women and children, fronted by the Mothersole sisters and Amelia Ager, brutally set upon a lone forager in a cornfield. Between them, Channell and a local preacher, Mr. Girkin, separate the brawling banshees from their battered victim, Mary Ann Downing, who is, in Mr. Channell's private opinion, no better than her tormentors ("raving hags the lot of them."). Fresh combat is only prevented when Channell denies Mrs. Downing another mouthful of the local grog (a wine laced with gin and laudanum) by pouring it on the soil. That night Channell learns from his elderly mother of a similar outbreak of seemingly mindless bloodshed in the same field the previous year.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 18, 2015 18:21:20 GMT
As mentioned elsewhere, perhaps chief among #28's non-fiction highlights is Dan McGachey's listing of his Jamesian finds on trawling the Radio Times archive, 1923-2009, via the BBC Genome Project. Although the additions to the extant document(s) are all radio broadcasts (beginning with A School Story, as read by Mr. Vincent Curran for the Home Service on October 27th 1932), Lurker considerably enlivens the piece with choice snippets from the unilaterally positive critical reception. In the 'Reviews' section (don't go there if your wants list can't take yet another pounding), David Harris provides a blow-by-blow account of our friend and colleague James Doig's ten-story début, Friends Of The Dead (Sarob, 2015), "a collection to savour," while G&S veteran Roger Johnston applies the same treatment to Reggie Oliver's hand-picked 'best of' compilation, The Sea Of Blood (Dark Renaissance, 2015). Mention should also be made of the 'Reviews of Unwritten Books' department, where-in Ian Bunting tackles L. T. C. Rolt's Further Disturbances: Twelve More Stories Of The Supernatural (Whitminster, 2015), featuring such forgotten classics as Lands End - "what caused the desertion of a lighthouse at the height of a storm?" - and Black Lodge, "in which the Hell-fire Club rears its head".
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Post by Michael Connolly on Dec 19, 2015 13:41:50 GMT
About the Radio Times archive, the ISSUU website has a collection of pages related to BBC's Ghost Stories at Christmas. Search under Ghost Stories for Christmas Radio Times Coverage. I could not attach it as it is too big!
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Post by dem bones on Dec 19, 2015 17:48:35 GMT
About the Radio Times archive, the ISSUU website has a collection of pages related to BBC's Ghost Stories at Christmas. Search under Ghost Stories for Christmas Radio Times Coverage. I could not attach it as it is too big! Do you mean this link, Michael, issuu.com? Can imagine people losing entire days to that particular archive. Still trying to dream up titles for Reviews of Unwritten Books. I've two possible candidates, but it would take someone who can actually write to do justice to Daughter Of The Demoniac Goat and Stories Less Sinister ...
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 19, 2015 19:04:52 GMT
Daughter Of The Demoniac Goat It is actually just a repackaging of some stories by Arthur Machen, including "The Great God Pan."
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Post by ramseycampbell on Jun 4, 2016 13:49:36 GMT
Did that Rolt book ever appear, or is it as spectral as its contents?
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Post by ramseycampbell on Jun 4, 2016 13:56:31 GMT
Oh dear, I withdraw in shame. Forget I asked...
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 4, 2016 15:36:46 GMT
Oh dear, I withdraw in shame. Forget I asked... You're far from the only one! I think people wanted so much to believe that the book was real, that their subconscious refused to see all the signs that it wasn't!
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jun 4, 2016 15:38:21 GMT
I am fairly sure I have it somewhere.
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Post by andydecker on Jun 4, 2016 17:40:39 GMT
I read regulary about G&S in Karl Wagners Year's Best Horror as he included at least one story. But I never actually got hold of an issue. Seems I missed a lot.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 4, 2016 17:50:47 GMT
I read regulary about G&S in Karl Wagners Year's Best Horror as he included at least one story. But I never actually got hold of an issue. Seems I missed a lot. The present G&S Newsletter is actually just the same as the old G&S (I'll be dropping the "Newsletter" eventually) - the content range is much the same, with a couple of stories in every issue. So you haven't necessarily missed out entirely. Also, old issues are still findable (with a few exceptions) at fairly reasonable prices from dealers like Cold Tonnage. Aside from a few of the earliest ones, which do go for ridiculous amounts, you should be able to find them for £10 or so.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 5, 2016 9:49:35 GMT
I am fairly sure I have it somewhere. If enough people believe it exists, perhaps it will.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Jun 6, 2016 11:49:14 GMT
Aside from a few of the earliest ones, which do go for ridiculous amounts, you should be able to find them for £10 or so. Speaking of money, did you get my cheque to renew my sub? I sent it the week before last. The cost of postage these days is shocking. I remember reading that Virginia Woolf used to cut up franked stamps and stick the bits together to make a "new" stamp.
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Post by ropardoe on Jun 6, 2016 12:30:23 GMT
Aside from a few of the earliest ones, which do go for ridiculous amounts, you should be able to find them for £10 or so. Speaking of money, did you get my cheque to renew my sub? I sent it the week before last. The cost of postage these days is shocking. I remember reading that Virginia Woolf used to cut up franked stamps and stick the bits together to make a "new" stamp. Yes, thanks - safely received a few days ago: I put it in the bank this morning. The cost of overseas postage is the thing which always aggravates me: I can't recall exactly what it is now, but it's in the region of £4 per copy (that's airmail printed matter). Occasionally this has even tempted me to say that I'll only accept UK subscribers in future, but no, that's not going to happen: I value my overseas readers, especially the Americans.
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