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Post by helrunar on May 4, 2020 15:24:24 GMT
Interesting blog post from John Linwood Grant... I had never heard of this author, Sir Andrew Caldecott. He wrote a tale based on one of the Provost's "Stories I have tried to write." greydogtales.com/blog/not-exactly-ghostsMr Grant posted this link to an MR James group I attend via social media. That Wordsworth edition of Caldecott's two volumes of tales does look attractive. H.
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Post by ropardoe on May 4, 2020 15:49:02 GMT
Interesting blog post from John Linwood Grant... I had never heard of this author, Sir Andrew Caldecott. He wrote a tale based on one of the Provost's "Stories I have tried to write." greydogtales.com/blog/not-exactly-ghostsMr Grant posted this link to an MR James group I attend via social media. That Wordsworth edition of Caldecott's two volumes of tales does look attractive. H. Yes, that story's called "Christmas Re-union", and we reprinted it in the Ghost and Scholars book. He's in the James Gang, but really only because of this tale plus "Seated One Day at the Organ" (Great Ghost Stories about Organs - er, could be misconstrued!). A number of his other stories are pretty good, but not at all Jamesian.
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Post by cantoris on May 7, 2020 20:35:58 GMT
Hi! Some links you may all find of interest - I hope it is appropriate to share them here: In the current COVID-19 lockdown, Robert Lloyd Parry ("Nunkie") has been live-streaming readings of M.R.James and other authors. Last night was H.G.Wells's "The Sea Raiders". Links to the Facebook page where they are streamed live and the YouTube page you can watch them on afterwards are both here: www.nunkie.co.uk/scheduleThere's also a documentary about "A Warning to the Curious" that you can buy for a fiver on Vimeo starring Nunkie: "In ‘Dim Presences’ we follow performance storyteller and M R James expert Robert Lloyd Parry around Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Eton College, as he uncovers the unexpected cultural and historical influences behind this incomparably eerie work." - vimeo.com/ondemand/dimpresences/408855753I thought it definitely worth the £5 it cost to either download (to keep) - 2.3GB - or to stream it off the net. Finally, Chris Halton has released an M.R.James documentary that you can watch free with Amazon Prime: UK = www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0873CDCVS/US = www.amazon.com/Haunting-M-R-James-Chris-Halton/dp/B0873BZQQ9/Having tried some of his material before, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this and the production quality is also high.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jul 19, 2020 22:37:50 GMT
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Post by ropardoe on Jul 20, 2020 8:42:09 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Sept 13, 2020 8:36:07 GMT
Pure class from the club #UpTheGreyhounds #WhatAClubWhatAnEthos #TaffAin'tDead #RIPTaffGoose #AubergineArmy #streathamroversfc #NeverStopNotGivingUp #RIPTheGaffer
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Post by Michael Connolly on Sept 18, 2020 13:36:54 GMT
I've just come across this in the library. Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by one Edward Parnell (Collins, 2019). From Amazon: In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.
In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children’s fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift’s Waterland to the archetypal ‘folk horror’ film The Wicker Man…
Ghostland is Parnell’s moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.The index cites Mike Ashley, E.F. Benson, Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Mark Gatiss, M.R. James (many times), Arthur Machen and L.T.C Rolt etc. So far it looks good.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Sept 21, 2020 10:26:27 GMT
I've just come across this in the library. Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country by one Edward Parnell (Collins, 2019). From Amazon: In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death.
In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. R. James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children’s fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper; from W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift’s Waterland to the archetypal ‘folk horror’ film The Wicker Man…
Ghostland is Parnell’s moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature.The index cites Mike Ashley, E.F. Benson, Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, Mark Gatiss, M.R. James (many times), Arthur Machen and L.T.C Rolt etc. So far it looks good. Ghostland (which I'd forgotten was cited in Ghosts & Scholars 36/37) is a misery memoir involving Edward Parnell's visits to locations related to his favourite writers in the genre. While it's very heavily sourced (including references to Ghosts & Scholars), the author has very little new to say about the stories he describes. Anyhow, did you know that William Hope Hodgson was even shorter than I am? And the book's cover looks like it was drawn by Alan Hunter for Ghosts & Scholars, why I noticed it in the first place.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Sept 21, 2020 10:38:06 GMT
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Post by helrunar on Oct 5, 2020 20:27:09 GMT
Although touted as "in the M. R. James tradition," the stories I've seen from Gregory (who is a personal friend of mine) seem more a post-postmodern echo of Borges, Kafka and Rod Serling than of our Provost But the stories had haunting elements that were effective, and at times chilling. The existential dread of living in the 21st century is an important theme. www.etsy.com/listing/881356509/the-wind-from-outsideGreat cover, needless to say. H.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 6, 2020 12:54:08 GMT
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Post by ropardoe on Oct 6, 2020 16:22:00 GMT
The only odd thing is the timing as the news item relates to the documentary “Wits in Felixstowe” which Robert Lloyd Parry made to accompany his “Oh, Whistle” enactment on a DVD released in 2018. It’s good publicity for him (I believe the docu will be available on Amazon Prime soon) and well deserved, as this is actually a great film. When I reviewed it in G&S I said it was the best MRJ documentary I’d ever seen and I stick by that statement. The link between JK Stephen and a possible inspiration for “Oh, Whistle” is tenuous but tenable.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 15, 2020 12:48:01 GMT
This seems to be the best place to include this. I only found out about this on Sunday. Last year Collins Crime Club published Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden Age Detection edited by Tony Medawar. It contains the first publication of "The Hours of Darkness", the only novella Edmund Crispin wrote about Fen, his amateur detective character. It is based on his radio play of the same name broadcast on December 31st 1949 on the Home Service (the equivalent of Radio 4) that did not feature Fen. The book is on its way to me so I haven't had my claws on it yet. The novella occurs during Christmas and I don't know if M.R. James is cited, quoted or used like Crispin does in four of his Fen novels. In any event, the novella has curiosity value at least and has had good reviews. The book also contains a previously unpublished Lord Peter Wimsey story by Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Locked Room", which has also been well received. I thought that I'd read the last of Sayers' and Crispin's short stories 30 years ago. The paperback of the book is due to be published on November 12th.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 23, 2020 12:10:09 GMT
This seems to be the best place to include this. I only found out about this on Sunday. Last year Collins Crime Club published Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden Age Detection edited by Tony Medawar. It contains the first publication of "The Hours of Darkness", the only novella Edmund Crispin wrote about Fen, his amateur detective character. It is based on his radio play of the same name broadcast on December 31st 1949 on the Home Service (the equivalent of Radio 4) that did not feature Fen. The book is on its way to me so I haven't had my claws on it yet. The novella occurs during Christmas and I don't know if M.R. James is cited, quoted or used like Crispin does in four of his Fen novels. In any event, the novella has curiosity value at least and has had good reviews. The book also contains a previously unpublished Lord Peter Wimsey story by Dorothy L. Sayers, "The Locked Room", which has also been well received. I thought that I'd read the last of Sayers' and Crispin's short stories 30 years ago. The paperback of the book is due to be published on November 12th. I've just skimmed through "The Hours of Darkness". While it does cite "The Travelling Grave" (ugh!), I'll wait until I read it to see if it has any other such references.
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Post by Michael Connolly on Oct 31, 2020 13:19:34 GMT
The December 1963 BBC Radio "Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You" is on Radio 4 Extra at 18.00 today. It's bound to be better than the Jonathan Miller television distortion, also with Michael Hordern. I'm assuming it will be downloadable later from here: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06sqq9zIs this the "horrible, an intensely horrible, face of crumpled linen"?
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