Tales from the Hidden Notebooks of M R James - The Hearties of...

A tribute to the ghost stories of M R James. 'When the Old Provost's Lodge at King's College, Cambridge, was being restored in 1978, I was a doctoral student there, writing a thesis on the impact of the Reformation on the concept of the disembodied soul in Protestant countries. Already fascinated by James's interest in ghosts, I nipped into the Old Lodge late one afternoon, just after the workmen had gone, and looked around the rooms that the great man had occupied. A shaft of sunlight from the south-west suddenly entered the room I was in - it was, I think, his old bedroom - and lit up the plasterless chimney breast. This beam revealed a couple of bricks wholly devoid of mortar. I pulled the bricks out and found behind them a small cavity containing a stash of notebooks. I fished the books out with glee and, after a moment's inspection, saw that they appeared to have been written by the famous antiquarian himself. What is supremely interesting about these notebooks - if, indeed, they are genuine, as I believe - is that from them one can extract coherent stories about M R James's own encounters with the occult. As I am now nearing death myself, I have decided to publish edited versions of the notebooks, each monograph dealing with one curious episode in the great scholar's life.' Read on and find out for yourself what M R James suffered for the Hearties of Adonai. If you enjoy this book, you might also like 'The Cellars of Ezekiel' and 'The Organ of Corpusty' in the same series.

Reviews

News