It was 10 years ago, not quite to the day, but close (on the 10th October 2011), that I wrote a blog post about my discovery of the above story ‘A Warning to the Curious’, but more importantly, discovering its author M R James.
I had, as a child, seen the 1972 TV adaptation of ‘A Warning’ and been hugely impacted by it, but in terms of a reference for it thereafter, I had none. I had memories of some of the scenes and imagined it was called ‘The Three Crowns’ from the reference to the three crowns of East Anglia, featured in the story, though that was my best guess for many years. The ideas within the story and the effect of them struck such a chord with me at that time and connected so neatly with the growing interests I had with Ghost stories, film, antiques and curiosities, all along with relating to the persuit of solitary enquiry. I am from Luton originally, and enjoyed the East Anglian reference, though Luton is far from evoking the atmosphere of the Norfolk coast of course, that reference bought the atmosphere and thrill of the story closer to me.
I’m not sure what prompted the investigation to find the film again, but after some scratching around, I found it and put a name too, to another story I had caught a glimps of in my youth, ‘Oh Whistle’ it was such a thrill and opened me up to M R James and the wider expanse of his writing and further to learn of the extraordinary scholar he was. I will write separately about ‘Oh Whistle’, by far the best realisation of a ghost story I have seen on screen. But it was a joy to realise that these glimpses of stories on screen, ‘A warning’ and ‘Oh whistle’ that connected with me so greatly, were after all, by the same writer.
While going through audio recordings of M R James stories on youtube, Micheal Horderns mostly, I discovered Robert Lloyd Parry and the M R James Project. It has been joyfully refreshing to find his work and I had the pleasure of seeing a live performance of his work at Theatre Severn in Shrewsbury, Number 13 and Count Magnus. His tour is also reaching venues in Scotland and lucky for me Innerpeffray library, close to me in Comrie, Perthshire in a few more weeks, I’ll be there!