Monthly Archives: October 2025

Literature

M R James’s Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary (1904)

Leave a comment

In anoth­er life I could eas­i­ly see myself as an anti­quar­i­an, cycling around remote vil­lages in search of ancient church­es to take brass rub­bings and explore wind-bent, lichen-cov­ered grave­stones, and the hum of sum­mer insects or a dis­tant trac­tor the only sounds gen­tly reach­ing my ears. Ah my! Then back to my clois­tered cham­bers at the Uni­ver­si­ty to study medieval­ism and write beau­ti­ful­ly enig­mat­ic ghost sto­ries for friends and select stu­dents. Per­haps an aged brandy to sip before bed. Oh wait, it seems I’m M R James!

Mon­tague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was an Eng­lish medieval­ist schol­ar who served var­i­ous­ly as provost and Vice-Chan­cel­lor at Kings’ Col­lege Cam­bridge, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge and Eton Col­lege. His life­time was ded­i­cat­ed to edu­ca­tion and in good old Mr Chips’ fash­ion, he died whilst still teach­ing, at Eton in 1936. His schol­ar­ly work was very high­ly regard­ed but his endur­ing lega­cy is his col­lec­tions of ghost sto­ries which he wrote orig­i­nal­ly as Christ­mas Eve enter­tain­ments. He remains the mas­ter ghost sto­ry writer.

James’s sto­ries were pub­lished in the col­lec­tions Ghost Sto­ries of an Anti­quary (1904), More Ghost Sto­ries of an Anti­quary (1911), A Thin Ghost and Oth­ers (1919), A Warn­ing to the Curi­ous and Oth­er Ghost Sto­ries (1925), and the hard­back omnibus The Col­lect­ed Ghost Sto­ries of M. R. James (1931). In these, he rede­fined the ghost sto­ry by ground­ing his sto­ries in real­ism and dry humour. His sto­ries often fea­tured a mild-man­nered aca­d­e­m­ic turn­ing up at some quaint sea­side resort or old French vil­lage and acci­den­tal­ly acquir­ing a cursed arte­fact which unleash­es some dark force. His ghouls were not overt: James was well aware that the great­est hor­rors lie with­in the human imag­i­na­tion and that one only needs to stim­u­late that imag­i­na­tion to con­jure up the most fright­en­ing appari­tions.

M.R. James, Ghost Sto­ries of an Anti­quary

Have you heard of the ‘M R James Test’? The rules are sim­ple: you must read one of his ghost sto­ries by the light of a sin­gle can­dle in a desert­ed house in an emp­ty room, with your back to an open door. You suc­ceed if your nerve holds and you don’t need to turn around and look over your shoul­der! I haven’t tried it myself but hav­ing read sev­er­al of his sto­ries I can well imag­ine the poten­tial for goosebumps…Happy Hal­loween!

M R James
Music

Thin Lizzy’s Jailbreak (1976)

Leave a comment

One of my ear­li­est music loves was the Irish hard rock band Thin Lizzy. Like many of my gen­er­a­tion, my intro­duc­tion came in the song that would become their all-time clas­sic, and the one you hear most on the radio (along with Whiskey In The Jar), name­ly The Boys Are Back In Town. This led me to go out and buy the album, Jail­break, which I found out was their sixth stu­dio album (released in March 1976) and thus I began my jour­ney of dis­cov­er­ing ear­li­er albums and then sub­se­quent albums as they came out. Phil Lynott was the cre­ative force that led the band through their four­teen-year career, with drum­mer Bri­an Downey also a con­stant fig­ure.

Formed in 1969, Thin Lizzy ini­tial­ly com­prised Lynott, Downey, and gui­tarist Eric Bell (and to be tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, organ­ist Eric Wrixon, though he left after a few months, leav­ing the band as a three-piece). The band’s music reflect­ed mul­ti­ple influ­ences from blues and psy­che­del­ic rock to tra­di­tion­al Irish music through a sol­id hard rock lens, and adorned by Phil’s evoca­tive lyrics that always have a sto­ry to tell; wit­ness these poet­ic lines from the lead song of their sec­ond album, Shades Of A Blue Orphan­age:

When we were kids we used to go over the back wall into old Dan’s scrap­yard
Into the snook­er hall where most us kids were barred
An’ into the Roxy and the Stel­la where film stars starred
That’s where me and Hopa­long an’ Roy Rogers got drunk and jarred
And we might have been the sav­iour of the men
The cap­tured cap­tain in the dev­il’s demon den
And we might have been the mag­ic politi­cian in some kind of tricky posi­tion
Like an old, old, old mas­ter musi­cian we kept on wish­in’
We was head­ed for the num­ber one hit coun­try again

Eric Bell left in 1973 and was briefly replaced by Gary Moore, but it was the deci­sion to replace Gary with two gui­tarists, Scott Gorham and Bri­an Robert­son, that the clas­sic line-up of my youth was formed. The twin gui­tar sound that Scott and Bri­an brought to the table would lead them to their great­est suc­cess­es and break them in the US, that holy grail of band ambi­tion. And it was Jail­break that did it. Packed with great songs like the epony­mous Jail­break, The Boys Are Back In Town, Cow­boy Song, and Emer­ald, the album was also the­mat­i­cal­ly coher­ent As demon­strat­ed so icon­i­cal­ly by Jim Fitz­patrick­’s great cov­er art­work, the album exudes themes of escape and rebel­lion, of the dis­en­fran­chised break­ing free from the shack­les of, well, you get the drift…

You can lis­ten to the song Jail­break here:

Bri­an Robert­son, Phil Lynott and Scott Gorham of Thin Lizzy