Mark Gatiss's adaptation of " The Tractate Middoth", another story by M. R. James, was broadcast on BBC Two on Christmas Day 2013. This was followed by a documentary, M. R. James: Ghost Writer. [37] Laced with M. R. James' trademark terror, The Mezzotint will guarantee a chill in the air for viewers this Christmas. Title screen of The Signalman, the 1976 adaptation. Because this was the first non-James story, the strand's title appears on screen for the first time. Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee ‘Number 13 by MR James’ (2000, Eleanor Yule, 30 mins)

Introductions by Lawrence Gordon Clark (2012, 39 mins): the director introduces The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, The Ash Tree, The Signalman, and StigmaRory Kinnear, Robert Bathurst, Frances Barber, John Hopkins, Emma Cunniffe, Nikesh Patel, Tommaso Di Vincenzo a b Pfaff, Richard W., "Montague Rhodes James", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online Edition). Oxford University Press. September 2004. [1]. Retrieved 2010-08-15. Simon Callow, Anjli Mohindra, Susan Penhaligon, Joshua Oakes-Rogers, Christopher Allen, Mark Gatiss My house is 200 years old. If I looked in the corner and suddenly saw a man in 18th-century clothes just for a second, it’s not completely out of line with what physics teaches us. I think it’s more likely to be some sort of time thing than it is ghosts as it were. I love everything about [ghosts], and I love the storytelling tradition, and I love the idea of it. I’ll tell you what really fascinates me. I think ultimately the reason that the ghost story endures is that even if it’s a slightly pessimistic view of the afterlife, it means there is something more. The Stalls of Barchester". British Film Institute Database. Archived from the original on 1 June 2009 . Retrieved 22 August 2010.

Farquhar, Simon (30 June 2015). "Ghosts of Christmas past: M.R. James, Lawrence Gordon Clark and A Ghost Story for Christmas". Sight & Sound . Retrieved 2 September 2016. Kit Harington, Freddie Fox, Colin Ryan, John Heffernan, James Swanton, Jonathan Rigby, Andrew Horton From this point on, the film is in largely familiar haunted house territory, with a nightlight that repeatedly switches itself off of its own accord, an unflattering bust that seems to watch Parkin sleep, and an unseen figure that attempts to enter his room at night by loudly and aggressively rattling and banging the door. It's that last one that best symbolises the film's failure to recognise was made its source material so effective, with the troubling but too-familiar monster beyond the door – a seriously scaled down version of a terrifying sequence in Robert Wise's seminal The Haunting – no match for the original's more frightening suggestion that the entity was entering Parkin's room at night and sleeping in the adjacent bed. Are there any other stories in particular that you have used as inspiration in the adaptation process?Clark directed another story by M. R. James, Casting The Runes for the series ITV Playhouse, produced by Yorkshire Television and first broadcast on ITV on 24 April 1979. Adapted by Clive Exton, it reimagined the events of James's story taking place in a contemporary television studio. [22] Kit Harington to star in BBC Christmas ghost story from Mark Gatiss". Radio Times. 19 October 2023. A university museum curator is intrigued by the unfolding tale of horror told by an otherwise unprepossessing 19th century mezzotint. [43]

One of my favourite things about Lost Hearts is, rather annoyingly, something I can't really discuss without spoiling the story's biggest and frankly most startling surprise. I can't even allude to it without prompting a number of you to second guess what I'm trying to avoid revealing. And for maximum impact, this is one time when you really should go in cold. A travelogue writer, Mr Wraxhall, becomes fascinated by the story of Count Magnus, the long-dead founder of a Swedish family who once made a journey to the Holy Land for less than holy reasons. [44] Sarah Dempster, writing in The Guardian in 2005, noted that "Perhaps the most surprising aspect ... is how little its adaptations ... have dated. They may boast the odd signifier of cheap 1970s telly – outlandish regional vowels, inappropriate eyeliner, a surfeit of depressed oboes – but lurking within their hushed cloisters and glum expanses of deserted coastline is a timelessness at odds with virtually everything written, or broadcast, before or since." [48]Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 and remains to this day one of Britain's finest writers of supernatural tales. His stories frequently have an autobiographical quality to them, often including an academic angle (James spent a good part of his adult life at King's College, Cambridge, eventually becoming Dean and later Vice-Chancellor of the University) and featuring characters who are prompted through experience to re-evaluate their previous cynicism about the supernatural, a reflection, perhaps, of James’s own detailed studies of the early history of the Bible. James was primarily a scholar, an historian and a prolific writer, and regarded his ghost stories almost as a hobby. But his use of language, his vivid descriptions and the manner in which the narratives unfold made them essential reading, and their influence on other genre writers and even film-makers has proved to be substantial. Several of his stories have been adapted for television, including by the BBC as part of the Ghost Stories for Christmas series. Big screen adaptations are rarer, the best by far being the 1957 Night of the Demon, an adaptation of James’s 1911 Casting the Runes and one of the cinema's best ever tales of the supernatural (the story was also adapted for television in 1968 as part of the series Mystery and Imagination and again in 1979 as an episode of ITV Playhouse). But of the TV adaptations, for many of us the 1968 version of Whistle and I'll Come to You still stands as the finest. Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee - Number 13 (2000, 30 mins): Ronald Frame’s adaptation is brought to life by the horror maestro Burton, Nigel (22 August 2007). "A Warning to the Curious in Aldeburgh, Suffolk: East Anglia's Ghost Trail". worldtravelblog.co.uk. Archived from the original on 4 September 2010 . Retrieved 22 August 2010. Number 13 (2006, 40 mins): infuriated by the ghoulish noises made nightly by his neighbour, Professor Anderson is soon driven to investigate the diabolical secrets of the old hotel and mysteriously vanishing room 13 The following year, an expanded boxset featuring Robert Powell and Michael Bryant narrating M. R. James in the series Classic Ghost Stories (1986) and Spine Chillers (1980) respectively. [61]