He would read them out every year on Christmas Eve, before they were eventually published in a number of collections. Read by BAFTA and Emmy-award winning actor Derek Jacobi, and with haunting and evocative music, these tales cannot fail to send a shiver down your spine. A young squire, John Martin, is on trial for murder in a court presided over by hanging judge George Jeffreys, but the girl he is accused of murdering has been seen after her death.

Below, we select and introduce ten of his greatest, and say a little about why they are worth reading. An archaeologist has a disturbing experience after borrowing a pair of binoculars belonging to an outcast local historian and venturing up a notorious landmark. R. James', published in 1931, bringing together all but four of his ghost stories (which had yet to be published). Unusually for a BBC television drama of the 1970s, each instalment was filmed entirely on location using 16 mm film.James is considered the master of the Victorian ghost story and this collection contains most of his short stories. I don’t actually have a favourite from this collection, all of the stories were strong in their own way. Contains 40 stories: the 30 stories from Collected Ghost Stories, the three tales published after them and the seven items from The Fenstanton Witch and Others. If you’re patient, the book offers some thrills and chills and a chance to become familiar with an influential author. A governess, incarcerated in a mental asylum, tells a doctor of the possession of her two pupils by a former governess and her lover.

Often the protagonist is a scholarly enquirer who stumbles upon unwelcome and potentially dangerous knowledge in the course of his enquiries, and his journey, along with the story, slowly descend into a madness equalling that of Lovecraft, but in a gentlemanly, English way.R. James, included in his book A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories first published in 1925. R. James enthusiasts will know the wealth of material that is available on his work, from TV and radio series of his ghost stories, to the magazine “Ghosts and Scholars” created by Rosemary Pardoe.