This episode Mike and Will pack their sleeping bags and bed down for ‘A Night in King’s College Chapel’ by M.R. James.

The episode also features an exclusive interview with James Drewett and Richard Svensson, creators of ‘Monsters and Miscreants’ a new M.R. James-themed card game available to order now. You can also watch an unboxing video of the same game featuring your humble hosts, Will and Mike, recorded live in Will’s kitchen. The glamour!

About Monsters and Miscreants:

• Order your copy at pleasingterror.wordpress.com, or find out more at their Facebook page
• View more of Richard’s artwork at his website loneanimator.com, where you can also find some of his awesome M.R. James animated short films. Also check out Richard on DeviantArt.
• Props also go to Ivory Graphics, the company responsible for printing the card game.
• If you are curious about James’s other still-in-development M.R. James card game ‘Cards for the Curious’, watch this Youtube video to find out more.

Show notes:

• A Night in Kings College Chapel by M.R. James (Ghosts & Scholars)
  You can read the full text of this story at the ever-useful Ghosts & Scholars website.
• A Guide to the Windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge by M.R. James (Cambridge University Press)
  After writing this story M.R. James went on to write this book on the King’s College Chapel glass. It was published in 1899.
• The Medieval Stained Glass Photographic Archive (therosewindow.com)
  This website contains images of nearly all the stained glass mentioned in this story, including their locations within the chapel. More detailed text about the windows can also be found at vidimus.org, and this video from The Guardian explores the chapel.
• The Univeristy Pitt Club
  The final fragment of this story was found written on Pitt Club note paper, hinting at where James may have been sitting when he wrote it.
• ‘Dare to be a Daniel’ (Youtube)
  It is likely that this is the sort of thing James was afraid of when he makes his sniffy comments about ‘congregational singing’!
• Reuben and the well (Biblehub.com)
  Genesis 37:29 – the scene from the bible that Reuben is supposed to be representing in his window when ‘on duty’.
• Moses and the Manna from heaven (biblegateway.com)
  Exodus 16 – where the Manna comes from which the naughty children of Israel are throwing at Reuben in the story.
• Biblical typology (theopedia.com)
  When Reuben says “I may only be a type…” he is referring to this.
• The most misunderstood woman in the bible (todayschristianwoman.com)
  In this story Job’s wife is portrayed as an unsympathetic nagging tyrant, a traditional interpretation of her character. However, more modern minds have reassessed her character and come to a different conclusion.
• Window of opportunity (spectator.co.uk)
  During the episode Mike mentions the surprising story of how King’s College Chapel got it’s famous west window. This is it!

The windows themselves (mostly at therosewindow.com):

• Reuben
• Gathering the manna (or throwing the bread rolls)
• Naomi, she of the deceased and hen-pecked husband
• Job, tormented by demons (and his wife)
• Jonah and one crazy-ass looking whale
• Tobias and his mother
• And here’s the vicious dog

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What could be more worthy of a Christmas episode than a ghost story? Answer: twelve ghost stories!  This week Mike and Will find plenty of seasonal cheer in the scribblings of a 15th century monk from Yorkshire, whose collected tales of wandering spirits Monty transcribed in 1922.  Expect lashings of purgatorial terrors, a stocking-full of redemption and a whole load of bad wassailing, ghostly and otherwise*, as we explore Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories.

Links:

• The Byland Abbey Project  has all the stories, plus translation notes and commentary on each story.  Invaluable!
• Ghosts in Medieval Yorkshire, by Jacqueline Simpson, is a fantastic article, not least for  Jacqueline’s analysis of the different roots of James’ ghost stories and these medieval tales.
• Mark Gatiss talks about medieval manuscripts with a curator at the Fitzwilliam Museum  in his 2013 documentary Ghostwriter (contains images some listeners will hopefully find disturbing).
• Death and the Afterlife – a British Library article with examples of medieval Books of Hours and other context for understanding the 15th century view of mortality, purgatory and salvation.
• Underrated BBC Radio 4 discussion show Beyond Belief (it’s great, even for atheists!) ran an episode on purgatory, which may not be available to listeners outside of the UK.

Happy Christmas and we’ll see  you again in 2016!

* no, seriously. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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This episode Mike and Will dust off their acting chops and take to the stage as they cover Auditor and Impresario, M.R. James’s little-know comic play! Expect diabolism, drama, demons and dreadful sub-GCSE-level acting!

The image to the right is none other than M.R. James himself, playing they the part of Peithetairos in an 1883 student production of Aristophanes’ The Birds at Cambridge. The play was performed in the original Greek, naturally!

Show notes:

• To our knowledge this play is currently only available in Ash Tree Press’s A Pleasing Terror. Currently only available in eBook form, but an essential purchase for any James fan in our opinion.
• This play is a parody of a student production of Dr Faustus by Christopher Marlow. You can read the whole thing on Project Gutenburg.
• This play was not the only thing inspired by the 1906 student production of Dr Faustus. It inspired the formation of the Marlowe Dramatic Society, which is still going today.
• In this episode we ruminate on the connections between this play and Rupert Brooke, who starred in the production of Dr Faustus which preceded the writing of this play.
• One figure who looms large over this play is M.R. James’s very good friend J.W. Clarke. Clarke (or ‘J’ to his friends) was a prominent figure at Cambridge and a great supporter of the Amateur Dramatic Club.
• Rosemary Pardoe ponders the meaning of the seemingly-unrelated latin sentences which Mephistopheles spouts in this article on the Ghost and Scholars website.
• The Seven Hills and other Cambridge oddities are explained in this entertaining article.
• Gyp, and a whole range of other mysterious terms are explained in this article on the slang and jargon of Cambridge University. For a chuckle we recommend checking out the references to  ‘Great Court Run’, ‘Grad-bashing’, ‘Hill’, ‘Open scholarship’, ‘Punting’, ‘Sent down’, ‘Sex club’ and ‘Suicide sunday’.
• More details on James’s involvement with drama at Cambridge can be found in James’s Eton and Kings.

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