In this episode, talking owls. Yes, you heard me correctly. Talking owls.

Has Monty completely lost his marbles? Mike and Will ask just that in this episode on ‘After Dark in the Playing Fields‘ by M.R. James.

Readings by kind permission of grand panjandrum and actor Robert Lloyd Parry!

The full reading of this story and many others can be found on Robert’s double-CD ‘Curious Creatures: The Shorter Horror of M.R. James‘ which is available to buy from nunkie.co.uk and is worth every penny.

Show notes:

• Story notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  The ever-reliable Rosemary Pardoe has produced a very useful set of notes on this story.
• Eton College, Windsor (various)
  The action in this story takes places in the playing fields of Eton College, Windsor, where M.R. James was provost when he wrote this story. The story features various locations in close proximity to each other .Monty meets the owl “not far from Sheep’s Bridge“, the owl is unceremoniously dumped in Fellow’s Pond before Monty eventually helps him climb into Bad Calx Tree.
• Eton Wall Game (etoncollege.com)
  In this episdoe Mike and Will mention the Eton Wall Game, one of the odd traditions unique to Eton College.
• A Midsummer Nights Dream (wikipedia)
  The mischievous sprites and fairies in this story are inspired by those in A Midsummer Nights Dream. The owl grumpily quotes “come not near out fairy Queen” from Act 2 Scene 2.
• The Five Jars by M.R. James (thin-ghost.org)
  This is not the only James story to feature talking animals, sprites and goblins. His novel for children ‘The Five Jars‘ is cut from very much the same cloth as this story.
• Daylight Saving Time (wikipedia)
  In this story and in ‘A Neighbours Landmark’ James refers to daylight saving time, a relatively new concept in M.R. James’s lifetime.
• Pathe News footage of Eton (BritishPathe.com)
  There is some fascinating early video footage of Eton College at the time James was provost on the British Pathe website, including videos of the Eton Wall Game, Eton Steeplechase and even possibly some footage of Monty himself!

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In this episode Mike & Will don their funeral garb and shuffle mournfully into ‘There was a man dwelt by a churchyard‘ by M.R. James.

A big thanks to Robert Lloyd Parry for giving us permission to use readings extracted from his excellent CD ‘Curious Creatures: The Shorter Horror of M.R. James‘, available to purchase from his website nunkie.co.uk!

An equally big thanks go to Les Edwards for giving us permission to use his gorgeous artwork inspired by this very story, just one of the many illustrations Les did for the recent M.R. James collection ‘Curious Warnings: The Great Ghost Stories of M.R. James‘. »

You can buy a print of this painting as well as many others from his website lesedwards.com

Show notes:

• A Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare (wikipedia)
  This title of this story comes from a line spoken by young Mamillius in Act 1 Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s ‘A Winter’s Tale’. Our audio extract came from the BBC’s lovely Shakespeare Animated Tales version of the play, available to watch on YouTube.
• Brass rubbings at Oddington, Oxfordshire (White Winds Brass Rubbing)
  In this episode M.R. James refers to an ‘old brass in a church with a figure of a person in a shroud’. While it may not be the exact brass James was thinking of, the shrouded figure at Oddington Church is certainly of a similar kind to the one he refers to.
• Ghosts & Scholars story notes (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Rosemary Pardoe’s notes on this story throw some very helpful light on some of the more perplexing parts of this story.
• John Poole, playwright (wikipedia)
  We forgot to mention it in the episode, but it is likely that M.R. Jame’s choise of the name ‘John Poole’ is a nod towards the English playwright John Poole (1786–1872) who was famous for this Shakespeare parodies.
• “‘I seen it wive at me out of the winder’: The Window as Threshold in M.R. James’s Stories” by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars Newsletter 4)
  This is the essay Will mentions in this episode which explores how James uses the window as a reoccuring feature of this ghost stories. Sadly the essay is not available to read online.
• Will-o-the-wisp or corpse lights (wikipedia)
  In this story the smith asks John Poole if he has ever seen any ‘lights’ in the churchyard. Rosemary Pardoe suggests that this is a reference to ‘corpse lights’.
• Ghosts & Scholars Survey (G&S)
  This story has an unenviable reputation for being voted one of the least popular M.R. James stories with readers of Ghosts & Scholars!

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This episode Mike & Will put on their thinking caps and puzzle their way through ‘Two Doctors‘ by M.R. James.

Thanks to Kirsty for the excellent readings, and to Alisdair Wood for the great illustration to the left.

Don’t forget to vote on which story you would like to see Stephen Gray and his crew film next, ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ by M.R. James or ‘The Willows’ by Algernon Blackwood.

Show notes

• Story Notes by Rosemary Pardoe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Visit the ever-excellent Ghosts & Scholars for a useful set of notes which shed light on some of the more perplexing aspects of this story.
• Gray’s Inn (Wikipedia)
  James says he found the papers which make up this story in a dossier addressed to a lawyer in Grey’s Inn. Also see Gray’s Inn on Monty’s World.
• Coronet and Bird Crest (MyFamilySilver.com)
  The ‘bedsheets’ purchased by Dr Quinn features a bird and coronet, a motif common to a quite a few family crests from this period.
• St. Anthony meeting the Satyr (Gallery.ca)
  The rector makes reference to ‘Anthony conversing with a satyr’ as featured in the book of Jerome. This is a 1640 engraving of this scene.
• An Elicidation (?) of the Plot of ‘Two Doctors’ by Lance Arney (Amazon.co.uk)
  This essay features in the collection of essays ‘Warnings to the Curious’ and was a great help to us in researching this story.

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