A Ghost Story for Christmas: "A Warning to the Curious", with Sir Christopher Lee
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- Опубликовано: 24 авг 2024
- M. R. James's work as a medievalist and scholar is still highly regarded, but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which some consider among the best in the genre. He redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. Because his protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests, he is known as the originator of the "antiquarian ghost story".
A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925). The first hardback collected edition appeared in 1931. Many of the tales were written as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to friends. This idea was used by the BBC in 2000 when they filmed Sir Christopher Lee reading James's stories in a candle-lit room in King's College.
Sir Christopher Lee could read a telephone book and I would be captivated.
😂😂 Ditto!!
Yeah i agree :D
Lee's voice is a pleasurable flight to far off places.
@@Lee.Carlson ❤❤❤
Absolutely agree 💖
This is something of the past. They always used to have a ghost story on a Christmas always Christmas Eve and they used to be brilliant again something that’s no longer done.
I remember being scared out of my wits with The Woman in Black one Christmas
Oh yes ! So sad that the best oral story telling Rituals have been losing momentum each passing year. Have a hope We are keeping them alive Lol
Happy Christmas in July 🎉😅
@@kevinwoplin9322That's a great 👻 ghost story !
They always have a ghost story on Christmas Eve on the BBC. Usually M.R. James.
Maybe not strictly ghost stories now, but they've done murder mysteries (Agatha Christie), Dickens, and even horror like the recent Dracula which was brilliant.
But yes, these storytelling ones with the narrator doing a kind of talking head performance is rarely seen now. Speaking of talking heads, I always go back to Alan Bennetts *Talking Heads* monologues:)
Bloody marvelous! The extremely talented Christopher Lee and the excellent author M. R. James - a marvelous combination!
Rest In Peace Sir Christopher Lee ... You lived the life of a true man's man amongst the greatest generation in a world full of danger at every turn . God Bless You Sir Christopher Lee
To be in a room lit by candle light and a fierce fire sitting listening to Mr Christopher Lee is a long wished for dream of mine i have long admired him
I've done something similar, except instead of candle, I had kerosene lamp and a good fire crackling away. But for as dark as the room was naturally as the walls were old bead board finished with boiled linseed oil and the ceilings were bead board as well, but black from coal dust which the former owner had heated with, the lamp didn't provide much more light than a candle. It was a cozy little 4 room house I rented from the former owner's son. A primitive sort of place with exactly one electric outlet in each room and a well house with an electric pump, but no indoor plumbing, the "facilities" being an outhouse a good 20 yards away behind the place which I only minded in winter when needing to go in the middle of the night, lol. I had an old floor model radio and could tune in a station that played OTR (Old Time Radio) broadcasts and would occasionally play stories like these as well. It was a pretty rural area with the closest neighbor being about a quarter mile away in northwest Tennessee. That's been about 26 years ago now. The rent was a pittance of $25 a month, and I think he just wanted someone there to keep an eye on the place and keep it from falling into ruin.
Lee is so amazing
Captured the essence of the James ghost story, the unsettling atmosphere created by this master of storytelling....wish they had done the full catalogue
Sir Christopher Lee has a most wonderful and haunting voice! I enjoyed this story very much! ~Janet in Canada
Brilliantly told by Christopher. So atmospheric.
What an awesome rendition of this short story.
I remember the Christmas Eve ghost stories. Loved them .
They're still on the BBC on Christmas Eve.
Over the years, I've managed to gather as many as are available in digital format, and it's my tradition now to watch a selection every Christmas. They help to invoke happier times, and M.R.James was the master of those short stories, and presented by actors with the flair for dramatic monologue, back when the BBC were trusted to be the nation's broadcaster.
R.I.P Sir Christopher Lee.
Wonderful…thank you for this.
By the weirdest coincidence, I've just watched a very old TV version of this story! Never heard of it before, now twice in ten days!
So have I. Very odd.
That was very atmospheric. Thanks for this
Very atmospheric. This is better than the dramatised version, because Christopher Lee is reciting the story itself. Seaburgh is Aldeburgh in Suffolk. The beach is shingle. I've been there.
I've driven through Suffolk and Norfolk at night on small roads and been caught in a sea mist at one o'clock in the morning. It is terrifying
Long wisps of mist going across the road like fingers of a giant ghostly hand. I was a bit lost and stopped to look at a small road sign, in the middle of the night on this lonely unmarked road. I was terrified tbh. It was a relief to finally find the "A" road again.
M R James was born in Suffolk. He knew what he was writing about.
Folks
Please buy Ghost stories for Xmas. Volume 1-2 on blu ray.
They include 3 episodes. Ash tree didn’t make it due to some stupid copyright clause. But still, important to preserve these
I watch them every Xmas. And if it’s a cold rainy evening
Good to know. Might start a new family tradition.
Fabulous from start to finish.
While ghost stories were popular, in Ireland we’d recall the dead, both recently passed and long gone ancestors.
Nice atmosphere of light,shadow,and colour.
Splendid!
Absolutely wonderful.
Much obliged. 🎩
I miss Sir Christopher Lee.😢
Wonderful ❤
His voice adds to the story. Excellently told
ITS 16TH AUGUST 2024 ELVIS DIED ON THIS DAY 47 YEARS AGO AND I WAS SEARCHING FOR SOMETHING TO WATCH THIS STORY CAME UP OUT OF SEASON I KNOW BUT A GHOST STORY NARRATED BY THE GREAT CHRISTOPHER LEE IS WORTH A LISTEN ANY TIME OF YEAR HE DID A LOT OF THESE AND THEY'RE JUST SUBLIME THANKYOU MR LEE FOR ALL YOUR YEARS OF BRILLIANT WORK REST IN PEACE FROM DAVID EAST ANGLIA COAST 🌊🌈🙏♥️
Wonderful!!!
From a time when quality was paramount and virtue signalling was rightly a lot less important. Coincidentally the BBC was a lot more popular and actually respected for these types of adaptations, funny that eh...
I have always loved Sir Christopher Lee one of our finest actors 💖
Bravo!!!
Brilliant!
I fear that Christopher Lee is the last of the old actors (real actors that actually had to learn their lines) that had gravitas for decades.
I felt like Halloween crossed over Christmas because ghosts wandered the earth for eternity
I’m scared now and don’t want to have nightmares, can I sleep in your bed tonight?
Marvelous
Just imagine Christopher Lee reading H. P. Lovecraft!
Thanks for this.
What a superb narrator.
These never age, from a time when the BBC was more interested in producing quality content than in shoe-horning in ethnic minorities and 'colour-blind' casting.
A bigot round every corner, it seems.
MRJ was brilliant at word painting. His descriptions are so very evocative, and deeply unsettling.
I.e. The current awful BBC has no idea of merit or quality anymore it is KFC of tv instead of the finest food by Heston Blumenthal, no class or intelligence
Remember that , Xmas eve ghost stories, saw The Woman In Black on there late 80s best version ever, got it on DVD .
Well told, but @28:49 says the narrator is Crawford Logan. R.I.P. Mr Lee.
And indeed the narrator is Crawford Logan. His is the first voice we hear in this story.
M R James. Christopher Lee actually met him. How cool is that?
Wow this is so good!!
Superb.
For those connoisseurs of the 'Ghost Story For Christmas', might I recommend 'The Mezzotint' with Robert Powell narrating.
This was when the BBC oozed class
That opening theme music is reminiscent of King Crimson - The Court of the Crimson King.
Would like to hear him read, _The Turn of The Screw_.
Sadly the BBC is gone so downhill that there are simply no films / series to watch anymore...... See Doctor Who or indeed Sherlock, all being sold off. Why pay TV license fee 😢😢😢😢😢
Please put subtitles en french.
Does anyone remember a mystery and imagination series presented by Christoper Lee in the 70s/80s, where his preamble included the words...''I love September, when the nights really start drawing in''? I have tried to find it on YT, but cannot remember its title.
Lovely stuff ❤
No captions for hard of hearing. Boo 😮…
I'm sure I will enjoy this, but question: how did ghost stories become associated with Christmas? What is the connection? I would think Halloween, All Souls' Say....???
The series was inspired by the success of Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968), based on an M. R. James story and directed by Jonathan Miller for the BBC One documentary strand Omnibus. As James originally wrote his stories to be read aloud as Christmas entertainment when he was Provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton College, and Later Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas, A Ghost Story for Christmas was intended to be a part of this tradition.
Telling ghost stories was popular in the Victorian Era even before Dickens' Christmas Carol. Some think it goes back to observing the Winter Solstice which was a time for the dead in Ancient Britain.
Slow
ghost stories need to be slow. make sure you belong here.
yes you are
Stories from another time, when the language was more thought evoking, and people were expected to have a decent vocabulary.