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M. R. James

Hogarth999 said:
Do Argo still exist?

Unfortunately not.

There was a Radio 4 Archive Hour programme about Argo (the British one - there's an American Argo Records which is unconnected) a while back. A very eclectic mix of spoken-word, music and other sounds produced by a mildly eccentric Brit (I think) on a very low budget. He was also producing world-music before the term was invented. From the snippets of stuff played on the documentary you got the feeling that the entire collection was probably worth owning.

I've got a couple of Argo recordings, my favourite being one of Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas.

Argo became part of Decca then Polygram and then its catalogue apparently passed to Universal - so the recordings probably still exist gathering dust in a basement somewhere. Given the growing popularity of audio-books maybe some bright-spark will think about re-releasing them. Or maybe in a few decades time some fusty academic will stumble on them while researching a history of the recording industry, secrete them under his tweeds, take them home for further study and wonder what it is that keeps scratching at his window overnight and why he can't seem to keep his bedsheets on.
 
I see - well, looks like we're stuffed then. :(

Must be someone out there who has some ....................
 
The BFI DVD of A Warning to the Curious apparently includes one of the Argo recordings of Hordern reading the original story. Worth having for that alone I would think.

Might be worth seeing if the nice people at Ghosts and Scholars have a source for the recordings.
 
I managed to get all the Michael Hordern/Argo recordings off Ebay on a disk which also included some Robert Powell and Christopher Lee narrations. By what methods these recordings came into the present owners hands is obviously all a bit discus ebaeatis bootlegum est - (MPIII).

The Hordern recordings are pure class - just the voice and the story. The Lee and Powell are a little tricksy for my liking - complete with sound effects and atmospheric music, which all seems a little unnecessary to me but then that might just be me being unnecessarily purist

I'm pretty sure, as with a lot of the recorded stuff you find on Ebay, that the person I bought this from puts the same stuff up for sale on a regular basis. If anyone's interested I think I found it simply by typing ghost stories James into the search facility. Otherwise I could see if I've still got the dealers details so you can keep an eye out. Really very worthwhile the few quid it cost me.
 
Thanks, if you happen to know the seller's name that might help me to find replacements for my severely worn out original tapes.
 
Further to Spookdaddy's post above, Wikipedia has a useful page on the Argo label:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_Records_(UK)

Havey Usill was the founder and he was allowed a certain degree of autonomy within the Decca group. The label had only four years of real independence and most of its celebrated productions date from the period within the Decca group.

There is one major omission from this account: the extensive recordings of Shakespeare etc. and many of the musical recordings were underwritten by the British Council. Those were the days! I gather that sets of the discs were sent to British Consulates and Embassies so that foreigners could be positively influenced. Well it beats depleted uranium. :(

I am dubious about the sales figures quoted for the Transacord railway records - they seem enormous! Perhaps they mean sales of the whole catalogue?

Sorry, this anorak-discographical note is probably not entirely OT. :?
 
Just stumbled across one of those weird little synchronisities that plague those of us who read too much and too late into the night.

In Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, May Lad, the whistle of the title has the Latin phrase QUIS EST ISTE QUI VENIT inscribed on it. Parkins, the protagonist, understands the phrase to mean "who is this who is coming". Last night I noticed that the graphic embeded in the story is bookended by a pair of swastikas. The story appeared in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, published in 1904.

1904, the year Adolf Hitler moved to Vienna, where

The Nazi philosophy candidly expressed in Mein Kampf, with its brutality, opportunism, contempt for the masses, distrust of even his closest friends, fanatical strength of will and advocacy of the "big lie," was all born in the gutters of Vienna.
(source).

Such ominous prescience is purely coincidence I know but there's still something quite satisfyingly spooky about it. Who is this who is coming indeed?!
 
This Friday night on BBC4:

Fri 22 Dec, 22:00-22:30
MR James: The Corner of the Retina
Profile of the famous author featuring interviews with admirers of his spine-chilling ficton, including Ruth Rendell and Muriel Gray.

30mins Stereo Widescreen
Subject Factual; Documentaries




Fri 22 Dec, 22:30-23:10
No 13
Adaptation of the MR James ghost story. An academic visits a small cathedral city to research its ecclesiastical history when the subject of his research begins to disturb his slumber. [AD,S]

40mins Stereo Widescreen
Subject Entertainment; Drama & Stories




Fri 22 Dec, 23:10-23:40
The Story of the Ghost Story
A look at the history of the ghost story, from tradition and folklore via the Gothic novel to the present, offering insights into the work of some of the genre's greatest writers.

30mins Stereo Widescreen
Subject Factual; Arts
 
Did anyone else see Number 13 either tonight or last night? Nice to see the BBC still have a knack for this sort of thing after all these years. The low budget helped, I thought, with no horrible computer graphics to be seen. Good soundtrack, too. Just right for Christmas.
 
gncxx said:
Did anyone else see Number 13 either tonight or last night? Nice to see the BBC still have a knack for this sort of thing after all these years. The low budget helped, I thought, with no horrible computer graphics to be seen. Good soundtrack, too. Just right for Christmas.

I quite enjoyed it but it seemed to misfire at times. The shadow on the wall was projected on the building next door in the story and there is a glimpse of something white in the window. The number and position of the windows is thrown into confusion by a cigarette end - sacrificed to our modern horror of the weed? The electronic sound effects were a bit much for me: the horror of James is the very plainness of the phenomena - just overheard voices in the tale. Still, there was much to enjoy. I liked last year's A View from a Hill too. :)
 
There has been a series of MR James stories on BBC radio 7 this week:

Canon Alberic's Scrapbook
Lost Hearts
A School Story
The Haunted Doll's House
Rats

All shows from the last six days can be heard again by going to the BBC 7 website. Canon Alberic's Scrapbook was the first, last Monday, so hurry if you want to hear it as tonight is your last chance! :)
 
Re M.R. James

The new FT has mentioned a 'flurry' of new adaptations can be expected as his work is now out of copyright.
If anyone is new to MRJ's work and interested in an intro to what print editions and film-TV adaptations are available, I did a roundup last year, for a blog entry I wrote following up Nick Warren's "Accursed Treasure" item in FT #206 (on MRJ and the Rennes le Chateau mystery). This 'Further Reading & Viewing' roundup has links, including to online video clips. It's at
http://codexceltica.blogspot.com/2006/0 ... codex.html
[scroll down to bottom of page]
 
Craftsman is publishing the complete unabridged ghost stories of MR James on audio CD. Think there are two volumes and that they are out February/March.

www.craftsmanaudio.co.uk
 
Ravenstone said:
Oh....bugger :(

Please tell me it's going to be repeated

No. 13 is repeated on BBC Four Thursday next week (Feb 22) in the evening and then again in the early hours of Friday ;)
 
I wish we could watch these in America.
I adore M.R James............... :(

That Argo history is fascinating by the way.

This Looks like Someting I Must Have
M.R James Book of the Supernatural


LINK
 
quantgirl said:
Craftsman is publishing the complete unabridged ghost stories of MR James on audio CD. Think there are two volumes and that they are out February/March.

Oh dear. Oh deary, deary me. Hmm. How long can Spook go without food?

Have to say the mind boggles slightly at the thought of the stories being read by the actor who did the voice for Monkey but, well, I have put a bit of weight on lately!
 
Spookdaddy said:
quantgirl said:
Craftsman is publishing the complete unabridged ghost stories of MR James on audio CD. Think there are two volumes and that they are out February/March.

Oh dear. Oh deary, deary me. Hmm. How long can Spook go without food?

Have to say the mind boggles slightly at the thought of the stories being read by the actor who did the voice for Monkey but, well, I have put a bit of weight on lately!

Just think of him as the actor who played the part of Silver in Sapphire & Steel, that'll help. :)
 
I finally succumbed and bought Volume 1 of the Craftsman Audio recordings. Excellent - not a single complaint. I won't bother with a review because the one written by The Glum Reaper on the Amazon website really says everything there is to say.

All I'd add is that the music is, as the reviewer states, 'suitably eerie' but it's only used between tracks and doesn't encroach on the actual storytelling - which is fine by me. Similarly there are none of those cheesy sound effects that the producers felt the need to use in the recordings of Robert Powell and Christopher Lee. Craftsman rely on pure storytelling and although I wouldn't want to play one off against the other I would say that David Collings storytelling will probably not disappoint those who, like me, love the Michael Hordern recordings.

My only, very minor, niggle is that there could maybe have been more in the way of background and articles on the Data CD. But then I expect there'll be another included when Volume 2 is released in November.
 
I hope this is going to make someone's day.

Over the last couple of years I've been regularly sifting the internet on the offchance that I might find the one Argo/Hordern/M R James collection that I still don't have a copy of.

Anyway, finally this page has appeared.

Unfortunately - for me - it only contains one of the stories that I don't already have. Fortunately - for you - it contains several of these very hard to find Hordern recordings.

The page does seem to be a little temperamental - this morning I couldn't get any of the files to either play or download, but when I tried again just now all seems fine. (However, just clicking download doesn't work - right click on Download/save target as/rename the file, is what worked for me.

One of the files on this page appears to be a radio dramatisation rather than one of the Argo recordings, and a couple are obviously not connected to M R James or Michael Hordern at all.

The Craftsman Audio collection is great - but, to my mind, nothing beats the Hordern recordings.

Enjoy, you lucky people.
 
Ho, yus. Definitely made my day!

Straight to MP3 player, about 10 of those. Thank you very much :).
 
Dunno what other people think but for me M R James's output was uneven. The best of it is superb, but there are a fair number of fillers where he's going through the motions.
The adaptations vary too.
 
I listen to some geezer reading MR James stories every night through headphones. Never heard the end as I'm asleep in minutes. That's the effect men's voices have on me. :lol:
 
colpepper1 said:
Dunno what other people think but for me M R James's output was uneven. The best of it is superb, but there are a fair number of fillers where he's going through the motions.
The adaptations vary too.

I'd agree that there are some clunkers, especially later on in his output, but really not that many and certainly nothing that takes the shine off James at his best. Occasionally I think he shows off a bit - for example, in Martin's Close and Two Doctors the author seems to be having fun with form through his knowledge of old manuscripts and transcripts of old trials - it can come over as a bit self-indulgent, but whether it's at the expense of a good story is probably a matter of taste.

Personally I prefer the straight readings - sans frills, music or crackly fireside sound effects. Most of the dramatised radio adaptations that I've heard have been pretty poor, and often overcomplicated by the tendency to add to the plot and characterisations in order, I assume, to make them attractive to an audience more familiar with the conventions (and clichés) of the modern genre; my stock response to most of these is usually: why on earth did you bother?

As some on this board will already know, Night of the Demon is a favourite film of mine. As a film it's remarkable in it's own light. As an adaptation I think it works well because, although updated and fairly loose in translation (and, of course, there's the contentious subject of that demon), it sticks pretty closely to the central themes of the original.

I've quite enjoyed most of the BBC adaptations, although there's always been something about them that irks, and it was only reading a comment on YouTube (of all places) that I realised what it is: In virtually every adaptation the protagonist is portrayed to some extent as either grumpy, or anti-social, or awkward, or arrogant, or somehow lacking in social grace and the ability to connect with other human beings - whereas the Jamesian protagonist, although a bachelor and a loner, is almost always enthusiastic, garrulous, gossipy, inquisitive and generally content inside the cosy confines of his academic universe - in short, he tends to be relatively happy. (Until, that is, the sheets start acting in a way they really have no right to.)
 
Spookdaddy said:
In virtually every adaptation the protagonist is portrayed to some extent as either grumpy, or anti-social, or awkward, or arrogant, or somehow lacking in social grace and the ability to connect with other human beings

I agree. James's main characters tends to be be snippy or wry but not autistic. The BBC Oh Whistle worked brilliantly but it wasn't OWAICTYML of the book. Watching it again this Christmas I realised how much wide angle lenses and deep focus were used and distorted sound, it was basically Film Noir UK style. Deep focus is very difficult to cut around and they did a pretty good job. Edward Dmytryk meets Edwardian scholar.
 
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