A Ghost Story for Christmas: ‘There Was A Man Dwelt By A Churchyard’
I recently recorded a dramatic reading of M. R. James’s story ‘There Was A Man Dwelt By A Churchyard’ for the Churches Conservation Trust, as a special online event for … Continue reading
Christmas Ghosts on BBC History Extra
The talk on Christmas ghost stories I gave to the Churches Conservation Trust on 3 December is now available as part of a BBC History Extra podcast, in which I … Continue reading
Review: Opening The Box of Delights by Philip W. Errington
Philip W. Errington, Opening the Box of Delights (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2020), 128pp. I cannot have been old enough to watch the BBC adaptation of John Masefield’s The … Continue reading
Christmas is cancelled! The Bury St Edmunds Christmas riots of the 1640s
The Christmas of 1644 was a bleak time. England was embroiled in a bitter civil war that had already lasted over two years, with a consequent breakdown of law and … Continue reading
Review: Staging Fairyland by Jennifer Schacker
My review of Staging Fairyland: Folklore, Children’s Entertainment and Nineteenth-Century Pantomime by Jennifer Schacker has just been published in Folklore, the journal of the Folklore Society. The book explores the … Continue reading
A gimpse of Abbot John Reeve?
A recurring theme of this blog recently has been the search for images of abbots of Bury St Edmunds. Last year I drew attention to a surviving depiction of Abbot … Continue reading
English Social and Local History at Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education
Today I delivered a day of remote teaching for Oxford University’s Department of Continuing Education on the Undergraduate Diploma in English Social and Local History. My three lectures focussed on … Continue reading
‘Christmas Ghosts’ for the Churches Conservation Trust
This afternoon I delivered my second live Facebook lecture for the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), following on from my lecture on ‘Macabre Church Lore’ in October. The theme this time … Continue reading
Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall in The Catholic Herald
My article ‘Christianity on Hadrian’s Wall’ has just been published in the December edition of The Catholic Herald. In the article I discuss a discovery announced in August this year, … Continue reading
