Ghost stories - a guest blog by AK Benedict

This is the right time of year for ghost stories, a genre I've always enjoyed. Last year saw the publication of my first ghost story, "No Flowers", and I'm tempted to write another before long. I'm also very much looking forward to seeing a new M.R. James adaptation and documentary, to be screened on the BBC on Christmas.Day.  Reviews will be forthcoming! Whilst in the mood for ghosts, I invited AK Benedict, who is not only a fan of the genre but an expert in it, to contribute a post to this blog. Alexandra is one of the most interesting and evocative new writers to have emerged in the last year or two, and her characteristically witty and thoughtful response delighted me. Here it is.

‘Tell me winter's tales,


And speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night’

Marlowe

It is December 21^st, the winter solstice, and I am gathering ghost stories like logs in a forest that will blaze in the telling and see me through the longest night.

Ghost stories don’t sit well with summer: shadows are skimpy, days are long and spectres are rarely seen licking a Mr Whippy but now, in deepest December, when the wind slaps leaves on windows like parking tickets and the sun packs up early and slopes off to the pub, they are perfect.

The dark brings fear and uncertainty – we don’t know what lurks in the shadow in the cupboard at the bottom of the stairs. Ghost stories let fear out of the cupboard and allow it to run around the house before locking it back in again, worn out for now. Much like the crime novel, the spooky story acknowledges and exorcises darkness, if only until the fire dies out.

I’ve loved reading ghost stories in winter since I was a child, from Dickens’ ‘The Signalman’ to Lefcadio Hearn’s retelling of the Japanese supernatural tale ‘The Boy who Drew Cats’. The latter’s haunting advice: “at night, when in large spaces, keep to small” once had me sleeping on the floor of my wardrobe for all of Christmas week.

Reading stories of spirits at this time of year is a tradition that goes back to the winter’s tale spoken of by Marlowe and Prince Mamillius in Shakespeare’s own A Winter’s Tale who states that ‘a sad tale’s best for winter: I have one/ of sprites and goblins’. In 1820 Washington Irving wrote of ‘strange accounts of popular superstitions and legends’ told by the fireside on Christmas day; Dickens popularised the ghost story as a yuletide activity in The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol, ‘The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain and other stories and Henry James brilliant ‘The Turn of the Screw’ is presented as a ghost story told at Christmas by the narrator.

Montague Rhodes James, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, read his ghost stories to his friends in the Chitchat Society on Christmas Eve. His stories begin in casual, conversational style with dry humour and a clear sense of place; his protagonists are men (always men!) of reason, curiosity and scholarship who, like in LeFanu and Lovecraft, end up knowing less about the world than when they started. Rationality is powerless when up against ‘a horrible, intensely horrible face of crumpled linen’ (‘O Whistle and I’ll Come to you, my Lad’) or ‘pale, dusty skin, covering nothing but bones and tendons of appalling strength; coarse black hairs longer than ever grew on a human hand’ (‘Canon Alberic’s scrapbook’). M R James was the reason I applied to King’s College and it was only when I got in, and sat in the dining hall beneath the stern gaze of his portrait, that I found out that he had obstructed degrees for women. Sometimes, what you most fear comes to pass, and no ghost story will stop them.

I will be inside on Christmas Eve, wine mulling, chestnuts burning, candles shivering, and reading from my pile of M R James, Sheridan La Fanu, E F Benson, Ambrose Pierce, E Nesbit, May Sinclair, Charles Dickens and Henry James. I will probably eat my body weight in mince pies at the same time, knowing that the sun will come back from the bar soon with a packet of nuts and a tale to tell. Meanwhile, sitting in a shadow-licked room, reading ghosts stories out loud, is a way of knowing that I’m not dead. Yet." 

St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Week-end

St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Week-end is a crime conference with a distinctive and delightful personality which makes it very different from other crime-related events. The setting is St Hilda's College, Oxford, and I'm just back from the twentieth conference, which was, if anything, even more enjoyable than usual. The fact that this week-end is not advertised, has no promotional website, and yet has flourished for two decades, speaks for itself. When people do find out about it, and attend, they tend to love it, and go back year after year. There's no clearer sign of success than that.

The theme this year was "The Present and Future of Crime Fiction" and when I was asked to deliver a paper, I thought I would be very crafty and find a neat way to weave a talk about the Golden Age into the over-arching theme. What I hadn't anticipated was that some other writers would have the same idea - and my talk was on Saturday afternoon, while just before lunch P.D. James herself would be speaking about....the Golden Age.

P.D. James was aptly described by Natasha Cooper, the chair of the conference, as the true Queen of Crime and it was wonderful to see that her audience regarded it as a true privilege to be able to listen to her. And so it was. Fortunately for me, there was no overlap between her topics of mine, and one of the more daunting experiences of my public speaking career (yet a real honour) was to see Baroness James herself sitting in the front row to listen to my paper. I did feel a bit nervous, having foolishly said the previous evening that I feel more confident about speaking in public nowadays than I used to, but I managed to get through to the end without drying up completely. The papers are delivered in pairs, so P.D. James spoke along with Frances Fyfield, while I was paired with Peter Robinson - and it was very good to catch up with him again over the week-end.

The other speakers included Andrew Taylor (talking about C.S. Forester), and Val McDermid, while two after dinner speeches were given by Bernard Knight on the Friday, and Cilla Masters on the Saturday. There was also an extremely interesting panel chaired by Ayo Onatade on the future of crime publishing. The attendees included quite a number of notable writers who weren't actually speaking - a few examples include Frances Brody, Ann Granger, Marjorie Eccles, Kate Ellis, and AK Benedict - while I met several writers whose first books are due to appear shortly. As ever with these events, the combination of catching up with old friends and meeting new people was very pleasurable.

Much of the success of St Hilda's is down to continuity and the sterling efforts of the organisers, Kate Charles and Eileen Roberts, and Natasha Cooper, who chairs quite brilliantly in a calm, efficient and extremely generous style that few if any could match. This trio put a huge amount of work into the event, and their reward is simply that they give a lot of people a great time.If you've never attended St Hilda's, I do recommend it very strongly. The dates for next year are 15-17 August 2014.

Crimefest 2013 - part three

One of the highlights of my Saturday at Crimefest was the chance to appear on a panel moderated, with his customary wit, by Len Tyler. We were talking about detective duos, and fellow panellists were Helen Smith, whom I'd never had the pleasure of meeting before, Dorothy Cannell, who had been a member of our pub quiz team, and fellow Northern lawyer Neil White. Neil and I have a favourite shared trivia question: which character in his books used to work for me? The answer is Laura McGarritty/ The real life Laura's husband Duncan is a great friend of Neil's and was for many years a work colleague of mine, as was Laura. Neil used Laura's name for the female lead character in his first series of books.

Dorothy came up with an intriguing idea during the panel - she said she regarded characters in her books as employees who had to interview well to be included, and were subject to being dismissed every now and then if they didn't perform. There has to be an article worth writing to examine that metaphor. The panel was very enjoyable, and also rather relaxing, since I must say I find it easier being a panel member rather than a moderator.

Nev Fountain hosted an excellent session on Sherlock with Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat, and Sue Vertue, and I enjoyed Nev's company when I found myself sitting with him and his partner Nicola, a very successful actor and also a songwriter, at the gala dinner. Among the award winners were the admirable Ruth Dudley Edwards and Barry Forshaw. Barry won the H.R.F. Keating award for best crime reference book of the past five years,which was presented by Sheila Mitchell, Harry's widow.

I had a hand in setting up the award, though since I'd contributed essays to two of the books on a fabulous shortlist which also included fine books by P.D. James, John Curran and others, I decided it wasn't right for me to vote. Anyway, it was so hard to choose. But Barry's encyclopaedia on British Crime Writing was a worthy winner, I must say. The quality of the shortlist shows how strong writing about the genre has become in the UK in recent years, a development which is enormously pleasing.

Sunday saw an enjoyable interview with Robert Goddard, and then the annual Mastermind quiz, which was won by Peter Guttridge. One of the questions for Peter was about the legal subject in which I specialise. His answer was corporate law, and although this is not now the case, he was closer than he realised. I did start out my legal career combining employment law with corporate work. In fact my first published book was Understanding Computer Contracts. There has to be another quiz question there...

All in all, a marvellous four days. Adrian Muller and his fellow organisers did a great job as usual, and I feel that Crimefest is getting better each year. As ever it was good to see old friends, and meet a host of delightful people for the first time, including Helen, Dorothy. Nev, Nicola, Jeff Siger, James Wills, Alexandra Benedict, Xavier-Marie Bonnot, Quentin Bates, as well as a good many others. I've already booked for next year.