Episode 220: Letting Go with Melissa Martin

Melissa Martin returns. Long time listeners may recall that Melissa was one of the first people I interviewed when I started this project a couple of years ago. I was thrilled when she agreed to come back.

We didn't really have a set topic for the conversation and agreed to just hit record and see what happened. What happened was pretty amazing. We talked about decluttering - both Melissa and I have been in midst of some pretty major life changes - and mid life crises. It's an honest, at times frank , and funny conversation with one of my favourite writers.

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A Ghost Story for Christmas

As regular part of his Christmas Eve celebrations, M.R. James, medieval scholar and academic administrator, would read original ghost stories to the delight of his friends and colleagues. James's ghost stories, which were part of much older British tradition of telling tales of the supernatural at Christmas time, are some of finest ghost stories ever written. He abandoned many of the dated tropes that had been common and had become chiched - gothic castles, the aristocracy.

Most of James's stories have a contemporary setting - often the English country side. His protagonists are typically unassuming, some times naive, academics... not unlike their creator.

As a bit of bonus content to mark this yuletide, and in light of my conversation withJack Jewers, I'm including an audio version of one of James's most famous stories, his 1904 ghost story "'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad' read by the incomparable Michael Horden.