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A few offerings for the festive season, to fill in time if you're at a loose end and there's nothing worth watching on the telly.

Here's the late, great Sir Michael Hordern reading the classic tale of a lost crown that should never have been unearthed.






And here's the same gent reading the classic tale of a witch, and a tree, and a house, and nocturnal scampering Things.



It's not just M.R. James at Christmas, of course. He had many worthy successors, though few ever matched him for ideas and execution. Among the inter-war authors James praised was A.M. Burrage, whose story 'Smee' has a nice seasonal feel, focusing as it does on Christmas games in a country house.



Something much more obscure, now - a 'lost' drama starring the great Irish actor T.P. McKenna in the role of a Blackwood-like ghost story author.



And finally, a different take on a similar theme - a Kingsley Amis ghost story adapted for Granada TV and starring Jeremy Brett, best known for his definitive Sherlock Holmes back in the Eighties.