When Mr Humphreys unexpectedly inherits a country house and estate from an uncle he never met, he is charmed by the gardens – and intrigued by the overgrown maze, which has been locked up, with entry forbidden on the orders of his uncle, for more than 40 years...

A new, original recording of a classic public domain text, read and performed by Simon Stanhope for Bitesized Audio.

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Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medievalist and scholar, and is probably the best known and most celebrated English ghost story writer of the 20th century, although he actually began composing supernatural tales in the late Victorian era, beginning with 'Canon Alberic's ScrapBook' (1893). He was born in Kent, but spent most of his childhood in Suffolk, a county which features prominently in many of his stories, including perhaps his most famous 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad'. Several of James's protagonists also reflect his own antiquarian interests, with academics and historians featuring regularly. During a long academic career which encompassed several positions at King's College, Cambridge, and Eton College, M. R. James developed a tradition of reading ghost stories aloud to a group of friends, most famously on Christmas eve, and the majority of his stories were first heard in that setting.

'Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance' is M. R. James's longest ghost story. It was first published in book form as the last story in James's 1911 collection 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary'.

The story contains a number of Latin tags and phrases, which James does not translate. I have made a glossary of them here:

Dolebat se dolere non posse: Sorry that he could not feel sorry
Penetrans ad interiora mortis: Penetrating to the interior of death
Princeps tenebrarum: The Prince of Darkness
Quid multa?: Need I say more?
Secretum meum mihi et filiis domus meae: My secret for me and the sons of my house
Umbra mortis: The shadow of death
Vallis filiorum Hinnom: Valley of the Sons of Hinnom at Gehenna

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2021.