‘Are you awake, Count Magnus? Are you asleep, Count Magnus?’ While travelling in Sweden, Mr. Wraxall becomes fascinated by the legend surrounding Count Magnus De la Gardie, a nobleman of evil memory. He soon regrets his curiosity...

Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me:

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00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:12 Count Magnus
00:38:46 Credits, thanks and further listening

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 Scrap-Book' (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 '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. James published four volumes of ghost stories in his lifetime: 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' (1904), 'More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary' (1911), 'A Thin Ghost and Others' (1919) and 'A Warning to the Curious and Other Stories' (1925).

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 his ghost stories aloud to a group of friends, most famously on Christmas eve, and the majority of his published stories were first heard in that setting. 'Count Magnus' was apparently composed and read somewhere between 1900 and 1902; it was first published in 1904 as part of James's first anthology, 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary'.

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2022.

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