And now for something completely different! If you’re a fan of M.R James and you relish a spooky night out you should make every effort to get to Great War Huts to see Robert Lloyd Parry’s performance of these classic English ghost stories. Lloyd Parry is a Cambridgeshire based actor who for over 10 years has been staging recitals of these chilling tales of over-curious academics and arrogant authority figures stirring up forces they can’t control, and he’s a wonder to behold: he affects the appearance, demeanour and speech patterns of an abstracted early 20th Century don perfectly, and uses candlelight and the natural ambience of his carefully chosen venues to heighten the atmosphere. ​ This performance at Great War Huts features 'Lost Hearts' and paired here with perhaps James’s most poignant and personal work: 'A Warning to the Curious', in which a young archaeologist is haunted and hunted by the guardian of an ancient treasure. It was published in 1925 and is set in Aldeburgh and talks of a folk belief that three buried Anglo Saxon crowns protect the east coast of England from enemy invasion, and have done for centuries. The Great War is mentioned indirectly (it is said that the buried crowns prevented "the Germans landing and killing man, woman and child in their beds"), but the theme of defence of the realm and a sense of anxiety about invasion pervade the story. The bleak ending reflects the sense of loss that M R James felt and was called upon to memorialise after the war. As you will all know, the families or next-of-kin of every serviceman and woman who were killed or died during the Great War received a bronze death plaque and a printed memorial scroll. The wording upon the scrolls was written, with a few small amendments, by M R James. We will have examples of the scroll on display before the performance.