THE PORTRAIT OF A LOOKING-GLASS – A creepy skin-crawler in the style of M.R. James that tells the tale of an Oxford academic and a most peculiar mirror, wherein lies more than just reflections.

M.R. James aficionados are likely to recognise steals from The Mezzotint, Lost Hearts and A View from a Hill, plus there’s the obligatory Jamesian comic servant with his many mispronunciations. There are also references to people with connections with Aldeburgh (or Seaburgh in his stories). However, in a way the tale is really about Montague Rhodes James himself. The main character is called Rhodes and there are historical events, notably the letter to The Times concerning the bones of St Edmund the Martyr, which identify the narrator specifically as M.R. James. It’s all very meta!

Of course there’s more to any writer than how one individual reader perceives her or him through their writing. And from that point of view I doubt I’ve got James right, in that my way of seeing him won’t be the same as anyone else’s. However, I’ve tried to distil an essence as I see it and if The Portrait of a Looking-Glass can cause the reader some ‘pleasing terror’ my purpose in writing the tale will have been attained.

"Steve Nallon’s homage to M.R. James captures both the wit and horror of that master’s ghost stories – with their thoroughly decayed country houses, cobwebbed churches, and lonely windblown inns on the Norfolk coast, where the most terrifying of fellow guests emerge from oil paintings and cracked mirrors. I hope the old master materialises at least briefly in Steve Nallon’s shaving mirror to gently bestow on him a solemn but generous nod of praise."

William Palmer, award winning novelist and author of The Contract, The India House, Four Last Things, The Good Republic, The Island Rescue and In Love with Hell