Monday 30 September 1974

The Confession of Charles Linkworth

Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Cavalier & Scrapbook*, 13th January 1912
Collected in The Room in the Tower (1912)
5,905 words
(First read September(?) 1974)

This was the first thing I ever read by E F Benson, as collected in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964).  I was ten years old at the time.

It's also well worth mentioning that this was (probably) the second of two E F Benson stories broadcast on the BBC in December 1928, both read by the author himself.  This one definitely hit the ether on Christmas Eve.  (The other, still to be confirmed, was Atmospherics, qv.).  On the same day ~ and at the same time, so presumably on the other channel ~ he read Dickens' Christmas at Dingley Dell from The Pickwick Papers.

*I'm not 100% certain of this title ...