Atmospherics

Fiction ~ short story
I have a feeling that this story made its world début when it was broadcast on the BBC in December 1928, read by E F Benson himself.  It was first published in The Radio Times on 28/12/1928
Subsequently collected in Fine Feathers and Other Stories
Approx. 1,700 words
(First read 27/12/1994)

Our nameless author goes to spend a weekend with ... well, with himself, basically ~ at Mayor's Orchard, which is the house of his friend Harry Armytage, in the Cinque Port town of Tillingham.  He takes with him to show off his 'new toy': an Ad Astra wireless set.  Having rather failed to impress his pals, persistence pays off when ~ as if by magic ~ he tunes in to scenes from King George II's visit to Rye-I-mean-Tillingham as they are happening.  That's it.  Fred briefly re-used the idea (sort of) in his opinion piece Magic White and Black (1934) and, possibly, in another story I haven't succeeded in pinpointing yet.

See also: The Confession of Charles Linkworth (1912).

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 ...