Yesterday we took a walk into the Old East End, down Commercial Rd, past the Whitechapel Bell Foundry (birthplace of Liberty Bell) through streets broad and narrow, to the Cable Street Studios, an arts centre in an old warehouse. Here and in the dim light of a low dive, with motley collection of stools and chairs, 60 of sat wrapped up in the ghostly poetry of Helen Mort’s 'A Pint for the Ghost’, stories from the moors and city of Sheffield, of women who took a wrong turn in the mist or a beggar sentenced to starve for crime of hunger.

Then the incomparable Robert Lloyd Parry transported us to another time and place with his telling of M.R. James' Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad. If you ever have the chance to see Parry (such as this Saturday in Crawley), do. His storytelling is Jackanory for adults.