Tony Walker

There's a preoccupation with misdirection, which I think he does beautifully in this story.

and secrets and the borderline between what is seen and what is inferred.

He rarely goes in for explicit horror.

Instead, he specializes in the eerie coincidence, the inexplicable scrap of evidence, the twist of fate that remains only half explained.

The narrative effect is closer to a curious after-dinner speech than a formal ghost story, but the cumulative impression is one of the world being thinner and less reliable than we like to think.

In addition to the radio work, his stories appeared in print in several collections and later in omnibus volumes, such as But That's a Detail, collected stories of A.J.

Allen, which has helped to preserve his work for modern readers after a long period of relative obscurity.

Today he occupies a small but interesting niche in the history of British weird and humorous supernatural fiction, a writer whose modest output, conversational style and background in performance, anticipate later traditions of radio storytelling and audio drama.

His life ended in Norwich in 1941, in the middle of the Second World War, in Norfolk.

Norwich is in Norfolk, the capital of Norfolk.

But his best stories retained the peculiar charm of a man who knew how to make the strange sound like something that might have happened to you on your way home.

I've got a little bit more to say about that later on, but let's talk about the story.

So My Adventure in Norfolk was originally broadcast live, so that's its first appearance in the public.

And I think it still carries with it that feel of a story I might just tell you like this.

I'll tell you a funny thing that happened to me, etc.

It was sometime in the mid-1920s.

The story's dated 1924 in the contents of The Best of A.J.

Allen, which would make it one of his earliest pieces, delivered not long after his debut broadcast of My Adventure in German Street.

on the 31st of January 1924.

It was first collected in print in Good Evening Everyone, published by Hutchinson in 1928, which was his first book of stories.