The Ghost of Artemus Strange

Welcome to Batch Magna, a place where anything might happen. And often does...

Sir Humphrey has offered to play Father Christmas at the local hospital, but disaster strikes when he realises he won't be able to buy the sack of toys he'd promised the children.

Rupert, a gentleman of the road, is found asleep in an old car in the Hall's coach house. He is scrubbed up and given a room at the Hall, where two guests are already staying: a businessman and his rather young female companion. When money goes missing from their bedroom, Rupert is accused, and Miss Wyndham, the village's amateur sleuth, decides to investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, local author Phineas Cook has come up with the idea of a resident ghost at the Hall to attract paying guests. All goes smoothly until the ghostly actors spend too long in the pub one evening and their performance descends into sword-wielding chaos.

As always in Batch Magna, events somehow manage to turn out all right in the end - but in the most unexpected manner...

"Escape from the madness of life for a short while into the glorious eccentricity of Batch Magna once again, revel in its surroundings, its people, its comings and goings - which, often as bizarre as they are, usually work out for the best. Madcap schemes abound here, in this fifth book in the series, and the result is as greatly unpredictable as it is great fun. Wonderfully warm, gently witty, woefully wry and utterly, utterly compulsive."

"Christmas comes to Batch Hall, bringing an assortment of little stories that are added in like decorations on a Christmas tree. You can't leave one of them out because your tree will be incomplete then. If I had to guess at Peter Maughan's occupation, my bet would be on a weaver and I'll double down on that bet. Only a weaver a.k.a. master story teller can weave together, so magnificently, everything the stories in this chronicle encompasses."

"Batch Magna, straddling the border between England and Wales also straddles other borders. It’s a whimsical tale that would best be filmed by the old Ealing Studios of the 40’s and 50’s. The reader is never quite sure if this is a modern story or a vintage one. There are clues but never anything definitive. That allows it to poach from both past and present. [...] The jolly cast of characters, who truly are, in the best English sense, characters, provide humour and a bit of pathos. There are some lovely side stories such as a trip to London that does not turn out quite as expected and the bittersweet friendship between two aged folk whose lives have known great loss. This would be a great book to read sitting in an English garden on a summer’s day."

Peter Maughan studied at the Actor's Workshop in London, and worked as an actor in the UK and Ireland (in the heyday of Ardmore Studios). He founded and ran a fringe theatre in Barnes, London and, living on a converted Thames sailing barge among a small colony of houseboats on the River Medway, wrote pilot film scripts as a freelance deep in the green shades of rural Kent. He lives in a river valley in the Welsh Marches where he writes the Batch Magna novels. Visit Peter's website at 

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