M. R. James, Britain's greatest writer of ghost stories, is summoned by the Warden of Old College to investigate the inscription on an ancient stone mirror. But he finds himself drawn into a dark maze of secrets, including one from his own guilty past.

Oxford, 1665

At a time when established orthodoxies are being challenged by the new science, Warden Woodward of Old College has acquired the same mirror. He soon suspects conspiracy and witchcraft in a city besieged by plague.

Assailed by devastating visions, caught between fears of an ancient curse and the World...