The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings by Dan Jones Review

In the 12th century, monks transcribing texts by Cicero and various Christian theologists left some blank pages at the end of their transcript. These blank pages were filled with 12 medieval ghost stories by an unnamed monk in the 15th century. Most were a few lines long and the longest was the story of Snowball the tailor.

In the early 1920s, an academic and noted ghost story writer in his own right, MR James, found this centuries-old manuscript and copied down the ghost stories appended at the end of it, publishing them to a wider readership for the first time. Cut to 2020 and Dan Jones finds these stories and decides to retell the story of Snowball the tailor for a modern 21st century audience. And so we have this modest volume: The Tale of the Tailor and the Three Dead Kings.

So, how was this medieval ghost story? Look, I get it. They didn’t have Squid Game or TikTok in the Middle Ages so the bar for entertainment was hella low. I’ve read The Canterbury Tales so I wasn’t expecting to be that blown away. Still, this is one unremarkable story - the backstory of it is more entertaining than the actual content!

All that happens is Snowball and his horse Borin meet a spooky raven, a green talking dog and a ghost of a king and that’s it. Zzz… The only moment that stirred me from the stupor the story had me in was when I realised I’d finished it and there was nothing more to it!

I’m sure the original text is even duller (and the original Latin transcript is included for any psychos out there who want to read it) and that Jones did what he could to jazz up the story while still remaining true to the subject matter, but it’s still the most forgettable of stories that barely figures as a ghost story. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone except as a sleep aid.