Robert Louis Stevenson this week on BBC Radio 7; happy birthday, Eric Ambler.

In "The Short History of Gothic" series, BBC Radio 7 is featuring Robert Louis Stevenson's "Markheim" (1885), read by Notting Hill's Hugh Bonneville, in which a thief receives an unsettling surprise. Go here for the schedule or to listen; episodes can usually be heard for a week after broadcast.

Let's also remember that espionage master and screenwriter Eric Ambler (Journey into Fear, A Coffin for Dimitrios, etc.) was born today in London in 1909 and recall Michael Gilbert's words about him in Crime in Good Company: "[Ambler] says that he was an unpleasant child, but produces no evidence of this beyond a single attempt to blow up his own house with nitroglycerin."
About the image: Robert Louis Stevenson, NYPL