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Deadline has announced that Joanna Lumley and Tobias Menzies will headline the latest Christmas Ghost Story from Mark Gatiss for the BBC.

A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Room in the Tower is set between the First and Second World War. Additional cast includes Nancy Carroll (The Crown, Father Brown), Ben Mansfield (Endeavour, Sister Boniface Mysteries) and Gatiss’ recent Bookish co-star Polly Walker (Bridgerton, Rome).

For 15 years, Roger Winstanley has been haunted by an unsettling, recurring dream: an invitation to spend the night in the house of an acquaintance, where an unseen terror lurks and the figures who populate the dream seem to age in real time. Nightmare and waking life seem to finally collide when an invitation to the dreaded “room in the tower” becomes all too real…

Mark Gatiss, Writer and Director, says: “I’ve always wanted to adapt the great E.F. Benson’s ghost stories and this is one of his chilling best. I’m also very grateful to have been able to continue the most Christmassy of Christmas traditions. The Room in the Tower has been prepared for you – and with Tobias Menzies and the legendary Dame Joanna Lumley to boot!”

Mark Bell, Commissioning Editor for BBC Arts, says: “Mark and the team have gathered a wonderful cast for this atmospheric treat where dream meets terrifying reality. ‘I have given you the room in the tower’ is a sentence nobody will want to hear once they have experienced this festive haunting…”