A Ghost Story for Christmas: Lot No.249 with York actor James Swanton set to hit screens this Christmas

The festive special is an adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle short story and will be hitting screens on December 24.

Described as an ‘end-of-Empire chiller’ the special will feature Game of Thrones star, Kit Harington, Freddie Fox, Colin Ryan, John Heffernan, Jonathan Rigby, Andrew Horton and none other than Yorkshire’s own James Swanton.

Set in 1881, the story follows the lives of three Old College, Oxford students: Abercrombie Smith (Harington), “a model of Victorian manhood, clean of limb and sound of mind”; Monkhouse Lee (Ryan), “a delicate and unworldly student from Siam; and the strange” and exotic Edward Bellingham (Fox), whose “arcane research into Ancient Egypt is the talk of the campus”.

Speaking about the show, Mark Gatiss called the story the “original ‘mummy’” story, describing it as a “delicious Christmas treat”.

He said: “It’s certainly one of the first stories to feature a mummy as an instrument of revenge.

“So everything we associate with the Mummy from Hollywood to Hammer starts here. It’s got a terrific cast and it should be a delicious Christmas treat.”

Swanton is an award-winning actor and writer, who is increasingly known for his more “frightening” roles, having recently played “The Ash Man'' in the horror movie Stopmotion and “The Creature (Frankenstein)” in Frankenstein's Creature.

Talking about working with Swanton in the programme, Gatiss said: “It was a joyous experience – I’ve worked with John Heffernan on Dracula. James Swanton who plays the mummy is a fantastic physical performer who I worked with recently on The Quatermass Experiment at Alexandra Palace.”

Whereas his co-star, Harrington, called Swanton’s portrayal “genuinely scary”.

The Game of Thrones actor said: “He was genuinely scary. When he ran it was one of the more disturbing things I witnessed this year. We called him ‘mummy’ on set, it’s quite a Freudian piece really.”