I reread this as part of a book challenge in Another Place, and it still held up for me lo these many decades later.

James is very much the sort of boy that you usually met in the edgier British children's work, but still rang true to life as he dealt with both his family, indifferent friends and a poltergeist from 300 years earlier. it's the sort of work I'm slightly surprised was never adapted for television (unless it was, I haven't looked).