Jan 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The birthday festivities in New York began midweek with an ASH Wednesday supper at O'Casey's for dedicated enthusiasts seeking a truly long weekend, and continued on Thursday at the Williams Club, when Madeleine Stern (ac- companied by her partner Leona Rostenberg) was the Baker Street Irregulars' Distinguished Speaker, offering stories about Sherlock Holmes' rare books (and her talk will be published in the Baker Street Journal this year). The Hotel Algonquin was a nice venue for an informal Mrs. Hudson Breakfast on Friday morning, and more than 140 people were on hand for the William Gillette Luncheon at Moran's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant, where Andrew Joffe and Paul Singleton offered a dramatic rendition of "The True Murderers of Sherlock Holmes". And Otto Penzler's traditional open house at the Myster- ious Bookshop provided the usual opportunities to browse and buy. There were more than 160 on hand for the annual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars at the Union League Club, where Paul Herbert offered the toast to Sharon Novorksy as *the* Woman during the pre-dinner cocktail party (she then went on to dine at the Algonquin with other ladies who have received that honor). The dinner agenda was both scholarly and musical, including the usual traditions, recognition of George McCormack (attending his 43rd consecutive annual dinner), reminiscences of old Irregulars Elmer Davis (by Jon Lellenberg) and Nathan Bengis (by Andrew Fusco), and a spectacular "mu- sical tribute to the children of Baker Street": Eddy the Button (Paul Sing- leton), Julie the Wolf (Mary Ellen Rich), Tommy the Stick (Andrew Joffe), and Mikey (Richard Wein), with music and lyrics by Henry Boote. Mike Whelan (the BSI's "Wiggins") announced this year's Birthday Honours: the Two-Shilling Award ("for extraordinary devotion to the cause beyond the call of duty") to Donald K. Pollock, recognizing his fine work as editor of The Baker Street Journal; and Irregular Shillings and Investitures to An- drew L. Solberg ("Professor Coram"), Lloyd Rose ("George Sand"), Charles Foley ("Marlow Bates"), Julie A. McKuras ("The Duchess of Devonshire"), Daniel Stashower ("Thurston"), Marcus Geisser ("Rosenlaui"), and W. Scott Monty ("Corporal Henry Wood"). The Baskerville Bash also took place Friday evening, at the Manhattan Club and with more than 90 people on hand, and with entertainment that included a rousing toast by Chuck Kovacic (to The Hound of the Baskervilles) and a stirring performance by the Sherlettes and the Sherhunks of "Hello, Selden" (starring the Hound instead of Carol Channing). On Saturday morning the dealers room at the Algonquin was as usual crowded with sellers and buyers, and shortly after noon The Clients of Adrian Mull- iner commandeered the lobby for their now-traditional Junior Bloodstain. The BSI's Saturday-afternoon cocktail party attracted more than 250 people to the National Arts Club, where Bev Wolov introduced ladies who have been honored as *the* Woman over the years, and Al and Betsy Rosenblatt reported in verse on the events of the previous evening and the previous year (and you will be able to read that in the BSJ, too). And Ben Vizoskie was ap- plauded as the winner of the Morley-Montgomery Award (an attractive certi- Jan 01 #2 ficate and a check for $500) for the best contribution to The Baker Street Journal last year (his article on "Who Wrote the American Chapters of 'A Study in Scarlet'?" in the summer issue). And The Dr. John H. Watson Fund benefited from June Kinnee's energetic marketing of raffle tickets for Amy Frisbie's portrait of Sherlock Holmes (won by Dayna McCausland), as well as from the enthusiastic bidders in the traditional auction (which, untraditionally, included signing rights on Kate Karlson's leg cast). On Sunday locals and long-weekenders gathered at the Baker Street Pub and Restaurant for an excellent brunch that also was a surprise party celebrat- ing the 20th anniversary of Susan Rice and Mickey Fromkin. I've not reported on everything, I hasten to add; if you want more details than fit into print here, it is quite likely that there will be much longer reports in The Baker Street Journal, which is published quarterly and costs $21.00 a year ($23.50 outside the U.S.), and checks (credit-card payments accepted from foreign subscribers) can be sent to the BSJ at Box 465, Hano- ver, PA 17331. And the electronically-enabled can view photographs of the birthday festivities taken by Linda Anderson (and perhaps others) at a web- site at . Brad Keefauver offers some perspective on the BSI annual dinner (to which he returned after a twelve-year absence), and Brad and his wife Kathryn R. Carter provide a simultaneous account of the BSI dinner and the Bash in the January issue of The Holmes & Watson Report (which also has David Morrill's review of the 1977 television film "The Strange Case of the End of Civili- sation as We Know It" and James R. Webb's discussion of the manuscript of "The Dancing Men"). $16.00 a year for six issues (or $22.00 outside North America), or $3.00 for one issue, from Brad Keefauver (4009 North Chelsea Place, Peoria, IL 61614). And for those who want to mark their calendars for next year's festivities: the Baker Street Irregulars' annual dinner will be held on Jan. 11, 2002. The 20th annual Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle Symposium will be held on Mar. 9-11 at the Holiday Inn Conference Center in Fairborn, Ohio, with speakers and theatrics and other fun and games. Additional information is available from Cathy Gill, 4661 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223 (513-681-5507) . Jean-Pierre Cagnat is a splendid French illustrator and political cartoon- ist, and he has been attending Sherlockian gatherings for 15 years, and of course rendering what he has seen in his unique style. His tour "around the world of Sherlock Holmes" is now available, in full color and with text in English, in IT IS ALWAYS A JOY...TO ME TO MEET AN AMERICAN, A BRITON, A JAPANESE, A CANADIAN, A SWISS... (Paris: Mycroft's Brother Editions, 2000; 160 pp., 485 francs), from the publisher (26 avenue de la Republique, 75011 Paris, France) . Shipping is extra: 67fr to the European Union and Switzerland, 75fr to the rest of Europe and Africa, 110fr to America, Asia, and Oceania. Credit-card orders welcome, as are checks in non-French currency (please leave the payee line blank). And if you would like an inscribed copy, please state to whom. Jan 01 #3 Wayne B. Swift ("The Giant Rat of Sumatra") died on Jan. 15. Wayne was an electrical engineer and a teacher, and a computer systems analyst, and in the early 1970s arrived in Washington, D.C., where he discovered the world of Sherlockians, and met and married his wife Fran- cine, and became one of the stalwarts of The Red Circle, for whom he wrote the continuing serial "Upstairs, Downstairs, All Around the Holmes". Wayne received his Investiture from The Baker Street Irregulars in 1978, and was our expert on race horses and horse racing; he identified Silver Blaze as the Duke of Westminster's Ormonde, and The Baker Street Journal's Christmas Annual for 2000 (which is appropriately bound in turf-green covers) was his carefully-researched "History of The Silver Blaze" (from the race recorded by Dr. Watson through its many successors to last year's race at Saratoga). Yuichi Hirayama's THE ANNOTATED JELLAND'S VOYAGE offers a reprint of Arthur Conan Doyle's only story set in Japan, with annotations and an interesting discussion of the historical and literary background of the story; the 20- page pamphlet costs $7.00 postpaid from the author, at 2-10-12 Kamirenjaku, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181-0012, Japan (US dollar checks are welcome, payable to Mel Hughes). Our new 10c stamp (for presorted bound printed material) honors the N.Y. Public Library and shows one of the two handsome lions that guard its entrance on 42nd Street; visitors to the Library should not neglect its Berg Collection, which owns a chapter of the manuscript of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", and a letter (written for Conan Doyle by his secretary Charles Terry) to B. Fletcher Robinson (with the text of the acknowledgement found in the first American edition); complete manuscripts of "The Norwood Builder", "The Blanched Soldier", "The Devil's Foot", and two Brigadier Gerard stor- ies; and a fascinating archive of material about "The Lost World". "A Dime Novelist's View of American History" is the title of a lecture that J. Randolph Cox will give at the New York Public Library on May 17, as one of five talks scheduled this spring on "Pulp Fictions: Reading, Collecting, and Preserving Popular Culture". Randy, billed in the announcement as "the preeminent scholar of the dime novel genre in the United States," wrote the essay on Arthur Conan Doyle in the DICTIONARY OF LITERARY BIOGRAPHY (1988), and has contributed to The Baker Street Journal and Baker Street Miscella- nea, including an article noting that some of Conan Doyle's works have been published here as dime novels. "Rebooted Any Good Books Lately?" asked the headline on Ian Austen's story in the N.Y. Times (Jan. 4), kindly forwarded by Dan Knight. The review of electronic-book readers included an illustration of the Franklin eBookMan displaying a passage from "The Three Students". THE ORIGINAL TEXT SOLAR PONS OMNIBUS EDITION is a new collection of all of August Derleth's Solar Pons stories, published last year by George A. Van- derburgh in two volumes (with a total of 826 pages), with an introduction by Peter Ruber, and text taken from book collections published by Derleth (an earlier omnibus published in 1982 had text edited by Basil Copper, who corrected "errors" he had perceived in Derleth's text). $138.00 postpaid from the August Derleth Society (Box 481, Sauk City, WI 53583). Jan 01 #4 There are paintings by two Canonical artists in the exhibition "Art for the Nation: Collecting for a New Century" at the Na- tional Gallery of Art in Washington, through Feb. 4: Jean-Baptiste Greuze's "The Well-Loved Mother" (1765) and Claude Joseph Vernet's "The Shipwreck" (1772). The electronically enabled also can see the paintings at the NGA web-site at and at . Thanks to Mary Burke for the URLs. A reminder (from Aug 00 #5): "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" has been has been touring in England and the United States, and the exhibit will be on display in the Hall of Ideas at the Midland Center for the Arts in Midland, Mich., Jan. 20 to Apr. 23. Additional information is available from the museum (1001 West Saint Andrews, Midland, MI 48640) (571-631-5931 ext 1217) . The fifth issue of the new Strand Magazine offers editor Andrew F. Gulli's interesting interview with Sir John Gielgud, a Sherlockian pastiche by Guy N. Smith, an Inspector Ghote story by H. R. F. Keating, and much more; sub- scriptions (four issues) cost $24.95 (U.S./Canada) or $29.95 (elsewhere), from Box 1418, Birmingham, MI 48012 (800-300-6652) (800-961-280 in the UK) . Don Hardenbrook ("Huret, the Boulevard Assassin") died on Dec. 18. He was a teacher, of English and French, it showed in his Sherlockian scholarship and in the poetry he wrote in the guise of Gaston Huret III. He was one of the founders of The Trained Cormorants, in 1947, and was published in The Baker Street Journal in July 1948 and many times thereafter. Don received his Investiture from the Baker Street Irregulars in 1955, and was for dec- ades one of the shining lights among the west coast's Sherlockians. "Sherlock Holmes and the Jackson Street Terror" is the mystery that Holmes and Watson and participants in this year's "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" will try to solve this year, on Mar. 9-11 and Nov. 2-4 in Cape May. The weekend includes a tour of the town's Victorian homes, and additional information is available from the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, Box 340, Cape May, NJ 08204 (609-884-5404) (800-275-4278) . The third volume of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY is A STUDY IN SCARLET, with an interesting introduction by Donald Pollock (Indianapolis: Gasogene Books, 2001; 150 pp., $19.95); the annotations are perceptive, and draw upon old and new Sherlockian scholarship, and there is intriguing speculation on whether the story had more than one author, and on who those authors might have been. $22.70 postpaid from the publisher (Box 68308, Indianapolis, IN 46260). And THE ILLUSTRIOUS CLIENTS' SECOND CASE-NOTES, edited by Steven T. Doyle and Mark Gagen (Indianapolis: Gasogene Books, 1999; 79 pp., $12.95), is the latest anthology of essays, poetry, and puzzles written by members of the society. Of particular note is a unique scholarly paper ("Whatever Remains Must Be the Truth") written by Paul D. Herbert in 1977 and presented that same year to John Bennett Shaw (who must have loved it), and only now (and at long last) in print. $15.70 postpaid from the publisher (as above). Jan 01 #5 Stephen Clarkson's THE CANONICAL COMPENDIUM (Ashcroft: Calabash Press, 1999; 429 pp., US$45.00/CA$60.00) is the product of more than 30 years of research (it started as a joint project with the late Bill Fleischauer), and the results of the research are both interesting and use- ful: there's a topical index of the Canon, with 80 categories and 144 sub- categories, and story indexes for each of the 60 tales, with page numbers noted for five different editions (Baring-Gould's ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES and the Doubleday, Heritage Press, John Murray, and Oxford Press editions), plus intriguing introductory notes and "miscellaneous" citations for each story. The book costs US$52.50 postpaid (to the U.S.) or CA$66.00 (to Can- ada) or L34.50/US$55.00 (elsewhere) from the Calabash Press (Box 1360, Ash- croft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada) ; credit- card orders welcome. Michael Williams died on Jan. 11. He began his acting career at the age of seven, as a toy soldier in an amateur play, and made his professional debut in repertory at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1959. He went on to star with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he met and married Judi Dench, appear- ing with her on television in the 1980s. In 1989 he played Dr. Watson (to Clive Merrison's Holmes) in "A Study in Scarlet" on BBC radio, and in 1998 became the first actor to portray Watson in all of the Canonical stories. Bert Coules, who worked with Williams on the series, has said that he was "a kindly, modest man and a most generous and versatile actor." The Filmoods Company (Box 475, Scarsdale, NY 10583) offers a sales-list of its pamphlets of Sherlockian and Victorian erotica ("these stories furnish provocative details of the lives and experiences of characters who appear in those adventures, but about whom we know much less than we might..."). Thanks to Michael Ross for last year's German stamp honoring Heinz Rhmann, who was Dr. Watson in "Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war" (1937). Hans Albers, who played Holmes in the film, was honored on a Ger- man stamp in 1991 (Feb 92 #2). The film is a comedy (released on videocassette by Ufa Universum Film in 1992, in German and without subtitles). "The Sign of Four" (the second two-hour television film to star Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Dr. Watson) is scheduled to air on the Odyssey network on Mar. 23. Their version of "The Hound of the Basker- villes" debuted on the network last October. "I have been reading a short but clear and interesting account of the old building, purchasable at the modest sum of one penny from the local tobacc- onist," said Sherlock Holmes (in "The Valley of Fear"). Paul Churchill has determined that the pamphlet in question was "The Story of Birlstone Manor House", by B. W. Shepherd-Welwyn; it was published in 1888 and distributed by tobacconist L. V. Narramore, and copies of the pamphlet were distributed by Paul at the recent annual dinner of Watson's Tin Box in Eldersburg, Md. Three additional copies will be auctioned on the Internet: the web-site is , the auction begins on Feb. 4 and runs for one week, and the text keyword phrase will be "Birlstone Manor House" (or search for the item under the seller's ID "morse.hudson"). Jan 01 #6 The Montague Street Lodgers of Brooklyn have launched a series of irreverent, and occasionally incomprehensible, celebratory pamphlets, the most recent being THE VERY STRANGE HISTORY OF THE MONTAGUE LODGERS OF BROOKLYN (issued last year honoring their 15th anniversary); it was preceded by YOUGOTTABEKIDDING: THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF DOROTHY D. STIX, and both pamphlets are available ($5.00 each postpaid) from Peter J. Crupe (1533 64th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11219-5709). Phyllis White died on Dec. 22. She was a stalwart member of The Scowrers and Molly Maguires of San Francisco, and was honored as Member Number One at each meeting of Bouchercon, the annual mystery convention named for her husband Anthony Boucher. Her tales about the "Sherlock Holmes" radio days in the 1940s were delightful, and her poem "Prologue in Baker Street" was one of the birthday tributes published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (Jan. 1986). Reported: Colin Bruce's CONNED AGAIN, WATSON!: CAUTIONARY TALES OF LOGIC, MATH, AND PROBABILITY, from Perseus Books in December ($24.00); instruction from Sherlock Holmes, by the author of THE STRANGE CASE OF MRS. HUDSON'S CAT: AND OTHER SCIENCE MYSTERIES SOLVED BY SHERLOCK HOLMES (Jun 97 #4). H. Paul Jeffers' BLOODY BUSINESS: AN ANECDOTAL HISTORY OF SCOTLAND YARD was published in 1992 (Mar 93 #4), and it's available again in a 1999 Barnes & Noble reprint (278 pp., $6.98). The book is an interesting history of the Yard, with due attention to Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who has his own chapter). Carolyn Wheat's TALES OUT OF SCHOOL (Norfolk: Crippen & Landru, 2000; 237 pp., $40.00 cloth/$16.00 paper), is a collection of the best of her mystery stories, and one of them is a Sherlockian pastiche: "The Adventure of the Angel's Trumpet" appeared earlier in HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS (1996). The cloth edition is signed and is accompanied by a pamphlet with an additional story not included in the paper-covers edition. The publisher's address is Box 9315, Norfolk, VA 23505) (toll free 877- 662-6656); credit-card orders welcome. The 2000 issue of Beeman's Christmas Annual, published by The Occupants of the Empty House and edited by Janet Bensley, is devoted to "Flora & Fauna in the Canon" (including an article by Brad Keefauver on "Innocent Flora, Evil Fauna" resulting from his speculation that wrongly-accused Flora Mill- er might have had an evil sister). The 28-page booklet costs $10.00 post- paid; checks (payable to O.E.H.) can be sent to Stan Tinsley, 105 Wilcox Street, Ziegler, IL 62999. Joseph Coppola was in Washington this month for the winter meeting of the American Library Association, and reported some discoveries in the vendors room: Chinese translations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, available from the New China Book Store (926 Archer Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107) (215- 627-4507), and Russian translations, from Russia Online (Box 558, Kensing- ton, MD 20895) (301-929-8981) . And a neck- tie, with a pattern of bookshelves with books and Sherlockiana; $29.95 from Stop Falling Productions (15009 Manchester Road #159, Ballwin, MO 63011) (800-362-9511) . Jan 01 #7 "Paul Singleton is the complete lecher!" At least that's what Paul Singleton claims in publicity for his upcoming performance in "The Complete Lecher" at the Kraine Theatre in New York, on Mondays at 7:00 pm from Feb. 12 through Mar. 19; the theater is at 85 East 4th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), and the box-office phone number is 212-414- 5259. Those who have seen him performing at Sherlockian events can expect somewhat different entertainment: "Paul Singleton is back to torment and tantalize Nicole Golden in an hour of hilarity, double entendres, law and disorder! Nicole is the do-right lawyer assigned to Paul's case of selling porn in the back of his station wagon; Paul uses his street sense of Legal- Sleaze to get Nicole in his dark corner. Nicole is no Ally McBeal, as she is fully aware of what is going on, and takes Paul on a little joy ride up the straight and narrow." Tickets cost $10.00, and the show was written and directed by Andrew Joffe. Steve Allen died on Oct. 30, 2000. He was a prolific song-writer, as well as a talented author and actor, and one of television's most versatile en- tertainers. He created the "Tonight" show for NBC-TV in 1953, and launched "The Steve Allen Show" in 1956 (and on July 1, 1956, featured Elvis Presley as the guest star, singing "You Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog" to a basset hound named Sherlock). His mystery novel THE TALK SHOW MURDERS (1982) had references to Sherlock Holmes and (unusual in mystery novels) a character who belonged to the Baker Street Irregulars. James Moss Cardwell's musical comedy "Mrs. Hudson?...MRS. HUDSON!!" had its world premiere as a dramatic reading performed for The Diogenes Club of the Monterey Peninsula in 1981; there was no music (and there still isn't), and the author died in 1990. But the script survived, and it's irreverent and amusing, and it was published last year with an interesting introduction by Michael H. Kean and colorful dust-jacket artwork by Jean-Pierre Cagnat; 136 pp., $39.00 postpaid from George A. Vanderburgh, Box 204, Shelburne, ON LN0 1S0, Canada. READINGS: ESSAYS AND LITERARY ENTERTAINMENTS, by Michael Dirda (Blooming- ton: Indiana University Press, 2000; 216 pp., $24.95), is a collection of his essays published in the Washington Post's "Book World" section; those who heard his Sherlockian reminiscences during the birthday festivities in 2000 (and who read them in the summer 2000 issue of The Baker Street Jour- nal) will know how enthusiastic he is about reading, and how well he writes about what he has read. There are many Sherlockian and Doylean references in this book, but it would be well worth reading even if there weren't. Spotted by John Baesch: TROUBLESOME THINGS: A HISTORY OF FAIRIES AND FAIRY STORIES, by Diane Purkiss (London: Penguin Books, 2000; 368 pp., L20.00); includes discussion of the Cottingley fairies Reported by Doug Wrigglesworth: THE GREAT WAR OF WORDS: BRITISH, AMERICAN AND CANADIAN PROPAGANDA AND FICTION, 1914-1933, by Peter Buitenhuis (Van- couver: Univ. of British Columbia Press, 1987, 218 pp., $25.95); includes discussion of Conan Doyle's writing about the Boer War and the Great War. VICTORIAN QUEST ROMANCE: STEVENSON, HAGGARD, KIPLING AND CONAN DOYLE, by Robert Fraser (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1998; 93 pp., $19.00); relates "The Lost World" to contemporary "quest romances" by other authors. Jan 01 #8 Some attractive Sherlockian prints and posters are available on the World Wide Web: you select the design you want, and it is shipped printed on paper ($19.95) or canvas ($99.00 and up). You can see the images at Barnes & Noble at and at Amazon Z-shops at ; "Sherlock Holmes" is only one of many categories available. Forecast for May from St. Martin's Press (and reported by Fred Levin): Ro- berta Rogow's THE PROBLEM OF THE SURLY SERVANT ($23.95); the fourth in her series of mysteries starring Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dodgson. And (also from Saint Martin's) in July: Michael Kurland's new Moriarty pastiche THE GREAT GAME ($23.95), along with a one-volume trade paperback reprint of his first two pastiches THE INFERNAL DEVICE and DEATH BY GASLIGHT ($15.95). And Gerard Williams' DR. MORTIMER AND THE ALDGATE MYSTERY ($22.95); a new pastiche featuring Dr. James Mortimer. Some late-breaking news: Scott Monty has succeeded Ray Betzner as the cir- culation and advertising manager of the Baker Street Journal. Andrew G. Fusco prepares Sherlockian-era calendars for distribution during the birthday festivities in New York, carefully choosing a Sherlockian year that works for the current year; some of my readers will find enclosed the rare green variant that was not distributed in New York. Our postage rates have changed, and so have the subscription rates for my monthly newsletter, which now costs $9.30 a year for six or more pages of whatever gossip I find appropriate, much of it quite trivial, but most of it Sherlockian or Doylean; $12.40 a year to Canada; $15.00 a year overseas (the overseas rate is now 80c for the first ounce, rather than 60c for the first half-ounce and 40c for the next half-ounce) And a few commercials: a 15-page list of the Investitured Irregulars, the Two-Shilling Awards, *the* Women, and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes costs $1.20 postpaid. An 80-page list of 781 Sherlockian societies, with names and addresses for contacts for 430 active societies, is $4.20 post- paid. A run of address labels for 360 individual contacts (recommended to avoid duplicate mailings to those who are contacts for more than one soci- ety) costs $10.40 postpaid (checks payable to Peter E. Blau, please). The list of irregulars and others also is available from me by e-mail (no charge), and both lists are available at Willis G. Frick's "Sherlocktron" home page at . Updating the item on the grand gourmet Sherlockian dinner at the Culinary Institute of America on May 12 (Dec 00 #1): Al and Julie Rosenblatt report that the event is now fully-booked. If you would like to see how much fun a past CIA dinner was, copies of Al and Julie's 20-page souvenir menu for "An Evening in Scarlet" on May 16, 1987, handsomely devised, designed, and produced, with many illustrations, annotations, and explanations, are still available; $20.00 postpaid (checks payable to Peter E. Blau, please). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Feb 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Last month I recommended Jean-Pierre Cagnat's IT IS ALWAYS A JOY...TO ME TO MEET AN AMERICAN, A BRITON, A JAPANESE, A CANADIAN, A SWISS... (Paris: My- croft's Brother Editions, 2000; 160 pp., 485 francs), and I'm happy to do so again, because there's much more to it than Jean-Pierre's excellent art: the accompanying text by Christilla Cagnat is delightful, as she explains what it is like to accompany a Sherlockian spouse, whether in pursuit of the Hound ("I hate Dartmoor!... Dartmoor makes you want to divorce and hate your husband") or between floors in a malfunctioning elevator ("There were nine of us. Nine foolish people who, on a cold Saturday night in New York, crowded into a tiny elevator meant for six"). It's recommended, and avail- able from the publisher (26 avenue de la Republique, 75011 Paris, France) ; shipping is extra: 67fr to the European Union and Switzerland, 75fr to the rest of Europe and Africa, 110fr to America, Asia, and Oceania. Credit-card orders welcome, as are checks in non-French currency (please leave the payee line blank). And if you would like an inscribed copy, please state to whom. Spotted by Ted Friedman: a colorful catalog from De La Concha Tobacconist (1390 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019) (One Civic Center Plaza, Hartford, CT 06103) , with a page for Peterson showing their Sherlock Holmes pipe tobacco, and a cover photograph showing a pipe resting on THE WORKS OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE published by the Longmeadow Press in 1985. Jacques Barzun's FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE: 500 YEARS OF CULTURAL TRIUMPH AND DEFEAT: 1500 TO THE PRESENT (Aug 00 #3) has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the winners will be announced on Mar. 15. Scott Monty reports that the Sherlockian societies in New England are plan- ning a Sherlockian evening at the Algonquin Club in Boston on Mar. 24. The agenda will include an interview with Sherlock Holmes (impersonated by Paul Singleton). Details are available from Scott (1836 Columbia Road #2, South Boston, MA 02127) (617-464-4153) . A bibliographic query: Les Moskowitz has noted an interesting typo in the Doubleday edition of THE COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES published in 1960 (this was reset, and has 1122 pages). The error is on page 645: "Holmes's card sent in to the manager ensured instand attention..." And the error is of interest because it occurs in the two-volume edition, but not in all print- ings of the one-volume edition. There are printing codes in both editions, at the lower right of page 1122, indicating the year (by letter, beginning with A for 1959) and the week (by number). The earliest copy I know of is a copy of the two-volume edition (with a presentation label from the pub- lisher) with a printing code A41 (1959, 41st week). And there are copies of the one-volume edition with printing codes C10 (1961, 10th week) and Q16 that contain the typo, and a copy with printing code BB42 in which the typo has been corrected. It would be nice to know when the page was reset for the one-volume edition; please let me know if you have copies with printing codes between C10 and BB42, and whether they have the typo. But: do not be confused by later reprints; Book-of-the Month Club editions have different printing codes, such as MP3B (for the Maple Press, 3rd month, 1972). Feb 01 #2 The December issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minne- sota has John Bergquist's report on the gift to the collections by Jennie C. Paton of part of her Sherlockian video library (the 16-page catalog is "in tiny print with narrow margins"), with some stories about how Jennie started and maintains the library; a tribute to early Sherlockian Charles Honce; and other news. If you would like to be on their mailing list you can contact Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . David Stuart Davies reports that the eighth International Gilbert & Sulli- van Festival will be held in Derbyshire from July 28 to Aug. 19, and that the agenda will include some Sherlockian events: a presentation by David on Sherlock Holmes (Aug. 4) and two performances by Roger Llewellyn in David's play "Sherlock Holmes - The Last Act" (on Aug. 4 and 17) at the Paxton The- atre in Buxton. More information is available from Ian Smith, The Old Vic- arage, Haley Hill, Halifax NX3 6DR, England . It's the Year of the Snake, and the U.S. Postal Service reports that in Chinese astrology the snake symbolizes wisdom, intensity, and physical beauty. One wonders if that's what readers of the Canon think about when they read about the cobra, swamp adder, vipers, and serpents that are mentioned in various stories. "DK" is a well-known set of initials among those who enjoy Dorling Kinders- ley's travel guides and educational books, and the company has now begun a line of fiction classics that includes THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000; 64 pp., $14.95); the story is abridged for younger readers, and illustrated by Mark Oldroyd, and there are annotations and explanations (also illustrated). Further to the report (Apr 00 #1) that Abbey National was considering sell- ing off and then leasing back its freehold buildings, including the head office at 221B Baker Street, Scott Monty notes a new report that the bank is the target of two separate takeover bids. Abbey National has been nego- tiating with the Bank of Scotland, but Lloyds TSB Group has now offered $27 billion to acquire Abbey National. If successful, Lloyds TSB would become Britain's second-largest bank, and the takeover will require approval from Britain's Office of Fair Trading. Spotted by David Morrill: THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES [Scan/RedH/Iden /Bosc/Five/Twis/Bery/Copp] read (abridged) by John Whitaker on four audio- cassettes; and THE HOUNDS OF THE BASKERVILLES read (abridged) by Michael J. Bennett on four audiocassettes (Englewood Cliffs: Media Books, 1999; $12.99 each). Gordon R. Dickson died on Feb. 1. He was one of the great science-fiction writers, and with Poul Anderson created the Hokas, and one of the very best cross-over stories: "The Adventure of the Misplaced Hound" (first published in Universe Science Fiction, Dec. 1953) was collected in EARTHMAN'S BURDEN (1957) and reprinted in THE SCIENCE-FICTIONAL SHERLOCK HOLMES (1960). All of the Hoka stories are great fun, and this one especially so. Feb 01 #3 The Feb. 2001 sales-list from Peter L. Stern (55 Temple Place, Boston, MA 02111) offers interesting Sherlock- iana and Doyleana, including a holograph manuscript of the poem "The Song of the Bowmen" with a signed letter from his niece Claire noting that the poem was written out by Sir Arthur for his sister Caroline (Claire's moth- er), offered at $6,000. Caroline was his sister Lottie, and the poem was first published in THE WHITE COMPANY (as "The Song of the Bow"). The British Royal Mint has issued a new Victorian anni- versary crown with the reverse showing a young Victoria (based on the William Wyon portrait used on the world's first postage stamps), and a backdrop representing the ironwork of the famed Crystal Palace. The cost of the coin in a presentation folder is $16.50 (plus $4.95 per order for shipping), and there are some toll-free phone numbers: 800-221-1215 (U.S.), 800-563-5943 (Canada), and 01443-623322 (U.K.). And a URL: . "Songs like '30 Seconds Over Tokyo' and 'Final Solution' (a reference not to Nazism, Mr. Thomas says, but to a Sherlock Holmes mystery) evoked an ex- istential dread that somehow tore through itself to become beautiful," Ann Powers wrote in the N.Y. Times (Oct. 19), in a review (noted by Greg Darak) of the 25th-anniversary performance by David Thomas and the punk rock band Pere Ubu. Do any Sherlockian punk rockers know if the piece is available on a recording? Reported by Catherine Cooke: Conan Doyle's OUR AFRICAN WINTER, scheduled from Duckworth in London in May (L14.99) in their series of reprints of classic travel books; it's an interesting account of the family's tour of eastern and southern Africa in 1928-1929. Dale Evans died on Feb. 7. Her first movie with Roy Rogers was "The Cowboy and the Senorita" (1944), and they married in 1947, performing together in 28 films and then on television. One of their early films was "San Fernan- do Valley" (1944): a herd of horses is rustled one dark evening, and Rogers deduces that it must have been an inside job, because of the ranch dog: "If they'd a been strangers," Rogers explained, "he would've barked, and there wasn't a peep out of him." And yes, a crown now is worth five pounds, rather than five shillings as in Sherlockian days. The five-shilling coin went out of circulation when the British decimalized their money (and didn't issue a circulating 25np coin); it was in 1990 that the Royal Mint began describing five-pound coins issued for collectors as crowns. Some late-breaking news about the grand gourmet Sherlockian dinner at the Culinary Institute of America: Al and Julie Rosenblatt have confirmed that the Rhinebeck Volunteer Fire Department will again offer their Firehouse Breakfast on Sunday, May 13. It's an easy walk from the Beekman Arms, but there's no guarantee that there will be a fire. The first such event, many years ago, was indeed interrupted by an alarm: the firefighter cooks roared off to fight the fire, and returned after a few minutes to report that it was a false alarm. All in honor of Irene Adler, of course. Feb 01 #4 "We must hurry up, for I want to go to Halle's concert to hear Norman Neruda this afternoon," said Sherlock Holmes (during "A Study in Scarlet"). Here's another quote from an admirer of the lady: "I stayed with Halle in Manchester. Madame Norman Neruda came to the concert; I like her very much, and I think you would too. Her playing is more to my taste than that of any other contemporary--unspoilt, pure and musical. The poor lady has been travel travelling about since October, playing in public in the provinces nearly every day and she will continue to do so until the end of March, but then she will make L1800 clear profit." In a letter from violinist Joseph Joachim to his wife, written in February 1870, spotted by Gayle Harris in LETTERS FROM AND TO JOSEPH JOACHIM (New York: Vienna House, 1914; reprinted 1974). Larry Ashley (an addictions counselor with the department of counseling at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas) is finding the Canon helpful: he'll lecture on "Sherlock Holmes and His World of Drug Use" on Apr. 26 (focusing on the historical context of drug use in the Victorian era). Sorry about that: is the correct URL for Willis Frick's "Sherlocktron" home page, where he has kindly provided space for the list of the Investitured Irregulars, the Two- Shilling Awards, the Women, and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes; and the lists of the Sherlockian societies, and many other items of interest. Our new sheet of "American Il- lustrators" stamps celebrates three artists of interest (one Sherlockian and two Doylean). Robert Fawcett (1903-1967) "is best remembered for recreating detailed illustrations to ac- company a series of Sherlock Holmes stories in Collier's magazine" (as the postal ser- vice notes on the back of the sheet); he illustrated Arthur Whitaker's pas- tiche "The Case of the Man Who Was Wanted" in Cosmopolitan in 1948, and the pastiches by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr in Collier's in 1953. Howard Pyle (1853-1911) illustrated "The Parasite" in Harper's Weekly in 1894 and "A Forgotten Tale" in Scribner's Magazine in 1895; and N. C. Wyeth (1881-1945) illustrated "The Coming of the Huns", "The First Cargo", and "The Red Star" in Scribner's Magazine in 1910-1911, and a later edition of THE WHITE COMPANY in 1922. Joe Eckrich offers a 13-page sales-list of Doyleana and Sherlockiana, with books, records, and videocassettes, and some nice non-Sherlockian material by Vincent Starrett and Michael Harrison; his address is 914 Oakmoor Drive, Fenton, MO 63026 . The centenary of the publication of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" will be celebrated in Australia on Sept. 29-Oct. 1, when The Sydney Passengers are sponsoring a Victorian-costume weekend at Bishopthorpe Manor at Goulburn, near Sydney. For more information, contact Sally Cornell (24 Byron Street, Croydon, NSW 2132, Australia) . Feb 01 #5 LITTLE SHERLOCK BEAR is a new 34-minute videocassette from Par- amount/Viacom ($6.99 in toy stores), with four animations based on the books written by Else Holmelund Minarik and illustrated by Maurice Sendak. The box shows Little Bear with deerstalker and magnifying glass, and the contents include "Detective Little Bear" (length 8 minutes); Little Bear appears in deerstalker and magnifying glass investigating the mystery of his grandfather's missing pocket watch. "The traditional stationmaster, a pillar of the community and ready to help even the most awkward customer, is set to return," according to a newspaper story at had from John Baesch. The Great North Eastern Railway is changing it customer service delivery managers into stationmasters, equipped with mobile phones and pagers, to make trains friendlier, more efficient, and faster. Stationmasters, one of them Prof. Moriarty's younger brother, are mentioned in five stories in the Canon. Ian Henry Publications (20 Park Drive, Romford, Essex RM1 4LH, England) has a new (autumn 2000) sales list of their Sherlockian books (including mono- graphs, pastiches, plays, and television and film scripts). And Ian Henry has just launched a series of paperback reprints of M. J. Trow's pastiches about Insp. Sholto Lestrade (L9.99 each). Further to the item (May 00 #8) about BBC plans to produce a new television version of "The Lost World" (co-producer Tim Haines said then that the nov- el, while not a classic, was a "rollicking good story"), Nancy Beiman notes a story in the Hollywood Reporter (Feb. 13) that reported that Bob Hoskins will star as Challenger, with Tom Ward (Lord Roxton), James Fox (Prof. Leo Summerlee), Matthew Rhys (Edward Malone), Elaine Cassidy (Agnes Kerr), and Peter Falk (the Rev. Theo Kerr). Executive producer Jane Tranter said last year that a new female character would be introduced to spice up the plot ("a load of sweaty men would be a bit dull"). Tim Haining was responsible for the BBC's acclaimed "Walking with Dinosaurs" (which was on the Discov- ery channel here), so we can expect some excellent digital dinosaurs. Reported by Jeff Bradway: Christopher Hitchens' UNACKNOWLEDGED LEGISLATION: WRITERS IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE (New York: Verso, 2001; 320 pp., $25.00) has a chapter on "The Case of Arthur Conan Doyle"; it's his long review of Daniel Stashower's biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle TELLER OF TALES, reprinted from the N.Y. Review of Books (Nov. 4, 1999). Further to the report that the Crowborough Town Council had provided funds for the life-size statue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sculpted by David Cor- nell (Jan 00 #6), Brian Pugh reports that the statue will be unveiled in Crowborough on Apr. 14. More information is available from the Council (The Town Hall, The Broadway, Crowborough, East Sussex TN6 1DA, England . David Musto reports that Yale University's 20th annual Sherlock Holmes Lec- ture will be held on June 28, at 8:00 pm at the Davies Auditorium, Becton Center, 15 Prospect Street on the Yale Campus. Murray Biggs (an Associate Professor of English and Theater Studies at Yale) will discuss the ways in which Holmes illustrated Conan Doyle's attitudes toward society. And the event will include a Rathbone/Bruce film. Feb 01 #6 Dan Stashower has noted a report in The Independent (Feb. 16) about Cottingley fairies material coming to auction on Mar. 13 at Bonhams & Brooks (attn: Carole Park, Montpelier Street, London SW7 1HH, England) (44-20-7393-3829) . It's sale 28534, lot 396: a collection of glass plates and other negatives originally owned by Edward Gardner (the theosophist who first showed the photographs to Arthur Conan Doyle); the archive includes photographs of the fairies, and unpub- lished pictures of Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths and their relatives, and the lot is estimated at L3,000-4,000. News from Fred Levin: June Thomson's HOLMES AND WATSON, published in Brit- ain in 1995, now has an American edition from Carroll & Graf ($24.00). And Gerard Williams' DR. MORTIMER AND THE BARKING MAN MYSTERY (his second pas- tiche starring Dr. Mortimer) is due from Carroll & Graf in April ($24.00). Mary Burke reports that there are photographs of Andaman islanders and of Agra on display in the exhibition "India Through the Lens: 1840-1911" at the Smithsonian Institution's Sackler Gallery in Washington through Mar. 25. There's a web-site at . The multicolor BASH 2001 lapel pin (honoring this year's Bas- kerville Bash during the birthday festivities in New York) is available ($12.50 postpaid to North America, and $13.50 else- where) from Warren Randall, 15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauket, NY 11720-1346. Further to the report (Oct 00 #5) on "2001: A New Sherlockian Odyssey: A Journey Through the Shaw 100" in Minneapolis on June 29-July 1, the conference brochure (with details on the speakers, banquet, and other events) and registration materials are now available from Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . Reported by Ed Collins: a dinner-theater production of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (newly dramatized by director Jeremy Tow) at the Chemainus Theatre on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, from Feb. 23 through Apr. 14; Box 1205, Chemainus, BC V0R 1K0, Canada (800-565-7738), and there's a web-site at . Christopher Morley was a splendid writer as well as the founder of The Ba- ker Street Irregulars, and Jim Hawkins reports that Bartleby ("Great Books Online") offers a sample of Morley's work on the World Wide Web: there's a brief biography of Morley at and the complete text of MODERN ESSAYS (1921) with a preface by Morley at . Travelman Publishing has installed three vending machines in the South Ken- sington Station on the London Underground, offering short stories in a map- fold format (L1.00 each) for readers who want something more interesting than the daily paper. And Sherlock Holmes is among the stories available. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Mar 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press "The Sign of Four" (with Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes) aired on Odyssey cable in March, and Charles Prepolec has reported that Muse Entertainment has confirmed that their next two-hour television film will be "A Scandal in Bohemia" (combining that story with "The Bruce-Partington Plans"). And The electronically enabled will find graphics and more information about "The Sign of Four" at web-sites at and . A HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM TAVERN IN BLOOMSBURY, by John N. Henderson (London: Blemund's books, 1989), traces the history of the tavern from 1723 (when it was the Dog and Duck) to the present day, and it does not neglect the fact that Sherlockian scholars have identified it as the Alpha Inn (in "The Blue Carbuncle"); John Baesch notes that the 32-page booklet still is available at the pub (L1.00). Further to the report (Jan 01 #3) that promotion for the Franklin eBookMan shows the electronic-book reader displaying a passage from the Canon, Rich- ard Wein notes that there's a similar illustration (this time showing the beginning of "The Empty House") in the early-spring catalog of "tools for serious readers" from Levenger (420 South Congress Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33445 (800-544-0880) . Robert S. Gellerstedt, Jr., died on Nov. 23, 2000. Bob worked for General Electric in the late 1940s (designing the gas turbine engine) and in 1951 moved to Lockheed Aircraft Corp. where he was instrumental in designing the Jetstar plane. He collected trains, and was a member of The Confederates of Wisteria Lodge in Atlanta, and in 1985 he brought his trusty Macintosh into Sherlockian service, compiling and publishing lists and indexes and 17 issues of his Christmas newsletter The Irregular News, and helping George Vanderburgh scan the entries in the first two volumes of Ron De Waal's bib- liographies for use in THE UNIVERSAL SHERLOCK HOLMES. CONNED AGAIN, WATSON!: CAUTIONARY TALES OF LOGIC, MATH, AND PROBABILITY, by Colin Bruce (Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2000; 290 pp., $24.00), employs Holmes and Watson to explain scams, game theory, and statistics, and does a good job of making it all sound easy; Bruce's earlier THE EINSTEIN PARADOX AND OTHER SCIENCE MYSTERIES SOLVED BY SHERLOCK HOLMES (Dec 98 #1) used a similar approach for scientific paradoxes. And the author has a web-site at . Fans of Ross Macdonald's work will welcome the announcement that his bio- grapher, Tom Nolan, has discovered some unpublished material in Macdonald's papers: one short story and two novelettes featuring Macdonald's private eye Lew Archer, all now available in STRANGERS IN TOWN (Norfolk: Crippen & Landru, 2001). $15.00 (paper) or $37.00 (cloth, signed by Nolan and with some additional material); Box 9315, Norfolk, VA 23505 (toll-free 877-622- 6656) ; credit-card orders welcome. There's nothing Sherlockian about the new book, as far as I know, but Macdonald's real name was Kenneth Millar, and his first published story was "The South Sea Soup Co." in The Grumbler (Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School, 1931); it's a parody featuring Herlock Sholmes and Sotwum. Mar 01 #2 "Violin Won't Go for a Song" was the headline on a story in the [London] Evening Standard (Mar. 14), at hand from John Baesch, about a Stradivarius up for auction at Sotheby's, where it was expected to bring up to L450,000. That's rather more than the 55 shillings that Sher- lock Holmes said he paid for his, but much less than the $1.58 million paid for the Kreutzer Stradivarius in 1998 (May 98 #3). Another Strad sent to auction that year in New York sold for $884,000 (Nov 98 #5). Terry Manners' biography THE MAN WHO BECAME SHERLOCK HOLMES; THE TORMENT OF JEREMY BRETT, first published in 1997, has been reissued as a trade paper- back (London: Virgin, 2001; 244 pp., L12.99); according to a recent review, "Brett's manic depression and his disastrous submersion in his most famous role are well described in a book that avoids the luvvie banalties of most theatre biographies." E. W. Ziebarth died on Feb. 27. He arrived at the University of Minnesota in 1937 to pursue a doctorate in speech communication, and in 1948 was one of the founding members of The Norwegian Explorers. He was a radio corres- pondent, and won two Peabody Awards for distinguished achievement in broad- casting, and served as dean of the university's College of Liberal Arts and as the university's interim president. And he wrote a fine article about "The Master and the Mass Media" in EXPLORING SHERLOCK HOLMES (published by the Norwegian Explorers in 1957). There are many Internet web-sites devoted to news/gossip/rumor about films, including Ananova , which reported this month that Catherine Zeta-Jones "is considering" making a film loosely based on "The Sign of Four" that also focuses on a secret love affair between Holmes and married member of the aristocracy. Alan Rickman "is tipped" as Holmes, and Gabriel Byrne as Watson. The script is currently "being developed," with a view to start filming next spring. Cynicism alert: when you see words and phrases such as "considering" and "tipped" and "being developed" in reports from the film industry, it is reasonably safe to assume that you're reading hype rather than news. Forecast for May: A PICTORIAL TRIBUTE TO JEREMY BRETT: THE DEFINITIVE SHER- LOCK HOLMES, by Linda Pritchard (his companion for the last few years of his life), with 100 photographs covering his entire career, and a foreword by Granada Television chairman Charles L. Allen; due from Paradise Books in London, 120 pp. Price not yet known, but expected to be $28.00 to $32.00; you can reserve copies now from Ashland Books, 132 Seventh Street, Ashland, OR 97520 (541-201-0271) . "A Music Reference Goes Electronic, Finally," was the headline in the N.Y. Times (Feb. 15) on Allan Kozinn's article about the new on-line edition of the NEW GROVE DICTIONARY OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS, which is regarded by many as the best-ever reference work for musicians and musicologists, as well as music fans. The 29-volume ink-on-paper set costs $4,850, and you can sub- scribe to the on-line version at rates ranging from $295 a year to $30 for ten 24-hour sessions. And electronically-enabled Sherlockians who want to see what Grove has to say about Lassus or Sarasate or Chopin or others who are mentioned in the Canon may wish to take advantage of the free 24-hour trial offer at the web-site . Mar 01 #3 The spring 2001 issue of The Serpentine Muse offers Kate Karl- son's thoughts on "Holmes the Gambler; or A Few Trifling Obser- vations on The Master's Income Sources", the late Wayne Swift's delightful toast to "The Queen Empress", and much more. The Muse is a quarterly pub- lished by The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, and it costs $10.00 a year (make your checks payable to the Adventuresses, please) from Evelyn A. Her- zog (360 West 21st Street #5-A, New York, NY 10011). Sorry about that: my report (Oct 00 #3) that Morton Lowry died on Aug. 22, 2000, was wrong: Lowry, who played John Stapleton in "The Hound of the Bas- kervilles" (1939 and the steward Sanford in "Pursuit to Algiers" (1945) ac- tually died on Nov. 26, 1987. The erroneous information turned up on the Internet Movie Data Base last year (and their mini-biography of Lowry has not been corrected, although his correct dates are now in the main entry). Further to the item (Jul 99 #6) about the renovation of Gillette Castle in Hadlyme, Conn., the work has taken longer than expected, and the park will be closed to the public on May 1, and the park and the castle are expected to be open again on Memorial Day in 2002. The cost will be about $10 mill- ion, and "it's money well spent," according to state parks director Pamela Adams. Visitors will be able to see the steam and electric trains that ran on track installed by William Gillette (the trains were purchased years ago by an amusement park in Bristol, and recently returned to the park for re- pair and restoration); they will be on exhibit as a static display, but it may be possible to lay a small loop of track so that the trains can run on special occasions in the summertime. You can see what the train and track looked like in the 1930s on the Fox Movietone interview with Gillette that is available on various videocassettes. Andy Fusco notes an advertisement in the spring issue of Pipes magazine for six pewter pipe tampers (each with a different character from the Sherlock Holmes tales) offered by the Catnip Hill Trading Company (2201 Catnip Hill Road, Nicholasville, KY 40356 (958-887-5737) ; $124.95 for the boxed set. Carol Wenk died on Mar. 9. She was an ardent and energetic member of the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts, and created and sold minia- ture blank books in the 1970s (her miniature SHERLOCK HOLMES was offered in 1980). In 1993 she succeeded Dee Snyder as leader of The Mini-Tonga Scion Society and editor of the Tonga Times; she greatly enjoyed the Sherlockian world, and was of much help to its miniaturists. Issue #41 of Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine offers an assortment of Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian material, including an interesting ess- ay by Bert Coules on Arthur Conan Doyle as a literary stylist, a discussion by Paul M. Chapman of the literary background for "The Hound of the Basker- villes", and an article by David Stuart Davies on the making of Granada's "The Three Gables". An annual subscription (six issues) costs L20.00 (in the (U.K.)/L22.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . Class- ic Specialties is the agent in the U.S. (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (toll-free 877-233-3823) , and cred- it-card orders are welcome at both addresses; back issues are available. Mar 01 #4 Elmer Davis was honored in Jon Lellenberg's tribute during the Baker Street Irregulars' annual dinner in New York in January, and that reminded me of a question I planned to ask some time ago. Elmer Davis played himself in the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), and Richard Shull appeared in many films. Is there any other Investitured Irregular who has appeared in a film as an actor? A search of the Internet Movie Data Base reveals that Elmer Davis also is an author who has had books made into films. Christopher Morley and Vin- cent Starrett are two more Investitured Irregulars whose books have been made into films. Are there any others? Bob Coghill has kindly forwarded a losing ticket (he wisely kept all his winning tickets) from the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation's "Mystery Cash" game. A caricature of Sherlock Holmes ap- pears on every ticket, and a calabash pipe and a deerstalker are among the game symbols (you need to uncover three of any symbol in order to win). Marcus Geisser reports that he has arrived in My- anmar [Burma], and that he is enjoying both the country and his work there for the International Committee of the Red Cross (for whom he worked in the Congo). Myanmar borders the Andaman Sea, but it's not all that close to the islands (noth- ing is all that close to the Andaman Islands, of course). He doesn't have e-mail, but his postal address is: c/o CICR/Myanmar/Mawlamyline, 19 Ave- nue de la Paix, CH-1202 Geneva, Switzerland. William Hanna died on Mar. 22. He was a pioneer in the field of animation, and collaborated with Joseph Barbera for more than 50 years, creating film and television classics that included "Tom and Jerry", "The Jetsons", "The Flintstones", "Yogi Bear", and "Scooby-Doo". Hanna-Barbera shows of- ten had Sherlockian allusions, including "The Hound of the Scoobyvilles at Baskerville Hall" (1984) and "Scooby-Doo Mysteries: Sherlock Doo" (1985). Reported: Quinn Fawcett's Mycroft Holmes pastiches AGAINST THE BROTHERHOOD and EMBASSY ROW are available from Recorded Books, read unabridged by Simon Prebble. AGAINST THE BROTHERHOOD costs $71.00 on cassettes and $94.00 on CDs (or $16.50 rental); EMBASSY ROW costs $82.00 on cassettes ($17.50 rent- al). Their address is: 270 Skipjack Road, Prince Frederick, MD 20678 (800- 638-1304) ; credit-card orders welcome. Further to the item (Feb 01 #6) on the auction of a collection of Cotting- ley fairies material at auction at Bonhams & Brooks in London on Mar. 13, the estimate was L3,000-4000, and the winning bid (by "an unnamed collec- tor") was L6,000; the lot included glass plates and other negatives origi- nally owned by Edward Gardner (the theosophist who first showed the photo- graphs to Arthur Conan Doyle), with photographs of the fairies, and unpub- lished pictures of Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths and their relatives. Mar 01 #5 The winter 2001 issue of the Tonga Times has arrived from Trish and Jay Pearlman, and it is nicely done indeed, with ten pages, color illustrations, and a miniature copy of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. They would like to hear from anyone who collects, constructs, or is inter- ested in Sherlockian miniatures, and membership in The Mini-Tonga Scion So- ciety costs $10.00 a year (or $11.00 to Canada, or $13.00 elsewhere); their address is 1656 East 19th Street #2-E, Brooklyn, NY 11229, and they have a web-site at . John Baesch has reported a review in the Tatler (Apr. 2001) of Ciaran Car- son's SHAMROCK TEA (Granta, L14.99): "The latest novel from this acclaimed Belfast writer is an absorbing fantasy centred round a van Eyck painting. Shamrock tea allows its drinker to pass through the painting into another world. The narrator meets Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and enters a magical universe where time is suspended. A fairytale for ad-ults, which contains a miscellany of facts." John also notes that the epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease has had an im- pact on at least one Sherlockian site: nearly 400 square miles of Dartmoor were closed to the public in order to protect hundreds of cattle and sheep that graze on common land on the moor. "Dartmoor Pubs Deserted by All But Their Ghosts" said a headline in The Times (Mar. 5); "the hordes of hikers, bird-watchers, canoeists, and geology students who normally populate one of Britain's last unspoilt open spaces have evaporated faster than yesterday's snow in the spring sunshine." The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes will hold their spring dinner on Apr. 21, at Bill's Gay 90's Restaurant in New York; details are available from Evelyn A. Herzog, 360 West 21st Street #5-A, New York, NY 10011. "Ladies and gentlemen will be welcomed" at this gathering of the Adventuresses and their friends (the fall dinner is open to members and female guests), and there are plans for an informal brunch on Apr. 22. John Doubleday's life-size statue of a seated Sherlock Holmes was unveiled in Meiringen in 1988, inscribed with 60 cryptic clues, each clue referring to one of the Canonical tales, and a 1:10 scale model of the sculpture was offered as a prize to anyone who identifies all the clues and stories. And no one has claimed the prize, according to Gavin Bell's story in the Daily Telegraph (Mar. 24): so far the highest score is 58. Regnery continues to publish American editions of M. J. Trow's delightful series about Inspector Sholto Lestrade; the 16 novels offer name-dropping, bawdy humor, and puns, as well as interesting mysteries. LESTRADE AND THE MIRROR OF MURDER (Washington: Regnery, 2000; 240 pp., $19.95) is available (it's #14 in the series). And the publisher is starting to issue the ser- ies in trade paperback: the first two titles (THE ADVENTURES OF INSPECTOR LESTRADE and BRIGADE) are available at $9.95. Sherlock Holmes (impersonated by John Sherwood) will return to Union City, Mich., on May 4 and 5 to host dinner events at the Victorian Villa Inn in honor of the centenary of the death of Queen Victoria. Additional details are available from the inn (601 North Broadway, Union City, MI 49094) (800- 348-4552) . Mar 01 #6 Reported: THE CONFESSIONS OF MYCROFT HOLMES: A PAPER CHASE, by Marcel Theroux (New York: Harcourt, 2001; 216 pp., $23.00), has had two reviews in the N.Y. Times (Mar. 13 in the daily paper, and Mar. 25 in the N.Y. Times Book Review). It's the second novel by the son of Paul Theroux, and according to one reviewer the novel focuses on family rivalry, and a mystery that involves a manuscript with the same title as the book. The book isn't Sherlockian, but the reviewers like its style and energy. The Bibliotheque Cantonale et Universitaire de Lausanne has an interesting archive of photographs of Arthur Conan Doyle, and in 1999 Sylvie Steinmann, as part of her work for a diploma, prepared a CD-ROM disk with 250 photo- graphs selected from the archives, accompanied by biographical and genealo- gical information. The disk is in French, and requires FileMaker 4.0 soft- ware and it is available from Michael Meer for $49.00 postpaid in currency, or $56.00 postpaid for checks and money orders (to cover bank charges). But: FileMaker is a data-base applications program, and the current version is 5.0, and it costs $249.00 from the company (with discounts available in computer stores), and the disk can be read only with the FileMaker program. The company web-site does allow you to download a trial version of 5.0 (as a 9-MB zipped file, and I have no idea how large it unzips to), and then you can run version 5.0 to convert the version 4.0 database on the CD-ROM disk to your hard disk, and you'll likely need 4-GB to convert the entire CD-ROM disk. Of course it might be possible to find someone who'll sell you a cheap copy of the FileMaker 4.0 software now that version 5.0 is available. Bookubes are an imaginative device: eight small cubes connected to form one larger cube that you unfold and refold to show various pictures or designs. The Sherlock Holmes Bookube of Quotations nicely displays full-color Paget artwork and Canonical quotations, and it costs L3.99 plus shipping (L2.99 to the U.S.) from Crime in Store (14 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9HE, Eng- land) (0207-379-3795) . The Musgrave Papers 2000 is the 13th annual published by The Northern Mus- graves, and as usual it's nicely done indeed, with 126 pages devoted to the stories in THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Kathryn White suggests that "The Second Stain" is a tale of "sex, lies, and red tape," and Auberon Redfearn offers amusing extracts from the diary of Col. Sebastian Moran). Informa- tion on membership in the society and on its publications is available from Anne Jordan, Fairbank, Beck Lane, Bingley, West Yorks. BD16 4DN, England . The current annual from the society also is the last to be edited by David Stuart Davies and Kathryn White, who report that Roger Johnson already is hard at work on the next one (which is to be devoted to THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES). David also reports that a computer crash has damaged his address files: any American contributors who have not received their auth- ors' copies should write to David at: Overdale, 69 Greenhead Road, Hudders- field HD1 4ER, England . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Apr 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Further to my query (Mar 01 #4) about Investitured Irregulars who have ap- peared in movies as actors (in addition to Elmer Davis), Bill Ward was a child actor, from the age of three in "The Amazing Mrs. Holliday" (1943) to the age of seven in "The Foxes of Harrow" (1947), and John E. Pforr had a bit part (as an extra) in Barry Levinson's "Liberty Heights" (1999). And Investitured Irregulars who have had books made into films (in addition to Christopher Morley and Vincent Starrett) include Poul Anderson, Isaac Asi- mov, John Ball, Frederic Dannay (as Ellery Queen), Robert L. Fish, Stuart Palmer, Rex Stout, and Eve Titus. If you include books made into televis- ion series, add Michael Harrison to the list. Jon Lellenberg (who supplied many of the authors listed) also notes that Henry C. Potter, the only mem- ber of The Baker Street Irregulars who has a star on Hollywood Boulevard, directed many films. "Granada to Revive Sherlock Holmes" was the headline on a story in the Mar. 31 issue of Broadcast magazine, reported by Bill Barnes. "Granada is to revive its successful drama series 'Sherlock Holmes' on ITV, The programme is currently being cast by Granada controller of drama and comedy Andy Har- ries. It will show a much grittier interpretation of Victorian London and will follow Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson during an earlier period of their partnership, when the men were in their early 30s. Granada produced 39 ep- isodes of the original series, which ran between 1984 and 1994 and garnered viewing figures of up to 14 million for the network. No transmission date has been revealed." And there's more, in a story in the Mirror (Apr. 2), forwarded by David M. Scott, which says that Robson Green and Jerome Flynn "are being lined up" to star as Holmes and Watson, with Sean Benn as Moriarty and Geraldine Som- erville as Holmes' girlfriend, in a series of 12 one-hour programs. Note: as with many such projects, Sherlockian and otherwise, initial publicity is quite often intended to help generate interest and funding. It remains to be seen whether Granada actually starts production. Forecast for May: SHERLOCK IN LOVE, by Sena Jeter Naslund, first published in 1993, in a trade-paperback reprint (New York: HarperPerennial, 2001; 240 pp., $13.00); the book opens in 1922 with Watson having decided to write a biography of Sherlock Holmes, and quickly encountering a series of myster- ies, current and past, that involve a mysterious violinist named Sigerson, an attempt to rescue Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, and much more. The style and voice are consistent with the Canon, and the narrative is cinematic, as is often the case with modern pastiches. The Mystery Writers of America will hold their 56th annual banquet on May 3 in New York; the nominees for Edgar awards include Martin Booth's THE DOC- TOR AND THE DETECTIVE: A BIOGRAPHY OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (for best cri- tical/biographical work) and David Pirie's "Murder Rooms: The Dark Origins of Sherlock Holmes" (for best TV feature/miniseries). Ed Hoch, whose work includes both Sherlockian and Doylean stories, will be honored as a Grand Master of the MWA, and Douglas G. Greene (the proprietor of Crippen & Lan- dru) will receive the Ellery Queen Award (for writing teams, editors, and publishers who have made an outstanding contribution to the mystery genre). Apr 01 #2 Further to the previous report (Sep 00 #3) about the continuing battle over Liberton Bank House (where Arthur Conan Doyle once lived), McDonald's has now scaled down its plans: the [Edinburgh] Scotsman reported (Mar. 19), that the company now proposed to build a 75-seat rest- aurant, painted white and without the world-famous golden M, farther away from the derelict house. But opponents note that the new plan blocks the original driveway to the house and make access impossible except through a shopping center, possibly deterring potential buyers who might want to re- store the house. Owen Dudley Edwards said in the South Edinburgh News last month that Conan Doyle "first learned to read and write" while he lived in the house, and that "It was here that the first impressions of human life came to him on the printed page which he would later make his battleground of endless triumphs." Our new stamp commemorates the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Nobel Prize, and by implication the only known Sherlockian to have won one: Prize: Philip S. Hench (1896-1965), winner of a prize for medicine in 1950. His collection (with four copies of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887), now is owned by the University of Minnesota. Further to the item (Feb 01 #5) about the BBC's new television version of "The Lost World", the production company, filming in New Zealand, has lost a famous capuchin monkey, Tuku, named in honor of the nation's first prime minister, according to a story in the Evening Standard (Mar. 27), at hand from John Baesch. A local observer noted that Tuku was part of the back- ground action, and its owner had assured the film crew that if it was taken off its lead it wouldn't disappear. "It did immediately, and no one could retrieve it." A BBC spokesman explained that they were in negotiation with the owner, "and we can't comment further about the monkey until the situa- tion is resolved." The Mysterious Bookshop Newsletter continues to appear monthly, offering a wide variety of titles, old and new, and there's always a section of Sher- lockiana (also old and new); 129 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019 (212- 765-0900) . The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers has a new web-site with offers by about 2,000 dealers worldwide, including (early this month) 450- 500 items listed for Arthur Conan Doyle; some items are rare and expensive (there are three non-Sherlockian manuscripts), and others are less rare and reasonably priced. The search engine is helpful, and one of the nice fea- tures of the new web-site is that you can use foreign-language characters in searches. The URL is . Nyree Dawn Porter died on Apr. 9. She was a fine actress, best known for her portrayal of Irene Forsyte in the BBC's late-1960s television series "The Forsyte Saga" (a role for which she won an award as best actress from the Society of Film and Television Arts, and was honored as an officer of the Order of the British Empire); the series was for many American admirers of Irene Adler an education on the British pronunciation of her given name (eye-REEN-ee). Miss Porter also was Lady Brackenstall in the Douglas Wil- mer version of "The Abbey Grange" on BBC television in 1965. Apr 01 #3 "In the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the Army," Dr. Watson wrote (in "A Study in Scarlet"). John Baesch has forwarded a review from the Evening Standard (Apr. 4) of Philip Hoare's new SPIKE ISLAND: THE MEMORY OF A MILITARY HOS- PITAL (Fourth Estate, L17.99); Hoare grew up near Netley, and his book cov- ers far more than the history of the hospital. "In more fertile spots the observer would have come to the con- clusion that one of those great herds of bisons which graze upon the prairie land was approaching him," Conan Doyle wrote (in "A Study in Scarlet"). Our new 21c stamp shows the silhouette of a bison; American do call them buffalo, but the buffalo mentioned in the Canon surely were South African Cape buffalo. Further to the item (Feb 01 #5) on plans for the unveiling of the life-size statue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Crowborough, the Daily Telegraph ran a story on Apr. 12 on protests by former mayor Steve Isted and others against the cost of the unveiling ceremony, but the statue, sculpted by David Cor- nell, was unveiled on Apr. 14 without a hitch (or protest). Georgina Doyle (widow of Sir Arthur's nephew Brigadier John Doyle) was the guest of honor, and spoke about how pleasant it was to see a statue of the creator rather than the creation; other members of Conan Doyle's extended family present were Richard Doyle, Catherine Beggs, Robert and Shirley Foley, and Charles Foley. Will Walsh (23 Powder Horn Road, Cortlandt Manor, NY 10567) offers a set of six postcards showing his watercolors of Canonical ships; $5.50 postpaid. Some of his original artwork also is available, and you can contact him by mail or e-mail . The tenth annual Watsonian Weekend on July 27-29 will feature Chuck Kovacic as guest speaker at the Regimental Dinner in Schiller Park, the 42nd annual running of The Silver Blaze at Arlington Race Track, the Fortescue Honours Brunch in Des Plaines, and a tour of Graceland (the cemetery where Vincent Starrett and other famous locals are buried) led by Don Izban; more infor- mation is available from Susan Z. Diamond (16W603 3rd Avenue, Bensenville, IL 60106) . "He's almost magical in his abilities," Morgan Freeman said in an interview with Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times (Apr. 15), talking about Dr. Alex Cross (the forensic psychologist Freeman plays in the new film "Along Came a Spider"). "He's very like Sherlock Holmes," Freeman continued. "One of my joys was Jeremy Brett doing Sherlock Holmes. I'm drawn to that sort of cerebral detective." Michael Chabon, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY (New York: Random House, 2000), was interviewed on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS-TV on Apr. 19, and he talked about how he started getting interested in writing. He said he was ten years old when he first wrong something long, in English class: a 12- page story about Sherlock Holmes meeting Captain Nemo, trying to write in Conan Doyle's style. His teacher gave him an A. Apr 01 #4 Derham Groves, recently lecturing about architecture in Vietnam, found the Canon in print there, in small and inexpensive paperbacks. And no, that's not Sherlock Holmes in the cover artwork; the story is "A Study in Scarlet" and the cover shows Jefferson Hope, and the booklet was published in Hanoi in 1998. Another publisher, in Ho Chi Minh [Saigon], has a series of 12 paperbacks with translations from the French OEUVRES COMPLETES published by Robert Laffont in Paris in the 1960s. Apr 01 #5 Jack Haley Jr. died on Apr. 21. He was born into show business (his father played the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz" in 1939), and he had a long career as a film and television director and producer; his Sherlockian credits include executive producer for a Sherlock Holmes episode of "That's Hollywood!" (1976) and executive in charge of production for the Roger Moore television film "Sherlock Holmes in New York" (1976). Original artwork by Robert Fawcett will be included in an auction on May 5 at Illustration House (96 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 (212-966-9444) . His artwork for "The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers" (by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr) in Collier's on Jun 20, 1953, shows Watson taking cards from the hands of the wax gamblers, and is estimated at $5,000-7,000. Fawcett's artwork for Agatha Christie's "Hickory Dickory Dock" in Collier's on Oct. 28, 1955, shows Hercule Poirot, and is estimated at $2,000-$3,000 (suggesting, perhaps, that Watson is more desirable than Poirot when it comes to original art by the same artist). A new sales-list of Sherlockiana, and an extensive one, with more than 500 items (List G), is offered by Michael S. Greenbaum (Janus Books, Box 40787, Tucson, AZ 85717) (800-986-1165) . Further to the report (Sep 00 #1) on plans to publish a complete run of The Baker Street Journal on a CD-ROM disk, in PDF format that can be read with Adobe Acrobat software (included) for Windows and Macintosh systems, there are four CD-ROM disks, and the set now is ready for shipping; it costs $105 postpaid (to North America) or $110 postpaid (elsewhere), and checks should be sent to The Baker Street Irregulars, 2029 Century Park East #3290, Los Angeles, CA 90067. The first issue of the BSJ appeared in 1946, when its editor, Edgar W. Smith, said that it was "dedicated to the proposition that there is still infinitely much to be said about the scene in Baker Street." That's still true, of course, and the archive on the BSJ disks illustrates just what is meant when we say that Sherlockians have "contributed to our literature." Mike Whelan (the current "Wiggins" of The Baker Street Irreg- ulars) suggested to the BSI at an annual dinner that the Irregulars should be a literary society rather than a fan club, and you'll be able to see on the disks just how literary, and how much fun, the BSJ has been for so many years, and still is. Tom Armstrong's "Marvin" comic strip used a Sherlockian motif to celebrate Easter in a continuing story, Apr. 2-7 and 9-14; thanks to Carl Heifetz for pursuing the mystery through the pages of the St. Petersburg Times. Apr 01 #6 Martin Gardner's imaginative THE ANNOTATED CASEY AT THE BAT: A COLLECTION OF BALLADS ABOUT THE MIGHTY CASEY (according to John Bennett Shaw, it has "the only accurate account of where Moorville (3Gar) was, and what happened to it") appeared in 1967, with a second edition in 1984, and there's a third edition (Mineola: Dover Publications, 1995: 231 pp., $8.95) with additional Sherlockian material: a one-paragraph summary of Charles Michael Carroll's poem "Sherlock at the Bat" (first published in Wheelwrightings in 1991). "Hooked: Illegal Drugs and How They Got That Way" is a four-hour mini-ser- ies broadcast by the History channel on Apr. 22; the third one-hour program ("Cocaine: The Third Scourge") included a one-minute segment about Sherlock Holmes, with a photograph of Basil Rathbone, a quote from "The Sign of the Four" (misidentified as "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution"), and commentary by David F. Musto of Yale University (and The Baker Street Irregulars). Laurie R. King will be on tour promoting her new (non-Mary Russell) novel FOLLY, and signing her books. The preliminary schedule: May 7 (Amsterdam); May 8 (joint event with Val McDermid and Manda Scott at Waterstones, Emer- son Chambers, Newcastle); May 9 (similar joint event at Waterstones, West End Branch, Edinburgh); May 10 (signings in London at Crime in Stone and Murder One, and perhaps at Silver Moon and Harrods, and a joint event with Andrew Taylor at Heffers, Cambridge); May 11 (joint event with Val McDermid and Waterstones, Deansgate, Manchester). More information may be available at Laurie's web-site at . Reported by Stu Shiffman: VILLAINS VICTORIOUS, edited by Martin H. Green- berg and John Helfers (New York: DAW Books, 2001; 320 pp., $6.99); an an- thology of 14 original stories, including a Sherlockian pastiche by Peter Tremayne, about Holmes' first encounter with Moriarty, in Ireland, where Colonel James Phillimore disappeared from his estate in Kerry. The museum exhibit "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" has been on display in the United States (Jan 01 #4), and now it's moving to Canada: it will open at the Vancouver Museum on June 11 and run through the end of the year. More information is available from the museum (1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9, Canada) (604-736-4431) and (by the end of the month) at their web-site . The annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe often includes new Sherlockian drama, and this year's play will be Edward Viney's new dramatization of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", at the Stage by Stage Edinburgh Academy in Henderson Row on Aug. 5-19. The box office (0131-557-1155) and the company web-site will open on June 1. After the Festival ends the play will also be produced in Exeter. According to company publicity, the production focuses on the supernatural dimensions of the story and the atmosphere created by a lone man of reason entering a close-knit, fright- ened community. Sir Hugo makes more than one appearance, and the audiences will get to see the Hound. "The tone of the piece is gothic and suspense- driven, rather than comic or camp, as some adaptations can be." The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) May 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press It was nice to see a mention of the creator of our grand Sherlockian game in conservative columnist George F. Will's op-ed piece in the Washington Post (Apr. 29): "Ronald Knox, the learned Catholic priest whose elegantly medieval mind converted a number of Oxford undergraduates in the 1920s and '30s, believed that airplanes, telephones and such gadgets were overrated and that the last good invention was the toast rack for the breakfast tab- le. Now, *that* was a conservative." Willis Frick spotted a report of a new play, scheduled at the South Coast Repertory's Second Stage in Costa Mesa, Oct. 30-Dec. 2. "Nostalgia" (writ- ten by Lucinda Coxon) is set on a farm in South Wales, where "two brothers hear an echo of hypnotic songs sung by sirens. There is a foreboding about the surrounding woods. Perhaps the strange woman across the river, who is loved from afar by one brother and scorned by the other, knows why. When Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle arrives, he gets the chance to put his literary insights to a real test as he attempts to untangle both the emotional and ethereal enigmas." The theater address is Box 2197, Cos- ta Mesa, CA 92628 (714-708-5555) . One of the events during the annual dinner of the Baker Street Irregulars in 1960 was a quiz presented by Irving Fenton, for which the first prize was a copy of LEAVES FROM THE COPPER BEECHES supplied by Bill Starr and Tom Hart by way of giving the volume some publicity. And Julian Wolff won the quiz. Julian's prize volume possibly was inscribed by Edgar W. Smith, and may also have been signed by some of those who attended the dinner; and I wonder if one of my readers acquired this copy when Julian's collection was dispersed some years ago. "Try Canadian Pacific Railway," was Sherlock Holmes' suggestion (in "Black Peter"), and John Baesch notes that it's as strong an investment now as it was then. The chairman of Canadian Pacific Ltd. told the company's share- holders on Apr. 26 that the time is right to split CP into five companies, one of which will be Canadian Pacific Railway. The company opened in 1881 as a "ribbon of steel" built to tie Canada together coast-to-coast, and it will again be a "pure play railway company" (CP's ships, petroleum, hotels, resorts, etc., will be owned by the other new companies). There's an addition to the list of three Investitured Irregulars who have appeared in movies as actors (Apr 01 #1), thanks to Roy Pilot: add Richard B. Shull, who was a professional actor on stage, screen, and television. "The Royal Arsenal at Woolwich is a real blast from the past," Chris Whar- ton wrote in The Sunday Telegraph (Apr. 22), in an article kindly forwarded by John Baesch. The Royal Ordnance Factory closed in 1967, and the London Development Agency bought the 76-acre site from the Ministry of Defence in 1997 for L1, and then spent L48.8 million to decontaminate the area. Some of the buildings now are being converted, one into a museum and others for housing, with apartments that will be priced from L105,000 (one bedroom) to L250,000 (three bedrooms). One hopes, of course, that someone will arrange for a plaque that will commemorate the services of Arthur Cadogan West, who was a clerk at the Woolwich Arsenal ("The Bruce-Partington Plans"). May 01 #2 The Sherlock Holmes Gazette was launched ten years ago as a 24- page journal edited by Elizabeth Wiggins, with a "Reichenbach Centenary Edition" on May 4, 1991; it has grown and prospered, and it was retitled Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine in 1997, and it is edited now by David Stuart Davies, and the decade's 40 issues (through 2000) are now available on a CD-ROM disk. The disk costs L39.95 or $60.00 postpaid from PHM Publications, PO Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex, PO18 8HD, Eng- land (you should specify PC or Mac); credit-card orders welcome. "This case deserves to be a classic," is the quote from the Canon noted by Joe Coppola in a new catalog from Reading Etc. (3201 SW 15th Street, Deer- field, FL 33442 (877-909-7323) , introducing a collection of handsome desk accessories that aren't themselves Sherlockian. The electronically-enabled will wish to visit Steve Trusell's splendid "De- tectives on Stamps" web-site at ; it was there that I discovered a report of the latest postage stamp honoring Arthur Conan Doyle: South Africa issued (Oct. 25, 2000) two stamps hon- oring Anglo-Boer/South African War Writers, showing portraits of Sol Plaatie and Johanna Brandt on one stamp, and Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill on the other stamp. The mint set, and an official first day cover, still are available from Philatel- ic Services, Private Bag X505, Pretoria 0001, South Africa ; the cost is R5.70 for the stamps and R7.70 for the cover, and credit-card orders are welcome. Bridget Byrne reported (in the Washington Post on May 8) on the cast of the new film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" (due in theaters on Nov. 16), and the film will feature two actors who have played Sherlock Holmes: John Cleese will be Nearly Headless Nick (a "ghost who 4 years ago wasn't quite beheaded"), and Alan Rickman will be Severus Snape ("cold-eyed, pale- skinned, sarcastic Slytherin housemaster and potions professor"). Cleese played Holmes on television in "Elementary, My Dear Watson" in 1973, and Rickman played the title role in William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" on stage in Birmingham in 1976. Issue #42 of Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine offers a first (as far as I know): Peter Guttridge's "Sound Alibi" is a pastiche with Basil Rath- bone and Nigel Bruce, in the midst of filming for Universal, assisting the police in solving a double murder perpetrated on the film set. And there's much more, non-Sherlockian and Sherlockian, including David Stuart Davies' article about the making of Granada's "The Dying Detective", and Denis Nor- den's quote from the first Sherlockian sketch that he and Frank Muir wrote for BBC radio in 1949. Annual subscriptions (six issues) cost L20.00 (in the U.K.)/L22.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . Class- ic Specialties is the agent in the U.S. (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (toll-free 877-233-3823) , and credit- card orders are welcome at both addresses; back issues are available. May 01 #3 A&E cable debuted it's "Nero Wolfe" mystery series last year with "The Golden Spiders" (Sep 00 #5), starring Maury Chaykin as Wolfe and Tim Hutton as Archie Goodwin, with a view of the portrait of Sherlock Holmes on the wall over Archie's desk. The series continues this year ("The Doorbell Rang", "Champagne for One", and "Prisoner's Base" have aired so far), and Holmes' portrait seems to have vanished, but there now are views of the picture of waterfall (which hides the secret panel through which people can see what's going on in the office); it is widely assumed that the waterfall is the Reichenbach, although this is not stated in any of the stories (and as seen in the series it doesn't look like the Reichen- bach). The series offers excellent atmosphere and production values, and Hutton is delightful as Archie Goodwin. Further to the item (Aug 96 #5) about how much the Conan Doyles liked Mercedes-Benz cars: the Wall Street Journal had a front-page article by Jonathan Welsh on May 8, about a 1955 Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing Coupe, ordered from the factory by Adrian Conan Doyle and now owned by Alfred Barbour, who purchased it for $165,000. The car then spent two years in a restoration shop, and after two years of work and an estimated bill of $300,000 the car resides in Barbour's garage in Mars, Pa. But he doesn't plan to drive it: "Sometimes I'll come down alone, pull up a chair and just sit and look at," he said. And he thinks the car is well worth what he's spent on it: "Some people have beautiful paintings or sculptures, and they have no trouble justifying it. My work of art just happens to be in the garage." Actually, the Mercedes was driven by Adrian's wife Anna Conan Doyle; according to Charles Foley, Adrian's own car was a Ferrari 250 GTO. Further to the report (Apr 01 #5) of original artwork by Robert Fawcett at auction in New York on May 5, his illustration for "The Adventure of the Wax Gamblers" (by Adrian Conan Doyle and John Dickson Carr) in Collier's, showing Watson but not Holmes (estimated at $5,000-7,000), brought $7,150 (including the 10% buyer's premium). Fawcett's artwork for Agatha Chris- tie's "Hickory Dickory Dock", showing Hercule Poirot (estimated at $2,000- 3,000) brought $3,080. Bill Barnes (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly, NSW 2095, Australia) notes that THE HOUNDS' COLLECTION: VOLUME 6 now is available; there are 98 pages of pas- tiche, humor, serious writing, and artwork by members of The Hounds of the Internet. Most of the material is new, but a few items have appeared else- where; the cost is $12.00/CA$18.00/L8.00/AU$14.75 postpaid by air (payment in currency preferred, but checks are acceptable), and PayPal can be used to . The latest issue of The Cormorant's Ring is a delightful tribute to Marga- ret and Don Hardenbrook: Don was one of the founders of The Trained Cormor- ants in 1947, and their wedding in 1957 was nicely Sherlockian (both the reverend and the best man were members of the Cormorants), and their marr- iage was a happy one in every way, as you will see in the reminiscences and reprints in the society's journal. It's available for $5.00 postpaid from Jim Coffin, 6570 East Paseo Alcazaa, Anaheim Hills, CA 92807. May 01 #4 Britain's second largest mortgage lender Abbey National contin- ues to sell bonds backed by residential mortgages, and "Holmes Four" (due in June) will be worth L2.6 billion, the largest such bond issue in European history. There's already a Holmes One, Holmes Two, and Holmes Three, and yes, the name is carefully chosen. According to a Reuters dis- patch (May 10), at hand from Ray Betzner, "The Holmes vehicle is named af- ter Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes who lived at Abbey's headquarters address on Baker Street in London." The June-July issue of British Heritage is devoted to "The Age of Empire: Victorian Britain", with information on the best sites for tourists inter- ested in the era, and (of course) mention of Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 645 Flank Drive, Harrisburg, PA 17112 (800-358-6327); $6.00. The spring issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has David Kotin's review of the Toronto Public Library's special collections, and Victoria Gill's article about one of the Conan Doyle family photographs (of Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, publisher H. M. McClure, detec- tive William J. Burns, Capitol Theatre owner Edward Bowes, and Sir Arthur, taken by Lady Doyle in 1913 at Windlesham, where they discussed the possi- bility of "a play combining a detective of fact with the greatest detective of fiction." The newsletter is available from Doug Wrigglesworth (16 Sun- set Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada) . And the Friends have a web-site at . There's a new lapel pin, for The Goose Club of the Alpha Inn; and the cost is $8.50 postpaid, from Jeanette Pyle, 16 Browe Court, Burlington, VT 05401. There were 180 people at the Culinary Institute of America on May 12 to enjoy "Sir Hugo Baskerville's Feast", which included delicacies such as spit-roasted boar, stuffed pheasant eggs, neat's tongue, warm venison pate, roast hind of oxen, cowcumber and dill sallet, and many other dishes known from the time of the Great Rebellion (1642-1652). The agenda also featured a performance by the Friends of Bogie (Andrew Joffe, Paul Singleton, and Sarah Montague Joffe) of a scene that didn't make it into last year's film "Best in Show" (involving the Hound, of course), and many toasts, one of which was Mike Whelan's warm tribute to "The Economic Sherlock Holmes" (Mike noted in passing that consideration is being given to reducing the cost of the annual birthday festivities by moving the Baker Street Irregulars' annual dinner to a centrally-located McDonald's located in Peoria, Ill.). The irregularly quinquennial Sherlockian dinners have been held at the CIA since 1973, masterminded always by Fritz Sonnenschmidt and Al and Julie Ro- senblatt, who were honored this year by Mike Whelan with a presentation of three Waterford toasting goblets, each inscribed as a Culinary Innovation Award. The weekend also included the traditional Sunday-morning pancake breakfast at the Rhinebeck Fire Department, and opportunities to tour the historic sites and sights of the Hudson Valley, one of which is the Presi- dential Library of BSI member Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose Sherlockian memorabilia have been carefully preserved in his archives. May 01 #5 Otto Penzler's pamphlet series of pastiches and parodies (Jun 00 #5) has a new title: Montgomery Carmichael's ON THE THRESH- HOLD OF THE CHAMBER OF HORRORS (which was first published in The Illustra- ted Sporting and Dramatic News, Oct 27, 1894). The 16-page pamphlet costs $10.00, from The Mysterious Bookshop, 129 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019) (800-352-2840) Isabella Beeton's classic MRS. BEETON'S BOOK OF HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT was first published in 1861, and it was a valuable guide for those who managed households in the days of Sherlock Holmes; she died in 1865 at the age of 28, but the book "spawned what we today would call a brand-name publishing empire," according to an article by Maryann Haggerty in the Washington Post (May 17). "Mrs. Beeton's name was slapped on just about any book that had anything to do with house-wifery. Think Martha Stewart, without the qual- ity control." A new edition of the book, edited by Nicola Humble for the Oxford World's Classics last year (672 pp., $13.95), offers an interesting look at how households were managed in those long-ago days. The Borough of St. Marylebone's contribution to the Festival of Britain in 1951 was an "Exhibition on Sherlock Holmes" at Abbey House in Baker Street that opened to the public on May 22; it ran until Sept. 22 and was visited by more than 50,000 people, and it attracted considerable publicity in the world press with a carefully-researched reproduction of the sitting-room at 221b, as well as displays of manuscripts, first editions, and memorabilia of Canonical cases. The Westminster Libraries have launched a web-site at to celebrate the 50th anni- versary of the exhibition, and it's nicely done indeed. The web-site will be updated, and next year it will honor the exhibition's visit to New York in 1952; Catherine Cooke would be glad to hear from anyone who saw it (or knows someone who saw it) and can offer reminiscences that can be added to the web-site. Her address is: Marylebone Library, Marylebone Road, London NW1 5PS, England . Linda Pritchard's A PICTORIAL TRIBUTE TO JEREMY BRETT: THE DEFINITIVE YEARS (London: Paradise Books, 2001; 120 pp., L15.00) offers a brief biography, tributes to the actor and his work, lists of his appearances on stage and screen and television, and a splendid selection of photographs covering his entire career. Available for $29.95 postpaid from Ashland Books, 132 Sev- enth Street, Ashland, OR 97520 . Jan Meredith died on May 10. She was an actress on stage, radio, and tele- vision, and in recent years a member of the Asheville Community Theater in North Carolina. In the 1980s she played Mrs. Hudson in Joseph Bevilaqua's parody radio series "The Mis-Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". Further to the reports (Apr 01 #1) that Granada is planning to revive their Sherlock Holmes series, David Stuart Davies has learned that the company is in the very early development stages of a new series, with the idea of pre- senting a younger Holmes and Watson. But there is no producer in charge of the project, nor any writers involved, and no decisions on casting. On the other hand, the Jeremy Brett series was the most successful financially of all the series Granada has ever made, and one might assume that something Sherlockian will appear from Granada in the next 18 to 24 months. May 01 #6 Kate Karlson traveled to Paris for the annual meeting of La So- ciete Sherlock Holmes de France in Paris in May (they "really rock," Kate reports), and the locals and the visitor enjoyed a tour of Pere Lachaise cemetery, where one will find the tombs of Oscar Wilde, Alphonse Bertillon, Honore de Balzac, Frederic Chopin, a Sir Charles Doyle (showing the correct family coat of arms), and a black marble tomb decorated with an enigmatic "SH" in gold below a cross; when asked by a passing tourist whose tomb it was, Phillipe Roland Nicholas (the society's youngest member) had a quick response: "C'est Sherlock Holmes." Further to the item (Mar 01 #1) about plans for Muse Entertainment's third two-hour television film starring Matt Frewer and Kenneth Welsh, it's now in production in Canada, according to a story in the Ottawa Citizen, kindly noted by Les Klinger. The working title is "The Royal Scandal" (based on "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Naval Treaty"). In their next film, Frewer and Welsh will play a cross-dressing hockey player and her coach: "Helga: A True Story" will feature Frewer in two roles: as Helga, who becomes an NHL star while disguised as a man, and her murderous twin sister Sonya. Welsh will be Helga's coach, confidante, and paramour. More investitured members of The Baker Street Irregulars in films: Philip Shreffler appeared as an extra in the Huck Finn episode of "Mark Twain: Be- neath the Laughter" (1980). Donald Pollock also was an extra (one of the zombies) in "Dawn of the Dead" (1978). And his car was filmed in the air- port parking lot in "Airport" (1970). Barnes & Noble still offers handsome Sherlockian prints and posters (Nov 99 #5: you select the design you want, and it's shipped to you printed on paper ($19.95) or canvas ($99.00 and up). You can also see the artwork (and Sherlock Holmes is only one of many categories available) at Barnes & Noble stores. And yes, this end-of-May issue of my newsletter is being published somewhat late, but I have a reasonable excuse: hepatitis A, which is an infection of the liver caused by a virus, and you get it from eating raw or undercooked shellfish that came from contaminated water, or (more likely) anything pre- pared by someone who hasn't paid attention to the signs one sees in restau- rant restrooms ("employees must wash their hands before leaving"). Hepati- tis A is the one you recover from (with hepatitis B you never get to drink alcohol again, and with hepatitis C you just get in line for a liver trans- plant), and there's no medicine to take: you just get plenty of rest, and drink lots of liquid, and eventually you get your appetite and energy back, and your skin and eyes aren't yellow any more. So I'm back to normal (when I say that to people, the response occasionally is, "when were you ever normal?"), and I'm not contagious any more, which will be nice news to those planning to attend the Sherlockian conference in Minneapolis at the end of June, since I plan to be there. As for the next issue of my newsletter, I'm not sure I'll have six whole pages of gossip by the end of June, but I expect to be back on schedule by the end of July. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Jun 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Bits & Pieces (One Puzzle Place, B8016, Stevens Point, WI 54481) (800-544- 7297) continues to offer "The Continuing Ad- ventures of Sherlock Holmes" puzzles ("read the enclosed story booklet and assemble the 550-piece jigsaw to solve each original murder mystery"): "The Fellow Lodgers" and "The Phantom of Sorrel House" (originally $10.95 each) are now discounted at $6.95 each. The Strand bookstore in New York has been open for business since 1927, and now boasts more than 12 miles of books for sale; Paul Singleton spotted an interview with the store's owner Fred Bass and his daughter Nancy, in Time Out New York (summer 2001), that reports that the store is "named after the famous London publishing street and after the magazine in which Arthur Con- an Doyle published the first Sherlock Holmes stories." The store is at 848 Broadway (at 12th Street), and is well worth a visit by every collector. Further to the item (Mar 01 #5) about Ciaran Carson's SHAMROCK TEA (London: Granta Books, 2001; 308 pp., L14.99), pursuit of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle in literature occasionally leads to discoveries of strange and wondrous writing, and the book certainly qualifies: it's an assembly of 101 short, interconnected, and colorful chapters tied to Jan van Eyck's paint- ing "The Arnolfini Portrait", the lives of the saints (both well-known and obscure), and much more. And yes, Carson pays tribute to both Conan Doyle and Holmes. Angela Browne died on June 20. She began her acting career on stage in the mid-1950s, and also had great success in film and on television; she played Mrs. Toller in Granada's "The Copper Beeches" (1985). The French have a long-standing tradition of baking epiphany cakes with a bean in them (whoever gets the slice with the bean gets good luck as well), but more recently small porcelain figurines are used instead of beans. And there's a set of ten "feves" (1" high) each with a character from the film "The Great Mouse Detective" available for $43.50 postpaid (if there are any left) from KinderMagic, 848 West Lantana Road, Lantana, FL 33462 (toll-free 877-875-4633) . If the supply is exhausted, they may be able to get more, so you can enroll on a waiting list. John Baesch has reported that the Queen's birthday honours included a CBE [Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire] for Christo- pher Lee, who played Sir Henry in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1959), Sherlock Holmes in "Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes" (1963), My- croft in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970), and Sherlock Holmes in the television films "Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady" and "Inci- dent at Victoria Falls" (1992), and he read "The Valley of Fear" for a set of audiocassettes in 1991. Dudley Moore, who also received a CBE, played Dr. Watson in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1978). And Leslie Bricusse, who received an OBE [making him an Officer of the Order], wrote the book, music, and lyrics for "Sherlock Holmes: The Musical" (1988), which included some of his work for MGM (the company hired him to write a new score for their planned-but-never-produced film of the musical "Baker Street"). Jun 01 #2 This year's Christmas card from The Sherlock Holmes Society of London will celebrate the society's 50th anniversary, with the society's logo and appropriate wording, on a special white card embossed in gold. $13.00 postpaid for ten cards (L5.50 to the U.K., L6.00 to Europe, L7.00 elsewhere); checks payable to the Society, please, and orders should be sent to Cdr. G. S. Stavert, 22 Homeheights, Clarence Parade, Southsea, Hants. PO5 3NN, England. Note: you can order now, but the cards will not be shipped until September. Lise McClendon has noted a new bookshop: Sherlock's Home, owned by John and Jane Hooper, at 7 North Missouri Street, Liberty, MO 64068 (816-792-0499) . Further to the report of THE CONFESSIONS OF MYCROFT HOLMES: A PAPER CHASE, by Marcel Theroux (New York: Harcourt, 2001; 216 pp., $23.00), it's an in- teresting novel, full of twists and turns and surprises, and although it's not Sherlockian ("The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes" are stories written by the narrator's uncle), it's an intriguing mystery. Norman Schatell was a delightful artist whose Sherlockian work appeared in Sherlockian (and other) journals, and informally on the envelopes in which he enclosed his letters to his friends. THE SCION OF SCHATELL: ART IN THE BLOOD (New York: Magico Magazine, 2001; 50 pp., $10.00 postpaid) offers a spiral-bound collection of Norman's work, assembled by Dave Galerstein and with an enthusiastic introduction by Irving Kamil, and it's a fine opportu- nity to see just how much artistic fun Norm (and his friends) had. Magico Magazine's address is: Box 156, New York, NY 10002. While it's true that The Baker Street Irregulars were born and nourished in the pages of the Saturday Review of Literature, it's also a fact that the pages of the Chicago Tribune offered its readers a splendid opportunity to discover just how much fun Sherlockians have. Vincent Starrett wrote for the paper for many years, of course, but there was another stalwart Sher- lockian on its staff: Charles Collins, who for more than two decades edited and wrote a daily column called "A Line o' Type or Two" and provided a for- um for his fellow enthusiasts. And you can now see just how much they all had, thanks to the late John Nieminski, who discovered more than 300 sepa- rate items of interest in the Collins' column, and assembled and annotated them for a book that was not published while he lived; and thanks to Ely Liebow, who has contributed two informative and enthusiastic introductions, about John Nieminski and Charles Collins, and who presided over publication of SHERLOCK IN THE TRIB (New York: Magico Magazine, 2000; 242 pp., $31.95 postpaid, publisher's address as above). Edgar W. Smith, in his BAKER STREET AND BEYOND (1940), was the first Sher- lockian to offer an annotated list of the place names that constitute the geography of the Canon, and others followed in his footsteps in encyclope- dias and similar guides. A SHERLOCKIAN GAZETTEER, by Virginia Powell (New York: Magico Magazine, 1997; 157 pp., $27.00 postpaid, publisher's address as above), offers some added value: her comprehensive list of place names, annotated from the Canon and often from the 11th edition of the ENCYCLOPED- IA BRITANNICA, also includes identifications by previous scholars of many of the place names disguised by Dr. Watson. Jun 01 #3 Mary Burke has returned from London to report on her visit to the British Museum, where the British Library's former reading room has been restored and opened to the public. Near the front chairs is a placard that states: "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle refers to Sherlock Holmes' researches in the Reading Room, and a later writer describes an imaginary meeting between Holmes and Karl Marx." And in a glassed bookcase against the wall there are 18 books by Conan Doyle, and another card with the quote from "The Musgrave Ritual" about Holmes' use of the British Museum: "There I waited, filling in my too abundant leisure time by studying all those branches of science which might make me more efficient." That "later writer" (Jon Lellenberg reports) was William S. Baring-Gould: his SHERLOCK HOLMES OF BAKER STREET: A LIFE OF THE WORLD'S FIRST CONSULTING DETECTIVE (1962) describes such a meeting (at which, it is amusing to note, Holmes never learned Marx's name). Lewis Feuer, in THE CASE OF THE REVOLU- TIONIST'S DAUGHTER: SHERLOCK HOLMES MEETS KARL MARX (1983) has Holmes meet- ting Marx, but at Marx's home in Maitland Park Road. And Michael Hardwick, in SHERLOCK HOLMES: MY LIFE AND CRIMES (1984), has Holmes recalling his use of the Reading Room: Holmes says of Marx that "I saw him there often," but not that he actually met him. Mary Burke also visited the Dulwich Picture Gallery, where one can see two paintings by Sherlock Holmes' great-great-grand-uncle Claude-Joseph Vernet: "An Italianate Harbour Scene" and "Italian Landscape". The gallery has an "adopt an old master" program that raises funds for conservation (adoption allows the use of the image of the artwork free of charge); "An Italianate Harbour Scene" needs urgent work, according to the gallery's head of devel- opment Lottie Cole, and it is up for adoption for L4,000. More information is available from Miss Cole (Dulwich Picture Gallery, Gallery Road, Dulwich Village, London, SE21 7AD, England) . Noted by Denny Dobry: William R. Hanson's pastiche "Sherlock Holmes and the Hawaiian Treasure" in the American Philatelist (July); one of the illustra- tions is a photograph of Denny's carefully-detailed recreation (in Reading, Pa.) of the sitting-room at 221B. If you can't find the issue locally, the magazine's address is: Box 8000, State College, PA 16803; $3.95. And their web-site is at . The U.S. Postal Service has honored "Peanuts" with a re- cent stamp that portrays Snoopy, not in the Sherlockian costume that we know so well, but rather in his far more widely-recognized guise as the fierce (and famous) World War I fighter pilot. Charles Schulz, who created Snoopy and the rest of the "Peanuts" characters, died last year (Feb 00 #6), and was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on June 7. Cullen Murphy, managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, has a column called "Innocent Bystander" in each issue; the columns are always interesting, and sometimes have mentions of Sherlock Holmes and of Sherlockians, as with the June issue, which is about attempts by today's doctors to diagnose the ail- ments of literary characters. The column also is available on-line at the magazine's web-site . Jun 01 #4 Further to the report (Apr 01 #3) on the unveiling of the life- size statue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Crowborough on Apr. 14, less than a month later the statue was vandalized, and Sir Arthur's hat was stolen. It's nice to note that modern detective methods were used to solve the case: Takeshi Shimizu spotted an Associated Press story (May 17) that reported that a police closed-circuit television camera recorded a 17- year-old youth climbing the statue; he managed to break off the hat before fleeing the scene of the crime, but he was later arrested and "interviewed about the theft" and then "cautioned but released without charge." There's been a lot of publicity for the publication of Mark Twain's "A Mur- der, a Mystery, and a Marriage" in The Atlantic Monthly (July-Aug. 2001), 125 years after he wrote the novelette for the magazine. And it's nice to learn that two members of The Baker Street Irregulars helped preserve the manuscript: according to the magazine's editor, Michael Kelly, who was in- terviewed on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" on June 25, the manuscript was discovered in the estate of the widow of a British bookseller in 1943 and purchased by Lew David Feldman, who sold it to Ellery Queen (Frederic Dan- nay), whose collection eventually was acquired by the University of Texas. Each issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine offers a last-page look at "Curiosities": out-of-print and long-neglected books that deserve attention from today's readers. The August issue has an enthusiastic recommendation by Paul Di Filippo's that begins: "Imagine Potocki's grimly fantastic THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1804) comically rewritten by William Goldman in the manner of THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1973), or perhaps infused with the spirit of Monty Python, and you'll have some idea of the giddy, fizzy buzz supplied by [his] first novel, a historical fantasia spanning the years 1483 to the author's present, and revolving around a magical bottled draught from the Fountain of Youth." There's more, including mention of Peter Ruber's sug- gestion that the book is "one of the great under-appreciated fantasies of this century," and the book they're raving about is Vincent Starrett's SEA- PORTS IN THE MOON (1928). Hank Ketcham died on May 31. He worked as an animator for Walter Lantz and then for Walt Disney, and after World War II as a freelance cartoonist, and "Dennis the Menace" was launched in 1951, syndicated in 16 papers. Ketcham recalled in an interview this year that when the cartoon started one editor offered a warning: "I don't see how it can last. There's only so much you can say about a 5-year-old-kid." Dennis has never changed, and now is syn- dicated in more than 1,000 papers. Here's the opening of the Sunday strip that ran on Aug. 20, 1995: Jun 01 #5 Laurie R. King reports that her next Mary Russell book, JUSTICE HALL, will be published next February. Laurie also is one of the thirteen women mystery writers who have written chapters for the serial novel NAKED CAME THE PHOENIX, edited by Marcia Talley (New York: St. Mart- in's, 2001; 320 pp., $24.95); the scheme is the same as in the 1996 serial novel NAKED CAME THE MANATEE (and there's no Mary Russell content). An of- ficial web-site at offers lots of information about Laurie and her books. Many television quiz shows have Sherlockian questions, and Laura Kuhn pro- vided the first report of one on "The Weakest Link" on NBC-TV, on July 2: "What literary detective first appeared in the 1887 novel A STUDY IN SCAR- LET?" "Sherlock Holmes." "That is the correct answer." It's nice to know that the program offers contestants at least a few easy questions. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES has been reissued in a new Penguin Classics edition (L4.99), edited by Christopher Frayling, who noted in an article in The Independent (July 1) that the book has finally "been promoted from the ghetto of Penguin Crime/Mystery to the pantheon of Penguin Classics." Another new edition of the story is THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES: HUNTING THE DARTMOOR LEGEND (Tiverton: Halsgrove House, 2001; 240 pp., L24.95); ac- cording to the publisher's publicity, the book includes the full text from The Strand Magazine, and a major new study by Philip Weller of the histori- cal, geographical, and literary background to the story, illustrated with 100 historic and contemporary photographs, and a foreword by Edward Hard- wicke. The publisher's address is Halsgrove House, Lower Moor Way, Tiver- ton, Devon EX16 6SS, England (44-1884-243242) . Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the earliest and best of those who and played the grand game of Sherlockian scholarship, and it is nice indeed that all of her essays on Sherlock Holmes will soon be in print again, together with (and available for the first time) the script she wrote for Lord Peter Wim- sey's comments for the centenary birthday tribute to Holmes that was broad- cast by BBC radio on Jan. 8, 1954. SAYERS ON HOLMES: ESSAYS AND FICTION ON SHERLOCK HOLMES will also have an informative introduction by Alzina Stone Dale; the 53-page book will be published in August by The Mythopoeic Soci- ety; $9.50 postpaid, and checks (payable to the Society, please) should be sent to Joan Marie Verba, Box 1363, Minnetonka, MN 55345. Bibliography can be a puzzling pursuit. There is a copy of George Bernard Shaw's first published play WIDOWERS' HOUSES (1893) inscribed by the author on the half-title for a charity auction a statement that, though the volume had, as he recalled, been issued originally in "a green colored cloth case of the shade called citrine," here was a copy bound in blue cloth. "I nev- er saw or heard of any blue copies," write Shaw. "Consequently, though I am actually writing these words in a blue copy I deny its existence." From a lecture by Dan H. Laurence at the Library of Congress in 1982 in which he discussed his work on his two-volume bibliography of Shaw (published by the Oxford University Press in 1983). Laurence's lecture was published by the Library of Congress' Center for the Book as A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AS A BIBLIOGRAPHY in 1983. The inscription, it should be noted, was Shaw's in- ventive (and false) response to the pursuit of binding variants. Jun 01 #6 The Norwegian Explorers did a splendid job with "2001: A Sher- lockian Odyssey: A Journey Among the Shaw 100" in Minneapolis in June, and it was especially nice to be able to tour the new underground storage facility of the University of Minnesota's new library, where the collections of John Bennett Shaw and many others are now preserved. Par- ticipants in the conference were taken on guided tours of the stacks, and had a chance to browse through the collection, which includes such things as John's favorite bolo tie, and a box labeled "bust of Sherlock Holmes and two handguns". The presentations, scholarly and otherwise, ran from Friday afternoon through lunch on Sunday, and there were about 120 people on hand for the festivities, and Julie McKuras, who with Dick Sveum presided over the event, ended the conference by suggesting that another one can be ex- pected in 2004. The June issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers eight pages of ar- ticles about past and present aspects of the collection, and a report from curator of special collections Tim Johnson, who also gave a delightful talk at the conference on what he collects (conflict of interest concerns ensure that he can't compete with the special collections, but he still has great fun collecting). If you would like to be on the Friends' mailing list you can contact Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . Clarkson N. Potter died on June 24. He was a publisher, writer, and liter- ary agent who began his publishing career in 1950 as an editor at Doubleday and Co. In 1959 he founded his own imprint, and published many cornerstone Sherlockian titles, including William S. Baring-Gould's SHERLOCK HOLMES OF BAKER STREET (1962) and THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES (1967), the American edition of Michael and Mollie Hardwick's SHERLOCK HOLMES COMPANION (1977), and a Bramhall House reprint edition of Ronald B. De Waal's THE WORLD BIB- LIOGRAPHY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR. WATSON (1977). A badger, a bison, a goose, and a grouse appear on our new Great Plains Prairie sheet of stamps, and all are mentioned in the Canon, but of the four only the bison is specifically American: "Those great herds of bisons which graze upon the prairie land" are mentioned in "A Study in Scarlet". Arlene Francis died on May 31. She acted on Broadway, with Orson Welles' Mercury Theater company, and in film and on radio and television, where she was a panelist on "What's My Line" for 25 years. In 1962 she joined Zacherley to introduce Chris Steinbrun- ner's broadcast of "The Valley of Fear" on Fordham University's WFUV-FM. And yes, it's some days past the end of June, but my newsletter is edging back toward being on schedule again. I seem to have recovered from my bout with hepatitis A, except for not yet being allowed to drink alcohol, but my doctor suggests that I may be able to fall off the wagon by mid-July. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Jul 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press T. R. Reid reported to the Washington Post (May 18) that former president Bill Clinton, on a visit to Poland, was hit on the sleeve by an egg appar- ently thrown by an anti-globalization protestor; Clinton laughed, and said that "It's good for young people to be angry about something." It was a bit different in London, where a heckler egged deputy prime minister John Prescott, who retaliated with a "powerful left to the egg-thrower's jaw." Anne Billman, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (May 19), was reminded of Sidney Paget's illustration for "The Solitary Cyclist" (the newspaper help- fully reprinted the artwork) and mentioned Holmes' "straight left against a slogging ruffian." Scott Monty has launched a "Calender of Sherlockian Events" at a web-site at , so that people can post (and read) information about up-coming events. You must register with Yahoo, and obtain a Yahoo ID, in order to access the calendar. Among the things you must tell Yahoo: your birthday, preferred language, ZIP code, gender, occupation, and industry. Yahoo will use the information "to cus- tomize the advertising and content you see, to fulfill your requests for certain products and services, and to contact you about specials and new products," according to their privacy policy, and you can opt out of the third category. "Pipe and cigar smoking is salubrious," Marty Pulvers told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter. "It relaxes you. "it's healthful in the same way the ritual is in religion. It causes you to pause and reflect." But Pulvers, the owner of the tobacco shop Sherlock's Haven, is concerned about declin- ing sales of cigars since California has banned smoking in bars and restau- rants, and because many former customers are placing out-of-state orders on the Internet to avoid California's high taxes on tobacco, and he is hoping to increase sales of his shop's pipes, according to an article, kindly for- warded by Emory Lee, in the San Francisco Chronicle (July 1). Further to the report (Apr 01 #2) about the continuing battle over Liberton Bank House (where Arthur Conan Doyle once lived as a child), planning offi- cers of the Edinburgh city council have recommended rejection of a proposal by McDonald's to build a restaurant near the cottage, noting that the com- pany had failed to consider restoration of the building. "We will be tak- ing legal advice," a spokesman for McDonald's said on May 30, adding that "At this stage we are likely to look at an appeal by public inquiry." Issue #43 of Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine offers a report (with photographs) on the Georgina Doyle's unveiling of the statue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at Crowborough in April; the third of four installments of Dav- id Stuart Davies' "Flickering Phantoms" (his discussion of the many film versions of "The Hound of the Baskervilles") and much more (Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian). Annual subscriptions (six issues) cost L20.00 (in the U.K.)/L22.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sus- sex PO18 8HD, England . Classic Specialties is their agent in the U.S. (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (toll-free 877-233-3823) , and credit-card orders are welcome at both addresses; back issues are available. Jul 01 #2 The Practical, But Limited, Geologists, met for dinner at the University Club in Denver on June 6, during the annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, to honor the world's first forensic geologist. Oklahoma state geologist Charles J. Mankin pre- sided over the festivities, and continuing to insist that Sherlock Holmes had visited Oklahoma rather than New York (New York state geologist Robert H. Fakundiny was not on hand to present his traditional rebuttal). The so- ciety will meet next in Boston in November, and in Houston in March. New York magazine offers a weekly two-page spread called "Gotham" which has a weekly quote about New York. On July 19 the quote was "The city of envy, office work, and hustle--Christopher Morley." Reported: William F. Nolan's DOWN THE LONG NIGHT (Five Star, $21.95) is a collection of his short stories, including "Sungrab" (which was first pub- lished in 1980 in AFTER THE FALL, a paperback anthology edited by Robert Sheckley; Mars-based private eye Sam Space, aided by robots named Holmes and Watson, pursues a new manifestation of the Baskerville curse. Also: MURDER MOST POSTAL: HOMICIDAL TALES THAT DELIVER A MESSAGE, edited by Mar- tin H. Greenberg (Nashville: Cumberland House, 2001; 307 pp., $14.95), in- cludes August Derleth's "Solar Pons" pastiche "The Adventure of the Penny Magenta". The Ritual is the semi-annual journal published by The Northern Musgraves; the spring issue has 68 pages of scholarship, news, and reviews, including Patrick Michael's interesting article on the early stage career of Charlie Chaplin, who went from appearing with H. A. Saintsbury in "Jim: The Romance of a Cockayne" and on tour in William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes", to act- ing with Gillette himself in "The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes" and "Sherlock Holmes". Information on membership in the society and on its publications is available from Anne Jordan, Fairbank, Beck Lane, Bingley, West Yorks. BD16 4DN, England . The New York-New Jersey "metro area" Sherlockian societies have issued a joint lapel pin, available for $9.00 postpaid from Warren Randall (15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauket, NY 11720). The pin is 2" in diameter, and (for those who can't read the fine print), the societies are: The Mini-Tonga So- ciety, The Three Garridebs of Westchester County, Watson's Tin Dispatchers of Staten Island, The Priory Scholars of New York, Mrs. Hudson's Cliffdwellers of Cliffside Park, The Long Island Cave Dwellers, The Epilogues of Sherlock Holmes, and The Montague Street Lodgers of Brooklyn. And that's the Statue of Liberty inside the silhouette. "Mystery!" has been one of the best of the series broadcast by PBS-TV for many years, funded by Mobil until last year, but WGBH-TV has announced that the series schedule has been trimmed: PBS-TV will show repeats at 10:00 pm on Thursdays from October through December 2001, when the series will shut down until it is revived with twelve weeks of new shows from July to Sep- tember 2002, and again in 2003. But mystery fans who have access to cable can still see fine shows, including the "Nero Wolfe" series now airing on A&E; Maury Chaykin is excellent as Nero Wolfe, and Timothy Hutton even bet- ter as Archie Goodwin, and the production values are splendid. Jul 01 #3 It has been three years since the last Sherlockian conference in Minneapolis, where Nils Nordberg presented a fine paper on "Sherlock Holmes in the Claws of Confidence Men; or, The Misadventures of a World Detective", noting that Holmes appeared in a long series of dime nov- els (well, 20-pfennige novels) published in Germany beginning in 1905, and in many other countries, and in a series of short Danish films. His paper is now in print as the lead article in the Oct. 2000 issue of Dime Novel Round-Up, available from its editor, J. Randolph Cox (Box 226, Dundas, MN 55019); $3.00 (or $15.00 a year for six issues). Catherine Cooke reports that Jason Brown of Anyone Can Play Productions has dramatized Conan Doyle's short story "Lot 249" for production at the Ports- mouth Arts Center from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3. The Centre is in Reginald Road, Southsea, Hants. PO4 9HN, England (44-23-9283-7373). Reported: a mass paperback reprint of MIDNIGHT LOUIE'S PET DETECTIVES, ed- ited by Carole Nelson Douglas (New York: Forge, 2000, 352 pp., $6.99); con- tents include her own story "A Baker Street Irregular" (in which Midnight Louie meets Irene Adler and solves a mystery for Sherlock Holmes). And a trade paperback reprint of Daniel Stashower's biography TELLER OF TALES: THE LIFE OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE in a paperback reprint (New York: Owl Books, 2001, 472 pp., $16.00); Dan also notes that a British trade paperback edi- tion is now available (London: Penguin, 2001; 472 pp., L8.99). Forecast by Bill Nadel (who contributed to the liner notes) in September, from Radio Spirits (Box 2141, Schiller Park, IL 60176): "The Best of Sher- lock Holmes", a collection of 20 of Edith Meiser's radio shows from 1948 (starring John Stanley) on ten cassettes ($34.98) or ten CDs ($39.98). And "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", a CD with two programs from Meis- er's 1948 series ($4.98). James Bernard died on July 12. He was a composer and screenwriter, and one of the very few composers to win an Academy Award for something other than music, for the screenplay of "Seven Days to Noon" (1950). He began working with Hammer Films in 1955, composing the music for "The Quatermass Experi- ment" and then scored most of their best films, including "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1959). His most recent work was the score for Kevin Brown- low's television documentary "Universal Horror" (1998). It was Scott Monty (naturally ) who spotted the Sherlockian content in Jim Meddick's comic strip "Monty" on June 19: Jul 01 #4 It's always nice to find something old that's new, in this case Will Oursler's FAMILY STORY (1963), which is an interesting and well-written memoir of his family. His father was Fulton Oursler, who knew Conan Doyle and fooled him with a faked spirit photograph; Will notes that his father, when he was a young reporter for the Baltimore American, wrote a short piece that made a box on the front page: "An unknown admirer of the late Edgar Allan Poe, who is buried in Baltimore, left a rose today on his grave." The unknown admirer was in fact Fulton Oursler himself, who thus started a tradition that continues today. He also was a member of The Bak- er Street Irregulars, as was Will, who inherited his father's Investiture ("The Abbey Grange"). C. T. ("Jack") Thorne died on May 2. He was working in the Marylebone Bor- ough Council's Reference Library with responsibility for local history in 1950, and was the first to suggest that the borough contribute a Sherlock Holmes exhibition to the Festival of Britain. He went on to mount the ex- hibition (Heather Owen notes in an obituary for Jack in the Sherlock Holmes Journal that his wife recalls that everything in the exhibition was of the correct period, "including the dust, which Jack collected from the shelves of the British Museum basement." He then traveled with the exhibition to New York in 1952, and went on to recreate the sitting-room at The Sherlock Holmes in London and at the Chateau de Lucens in Switzerland. Paul Brundage reports that subscribers to America Online can download "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in an E-Book format readable on a personal data assistant (PDA). Further to the mention (Jun 01 #5) of a new Penguin Classics edition of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Nicholas Utechin reports that there's more than one volume: A STUDY IN SCARLET (introduced by Iain Sinclair), THE VALLEY OF FEAR AND SELECTED CASES (introduced by Charles Palliser), THE SIGN OF FOUR (introduced by Peter Ackroyd), THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (introduced by (Christopher Frayling), THE ADVENTURES AND THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (introduced by Iain Pears), and THE LOST WORLD AND OTHER THRILLING TALES (introduced by Philip Gooden). Further to the item (Jun 01 #3) about the glassed bookcase in the British Museum's renovated Reading Room, containing books by Conan Doyle, a photo- graph reveals that the Canon is represented by seven of the nine volumes of the uniform set published by the Book-of-the-Month Club in 1994. One hopes that someone might be inspired to lead a campaign to raise the funds needed to donate to the British Museum a complete set of the Sherlock Holmes stor- ies issued by a British publisher. The summer 2001 issue of the Tonga Times honors Gertrude Mahoney (one of the founders of The Mini-Tonga Scion Society), who recently celebrated her 95th birthday and the birth of her newest great-grandchild. The newsletter also has detailed instructions on how to make a miniature tantalus, photographs and news from the world of Sherlockian miniatures, and suitable-for-framing miniature portraits of Queen Victoria. The cost of membership is $10.00 a year (or $11.00 to Canada or $13.00 elsewhere) from Trish and Jay Pearlman (1656 East 19th Street #2-E, Brooklyn, NY 11229, and they have a web-site at . Jul 01 #5 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle made a public declaration of his belief in spiritualism in an article published in 1916, and the next year in a speech, and in much more detail in 1918 in his book THE NEW REVE- LATION; the book is now available in a new edition (Garden City: Square One Publishers, 2001; 110 pp., $12.95), with an introduction and afterword by George J. Lankevich, who discusses Conan Doyle's life and career, and his relationship with Harry Houdini. Dick Riley and Pam McAllister's THE BEDSIDE, BATHTUB, AND ARMCHAIR COMPAN- ION TO SHERLOCK HOLMES (1999) now has a Japanese translation (Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 2000; 372 pp., Y1,800) by Masamichi Higurashi, who also has provided additional photographs, a chronology and bibliography, and other material. The Lynn Peavey Co. markets to law-enforcement profess- ionals, and in the Jan.-Feb. of their monthly newsletter The Daily Hound notes that their Zipr-Weld Evidence Tape was used to seal the boxes of ballots sent off to be re- counted in Florida. Their company mascot, Big Dog, also exists in larger-than-life inflatable plastic, and could be seen at this year's meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Seattle. Box 14100, Lenexa, KS 66285 (800-255-6499) . An addition to the growing list of Investitured members of The Baker Street Irregulars who have acted in films: Mary Ellen Rich, who appeared an extra in "The Group" (1966). And Al Ros- enblatt reports that when "Nobody's Fool" (1994) was being filmed in Pough- keepsie, he advised the crew on how to set up a courtroom scene (although he didn't receive formal credit as a technical advisor); they did, however, need a proper judicial robe for the scene, and used his (Al regrets that there is no Oscar for best supporting robe). Due in October: MURDER IN BAKER STREET: NEW TALES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, edit- ed by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001; 277 pp., $25.00; it's an anthology of new stories by fine writers such as Loren Estleman, L. B. Greenwood, Edward D. Hoch, Gill- ian Linscott, Stuart Kaminsky, Anne Perry, and Carolyn Wheat, plus a review of "100 Years of Sherlock Holmes" by Lloyd Rose, and a discussion of Conan Doyle's contributions to the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY by Jon Lellenberg. The Ben Silver Collection continues to offer a wide variety of regimental, club, corps, and university neckties in its mail-order catalog, many having Sherlockian and Doylean associations; 149 King Street, Charleston, SC 29401 (800-221-4671) . Gordon B. Shriver's "Boris Karloff: The Man Remembered" is a carefully-re- searched biography of a fine actor whose credits included his appearance as Mr. Mycroft in Alvin Sapinsley's adaptation H. F. Heard's A TASTE FOR HONEY ("The Sting of Death" was broadcast on ABC-TV's "The Elgin Hour" in 1955, and won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for the best televis- ion program of the year). It's featured in the latest issue (#34) of the quarterly Cult Movies ($4.95, or $30.00 for six issues); 6201 Sunset Boule- vard #152, Hollywood, CA 90028 . Jul 01 #6 Malice Domestic XIII (in Washington on May 4-6, with Rex Stout as ghost of honor, was (according to accounts from all quarters received) enjoyable, despite the lack of any specifically Sherlockian sess- ions. Next year's convention will be held on May 3-5 at the Crystal Gate- way Marriott in Arlington, Va., with Edward Marston as guest of honor, and G. K. Chesterton as ghost of honor. Full details are available from Malice Domestic (Box 31137, Bethesda, MD 20804) . And there's a registration cap of 1,500 at Bouchercon 2001 ("A Capital Mys- tery") on Nov. 1-4 at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, with Sue Grafton as American guest of honor and Peter Lovesey as international guest of honor, and there will be a Sherlockian panel ("Sherlock and His Creator" is the working title) on Thursday afternoon; registration closes on Aug. 15 (Box 11700, Washington, DC 20008 . "The Many Places of Sherlock Holmes" is the theme of Bill Dorn's Sherlock Holmes Calendar for 2002, which offers photographs of Sherlockian locales, plus dates for 55 of the cases, founding dates for many Sherlockian socie- ties, and other dates of significance in the Sherlockian world, The calen- dar costs $14.45 postpaid ($15.45 to Canada, $16.45 elsewhere), and checks can be sent to William S. Dorn, 2045 South Monroe Street, Denver, CO 80210 . THE POCKET ESSENTIAL SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Mark Campbell (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2001; 95 pp., L3.99), provides an interesting introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes for newcomers (a "modern equivalent of the old Baedeker Guide," Richard Lancelyn Green suggests in his introduction), with discussion of each of the 60 stories, an annotated list of actors who have played Holmes, and other reference material; the publisher's web-site is at , and the American distributor is Trafal- gar Square Publishing, Box 257, Howe Hill Road, North Pomfret, VT 05053, Campbell reports that a receptionist at Abbey House recently said that mail to Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street is now being sent to the Sherlock Holmes Museum, but the receptionist was wrong: Gug Kyriacou still is Sher- lock Holmes' secretary at Abbey House. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES: HUNTING THE DARTMOOR LEGEND, by Philip Wel- ler (Tiverton: Devon Books, 2001; 243 pp., L24.95), offers the text of the story from its first appearance in The Strand Magazine, and a great deal of careful and well-written scholarship: annotations to the text; discussion of the legends that echo in the story, and how it came to be written; exam- ination of the locations, real and invented, with contemporary black-and- white photographs and modern full-color photographs; a review of the many film and television versions of the story; and much more. Recommended. The publisher is at Halsgrove House, Lower Moor Way, Tiverton, DE EX16 6SS, England . The book also is available from Class- ic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (toll-free 877-233-3823) ; $45.15 postpaid to U.S. readers of this newsletter (the magic word is "Scuttlebutt") and the postpaid cost varies to other countries. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Aug 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Poul Anderson ("The Dreadful Abernetty Business") died on July 31. He was a past president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and was named a grand master of the organization in 1977, and over the years he won all the major awards in the genre. Poul's first story was published in 1947, and in 1952 he met (and in 1953 married) Karen Kruse, who had earlier founded The Red Circle of Washington. In an essay about his work he once wrote that "There is considerable overlap between followers of science fic- tion and of the great detective," and he was one of the best examples: his short story "The "Adventure of the Misplaced Hound" (written with Gordon R. Dickson) was published in 1953, and "The Martian Crown Jewels" in 1958, and there are many Canonical allusions in other stories and novels. Poul also wrote for Sherlockian publications, and he was twice a winner of The Baker Street Irregulars' Morley-Montgomery Award (recognizing the best contribu- tion to The Baker Street Journal), for work that appeared in 1958 and 1968. He received his Investiture from the BSI in 1960. Poul and Karen Anderson were in Washington to attend a World Science-Fiction Convention in 1974, and were guests of honor at a Red Circle cocktail party in their honor; Gordon R. Dick- son also was at the party, as was their crea- tion Sherlock Hoka (appropriately dressed Bar- ry Parker, a prize-winner in the convention's costume competition). Poul is on the right. It has been many years since John Bennett Shaw wondered just how obscene the Canon might be, and revealed the results of his research at an annual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars, and in an article "To Shelve or to Censor" that appeared in Shades of Sherlock in 1971. The electronically- enabled can find the results of somewhat similar research at a web-site at (it's called "The Sexiest Lines in Sherlockian Canon"). Sherlockians in or visiting Arizona might wish to stop by the Dam Bar and Grille in Page. According to a photograph in the Arizona Republic (Dec. 14), Vern Sherlock Holmes is the manager of the bar. More news about Bouchercon 2001, in Washington on Nov. 1-4: nominations for the Anthony Awards (voted on by fans) include Daniel Stashower for his Hou- dini mystery novel THE FLOATING LADY (for best paperback original); winners will be chosen by those attending the convention. Sorry: registration for Bouchercon 2001 closed on Aug. 15. OTHERWERE: STORIES OF TRANSFORMATION, edited by Laura Anne Gilman and Keith R. A. DeCandido (New York: Ace Books, 1996; 260 pp., $5.99), is an antholo- gy of new stories that deal with shape-shifting into something other than a werewolf; Esther M. Friesner's contribution is "The Strange Case of Ludwig the Unspeakable", and it's an amusing parody involving a consulting detec- tive and his narrator friend, both unnamed but easily recognized (don't ne- glect the brief biography of the author that precedes the story). The book is out-of-print, but worth looking for. Aug 01 #2 Les Evades de Dartmoor publish an annual with the title Le Re- gistre d'Ecrou (three issues are available at 45 fr each), and they have reprinted Flavien d'Hoursac's 1927 book LA VERITE SUR CONAN DOYLE (60 fr to members, 70 fr to non-members); the annual cost of membership is 132.20 fr (you must certify that you're "un dangereux malfaiteur"). Addi- tional information is available from Sebastien Canevet (37 rue du Commerce, 37160 Descartes, France) . A new CD discovered by John Baesch: PLAY THE GAME: VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN SPORTING SONGS (JUSCD001), issued by Just Accord Music (Box 224, Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5YJ, England) ; L9.99 (postpaid in the United Kingdom, L10.99 to Europe, L11.49 elsewhere). One of the 17 songs on the CD is Conan Doyle's "A Hunting Morning" (1898), set to music by Alfred J. Silver in 1908. Canadian Holmes, published quarterly by The Bootmakers of Toronto, always is interesting, and the summer issue has an amusing exchange of correspon- dence about the television mini-series "Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes", between Michael Doyle and Kathy Hughes (who writes the scripts for Diana Rigg's introductions broadcast on "Mystery!"). The focus of the exchange is on whether or not Dr. Joe Bell was pleased, when he was credited as the real Sherlock Holmes, but Hughes also notes that introduc- tions for the next four "Murder Rooms" shows have been taped, and that the stories are set in Southsea, and that one of them features Dr. Rutherford, the prototype for Professor Challenger. Annual subscriptions cost $20.00 a year; checks payable to the society can be sent to Derek Thorpe (5 Brownlea Avenue, Toronto, ON M9P 2R5, Canada). Emory Lee spotted promotion for THE HISTORY OF MYSTERY, by Max Allan Coll- ins, due from Collectors Press in October; 196 pp., 375 full-color images, $45.00. If you can't find it in local bookstores, the publisher is at Box 230986, Portland, OR 97281 (800-423-1848) . And yes, Sherlock Holmes is part of the history of mystery. The 2000 version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" starring Jason London and Emma Campbell is available on videocassette from Critics' Choice Video (Box 749, Itasca, IL 60143) (800-367-7765) , dis- counted at $13.69. And yes, those are the only stars named in the blurb. Jason London (Sir Henry Baskerville) and Emma Campbell (Beryl) were in the television film that starred Matt Frewer as Holmes. There are very few videocassettes of productions of plays by William Gill- ette: Frank Langella's version of "Sherlock Holmes" was broadcast by HBO in 1981 and taped off-the-air by those who had VCRs, but it's not available on a commercial cassette. Gillette wrote many other plays, but they're seldom produced; one exception is his melodrama "Secret Service" was broadcast by PBS-TV on "Great Performances" in 1977, taped by WNET-TV (New York) from a production at the Phoenix Theatre in New York, and it was an excellent pro- gram. It was nice indeed to learn from Karen Ellery that the program now is available on videocassette from the Broadway Theatre Archive (Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407) (800-422-2827) for $34.90 postpaid. The stars of the production are better known today than they were in 1977: Meryl Streep, John Lithgow, and Mary Beth Hurt. Aug 01 #3 Norm Davis reports that his AMUSING, HOLMES! still is available ($20.00 postpaid, signed on request); his address is 168 Grimes Mill Road, Caribou, ME 04736. Some years ago (Jan 93 #4) I reported that: AMUSING, HOLMES! is a collection of Sherlockian humor perpetrated by Norman M. Davis, and unfortunately there are only 123 pages in the book. One can judge how good it is by the fact that John Bennett Shaw, in his Foreword, readily admits that he has read the book twice (and anyone who has visited John's library knows that he doesn't have time to read many books more than once). Or you can try to read aloud "Introducing Sherlock Holmes?" without laughing. Recommended. One more to add to the list of Investitured members of The Baker Street Ir- regulars who have acted in films: Jerry Margolin, who appeared as an extra in the HBO television film "The Last Innocent Man" (1987). THE PRIORY SCHOOL TYRE DIRECTIONAL GUIDE is a 12-page booklet now available from Len Haffenden; it's an illustrated version of the winning side of the debate at a meeting of The Stormy Petrels of British Columbia in April 1992 on whether Holmes could determine the direction a bicycle had traveled (the vote was "yes"). Len's address is 1026 West Keith Road, North Vancouver, BC V7P 3C6, Canada; the booklet costs CA$5.00 to Canada, US$5.00 elsewhere. Tyke Niver reports a new set of two mini bean bags (Inspector Mickey wear- ing deerstalker and inverness, and Super Sleuth Goofy holding a magnifying glass) in the latest Disney catalog (Box 29144, Shawnee Mission, KS 66201 (800-237-5751) ; $14.00 (item 23155-F31). Penelope Fitzgerald's THE KNOX BROTHERS (1977) was reprinted last year (Sep 00 #2), and it has now been reissued in paperback (Washington: Counterpoint Press, 2001; 304 pp., $16.00); she was the daughter and niece of two greats in the Sherlockian world: her father was E. V. Knox, who used the pen-name "Evoe" when he edited Punch in the years when it published much excellent Sherlockian material, and one of her uncles was Ronald Knox, who invented the grand game so many Sherlockians play (her other uncles were Dillwyn, a classical scholar and a noted code-breaker in both World Wars, and Wilfred, an Anglo-Catholic priest and teacher). Audio Book Contractors (Box 40115, Washington, DC 20016) offers readings of a long list of authors, including Arthur Conan Doyle. Their latest titles are THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR and THE VALLEY OF FEAR, each on four cassettes ($10.95 30-day rental, $29.95 purchase). Maxine Reneker discovered "The Invisible Library", a web-site maintained by Brian Quinette, who has catalogued more than a thousand books that can be found only in other books. It's at , and it includes books found in the Canon and in THE LOST WORLD. John Baesch has kindly forwarded an article from the Daily Telegraph (Aug. 1) about Japan's launch of personalized postage stamps, which allow you to have your own photograph printed on tabs attached to the stamps. As noted earlier (May 00 #1), P-stamps were introduced by Australia in 1999; Canada and Great Britain joined the movement last year. The world of Sherlockians will, one expects, eventually produce a Sherlockian personalized stamp. Aug 01 #4 This year's "A Saturday with Sherlock Holmes" (sponsored by the Sherlockian societies in Baltimore) will be held at the Enoch Press Free Library on Oct. 6, honoring the centennial of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (starting with morning coffee in the Edgar Allan Poe Room at 10:00, and ending at 1:00). There's no charge for the festivities, and the library is at 400 Cathedral Street in Baltimore. Further to the report (Jan 01 #8) of Michael Kurland's third Moriarty pas- tiche THE GREAT GAME (now out from St. Martin's Press at $23.95), the trade paperback THE INFERNAL DEVICE AND OTHERS (from St. Martin's at $18.95) off- ers not only the first two novels THE INFERNAL DEVICE and DEATH BY GASLIGHT but also "The Paradol Paradox" (a new Moriarty short story). Carole Nelson Douglas' CHAPEL NOIR: AN IRENE ADLER NOVEL (New York: Forge, 2001; 480 pp., $25.95), continues her series of mysteries about Irene Adler and Penelope Huxleigh and Sherlock Holmes, with plenty of suspense and der- ring-do, and some interesting surprises and supporting characters; it's s much darker story than the first four novels in the series, and it's nice to know that a sixth Irene Adler mystery (CASTLE ROUGE) is due next year. Robert Kraus died on Aug. 7. He wrote, illustrated, and edited more than 100 children's books, including (with his son Bruce) THE DETECTIVE OF LONDON (1978), and he was a prolific cover artist and cartoonist for The New Yorker. This cartoon ran in the magazine on Mar. 19, 1969, with the caption "Don't 'Elementary, my dear Watson,' me, McCloskey!" John Baesch has forwarded British newspaper reports on the discovery of the wreck of the Mary Celeste, which sailed from New York for Europe on Nov. 17, 1872, and 17 days later was found adrift off the Azores with no one aboard, creating a still-unsolved mystery of the sea (Arthur Conan Doyle offered his own solution in "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement"). The ship continued in service under other owners until 1884, when it was used in an insurance scam, scuttled in the Caribbean in hopes of collecting on highly-insured but non-existent cargo; the scheme failed when the ship was caught on a coral reef rather than sinking in deep water. American author Clive Cussler and a team of shipwreck experts held a press conference this month to announce that they located the wreck of the Mary Celeste, on Rochelois Reef off Haiti. You can celebrate "La maledizione dei Baskervilles" (sponsored by Uno Stu- dio in Holmes) in Firenze on Mar. 22-24, 2002. For more information, con- tact Gianluca Salvatori, P.O. Box 140, 55042 Forte dei Marmi (LU), Italy . "Sherlock Holmes and the Jackson Street Terror" is the mystery that Holmes and Watson and participants in a "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" will attempt to solve this year, on Nov. 2-4 in Cape May. The weekend includes a tour of the town's Victorian homes, and additional information is available from the Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts, Box 340, Cape May, NJ 08204 (609-884- 5404 ext 185) (800-275-4278 ext 185) . Aug 01 #5 Ian Ousby died on Aug. 6. He was an expert in European histo- ry, and a literary scholar, and he taught English in England and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s; according to his obituary in the Daily Telegraph, Ousby said that it was in America that he decided to abandon teaching, because his students "appeared to be better-dressed and to have more money than I did." His first book was BLOODHOUNDS OF HEAVEN: THE DETECTIVE IN ENGLISH FICTION FROM GODWIN TO DOYLE (1976), and he went on to edit reference standards such as THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (1988) and THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO FICTION IN ENGLISH (1998). Scott Monty has reported that The Baker Street Journal now has a web-site, at , where the electronically-enabled can see some of the BSJ's contents, subscribe, and order back issues and the CD-ROM disk with all issues through the end of 2000. Jill Castoral advertised "Sherlock Fox" in Miniature Collec- tor (Feb. 2001); he's a 6.25" posable doll available painted and dressed by the artist ($175.00), or as a do-it-yourself kit ($48.00 painted or $28.00 unpainted (add $5.00 for a set of patterns for the clothing). And she's at work on a Watson raccoon. Her address is 6320 Uplands Boulevard, Sarasota, FL 34243 (914-355-3525) . Joe Eckrich reports that The Parallelogram (published by The Parallel Case of St. Louis) will have a special supplement celebrating the centennial of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES; 50 pages of articles and other material, almost all of the contents in print for the first time, available for $10.00 postpaid (Joseph J. Eckrich, 914 Oakmoor Drive, Fenton, MO 63026). Further to the item (Jul 01 #4) on new Penguin Classics editions of Conan Doyle's books, Laurie R. King's appreciative essay about him ("Art in the Blood?") can be read at their web-site at . Don Hobbs has reported William Herbert "Skip" Boyer's article "The Masonic Game Is Afoot: Was Sherlock Holmes a Mason?" in the Aug. 2001 issue of The Scottish Rite Journal; the issue also has an article about Harry Houdini as a Mason. You can read the articles at ; copies of the issue on paper cost $1.00 postpaid (1733 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009. The Passengers' Log is published by The Sydney Passengers, and the current issue (60 pages) offers news, reviews, and scholarship from Australia, in- cluding an interesting article by Arthur Williams about actor H. G. Stoker, who played Watson with Eille Norwood as Holmes in the play "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" (1923); Stoker was Australian, and a Navy man, commanding (at age 31) the first submarine to pass through the Dardanelles and attack the Turkish battleships that had been shelling Allied troops at Gallipoli. After the war ended he was offered command of a cruiser, but instead decid- ed to pursue an acting career. And Phil Cornell offers a new (and amusing) cartoon pun on the famous "elementary" phrase. Information on membership and subscriptions is available from Bill Barnes (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly NSW 2095, Australia) . Aug 01 #6 E. T. Hall died on Aug. 11. He was an Oxford University pro- fessor who provided the scientific evidence that proved that Piltdown Man was a hoax; after later archaeological discoveries cast doubt on the fossil discovered in Sussex in 1912, Hall used x-ray fluorescence in 1953 to show that the bones had been stained with potassium dichromate, and found iron filings that indicated that orangutan teeth had been altered to make them look human. His scientific work didn't identify the culprit in the hoax, but many people have been accused since then, including (in 1983) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It wasn't until 1996 that real evidence turned up (May 96 #6), suggesting that the hoaxer was Martin A. C. Hinton, a curator at the Natural History Museum in London. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave Fidel Castro a 75th-birthday present on Aug. 12: a visit to "The Lost World" in Canaima National Park, which has the world's tallest waterfall (Angel Falls) as well as jungle-draped mesas that may have served as the inspiration for Conan Doyle's novel. Further to the review (Jul 01 #6) of Philip Weller's THE HOUND OF THE BAS- KERVILLES: HUNTING THE DARTMOOR LEGEND, the book launch coincided with an invasion of Dartmoor by The Baskerville Hounds: 55 enthusiasts in full cos- tume, attending from Britain, Europe, North America, and Japan, visited all 120 places on Dartmoor connected to the story, and of course there was some picturesque coverage in the local press. And while on the subject of costume, it was "optional but strongly encour- aged" for The Sherlock Holmes Society of London's "Golden Jubilee Baltic Cruise" which (with more than 80 Sherlockians aboard the MV Princess Danae) departed Harwich on Aug. 25 for Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Kiel, returning (if all goes well) to Harwich on Sept. 7. There have been no press reports of shipwreck or piracy, and it would appear that the ship lacks a connection to the Internet, since I've not seen any messages posted from voyagers to Sherlockian electronic mail- ing lists. Of course it's also possible that there's no time for e-mail, what with all the wining, dining, lectures, films, and excursions. HOLMES OF THE MOVIES: THE SCREEN CAREER OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1976) was David Stuart Davies' first Sherlockian filmography; he has pursued Holmes in the cinema and on television ever since, and the results of that research are now available in his STARRING SHERLOCK HOLMES (London: Titan Books, 2001; 191 pp., L29.99). The coverage runs from the earliest silent films to the latest television films starring Matt Frewer, and the discussion of films and programs, and actors and directors and producers, is both interesting and perceptive; the illustrations are just as important, and the book is full of them, many in full color and some of them quite hard to find (you will be able to see Jackie Coogan towering over Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in Hollywood in 1923) (well, Coogan is standing on a table). There's an extra benefit for those who can't decide between Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett as the ideal Holmes: the publisher has provided a "Janus" dust jacket, and you can decide for yourself which actor belongs on the front of the book. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Sep 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press I'm happy to report that all of the Sherlockians in New York and Washington seem to have avoided harm during the tragedy on Sept. 11 (a few, it should be noted, by only narrow margins). And we are grateful for the messages of concern and support from our friends elsewhere in the United States, and in other countries. People have asked how they can help: those who can donate whole blood or platelets can contact the American Red Cross (800-448-3543). For those who would like to donate money, two of the better organizations are the American Red Cross National Disaster Relief Fund (Box 97089, Wash- ington, DC 20090) (800-435-7669) and the United Way's September 11th Fund (95 M Street SW, Washington, DC 20024 (800-710- 8002) . "The World of Sherlock Holmes: Volume I: Lifestyles" is a new CD-ROM disk that will run on both Windows and Mackintosh platforms; it offers audio and video, and maps of London, Sherlock Holmes' horoscope, and a reference sec- tion and you can tour Holmes' sitting room and bedroom. The disk's avail- able from The World of Sherlock Holmes, 7 Candover Street, London W1W 7DN, England , and it costs L29.00 (including val- ue-added tax in the U.K.) or L24.68 (without VAT) plus shipping (L2.00 to the U.K., L2.75 to Europe, L3.50 elsewhere). Also from Classic Specialties for $45.00 postpaid (to U.S. addresses) (the price is higher to foreign ad- dresses) if you mention the magic word ("Scuttlebutt"); credit-card orders welcome (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) . Classic Specialties also offers their new fall mail-order catalog, with a fine selection of Sherlockian books, audiocassettes, videocassettes, calen- dars, prints, magazines, deerstalkers, and a new embroidered sweatshirt. Virgin Books celebrated Spike Milligan's 80th birthday with a special edi- tion of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES ACCORDING TO SPIKE MILLIGAN (May 98 #2), and the book has been reissued (L5.99). Milligan has some familiarity with the story: he played a Policeman in the Peter Cook/Dudley Moore film "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1978); he also played Sherlock Holmes in a skit broadcast in the BBC-TV "Q" series. Barry Day's SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE APOCALYPSE MURDERS (Palm Beach: Second Opinion, 2001; 191 pp., $11.00) is the fourth in his series of pastiches; Holmes (and Watson and Mycroft and Irene) are involved in a battle against a serial killer who intends to destroy London. Jeremy Brett toured the United States in 1991, promoting Granada's "Sher- lock Holmes" television series, and he was interviewed by Robert Aubry Dav- is for the "Desert Island Discs" program broadcast by WETA-FM (Washington). And Severine Rubin reports that The Jeremy Brett Society of France has pub- lished A THRILLING TIME: AN INTERVIEW WITH JEREMY BRETT, an 80-page booklet that has transcripts of the interview (in French and English), photographs, notes, and a CD with the program itself. Postpaid costs are fr 225/$31.23 (Europe) or fr 240/$33.32 (U.S. and Canada) or fr 260/$36.09 (elsewhere); checks welcome, but please add fr 23/$3.19 for bank charges. Payment can be sent to the society (Residence le Clos de l'Arc, entree 5, Avenue Gaston Berger, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France). Sep 01 #2 Reported by Janice L. Weiner in The Police Gazette (the news- letter of the Scotland Yarders): a Chicago Tribune (Aug. 12) review of Al Sarrantonio's WEST TEXAS (Lancaster: Stealth Press, 2001; 150 pp., $26.95); the novel's a western, and a mystery, and interesting: Thomas Mullin is a black Civil War veteran, who's also an avid reader of the Sher- lock Holmes stories (copies of The Strand Magazine mailed to him from New York), sent onto the high plains to find a senator's missing son, and Mull- in has learned from what he has read. The book's a reprint (the first edi- tion was published in 1990), and the Stealth Press address is 336 College Avenue, (Lancaster, PA 17603 (800-806-1660) ; shipping is free if you order from their web-site. An addition to the growing list of Investitured members of The Baker Street Irregulars who have acted in films: Jean Upton, who provided voices ("air- port announcer" and "obnoxious child on airplane" and others) for "Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence" (1998). Muse Entertainment's third television film starring Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Dr. Watson will air on the Hallmark Channel on Oct. 19 (repeating on Oct. 21 and 25); "Sherlock Holmes in 'The Royal Scan- dal'" combines "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Bruce-Partington Plans". The latest stamp in our "Legends of Hollywood" series honors Lucille Ball, who starred in the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer film "Best Foot Forward" (1943), and (as noted by Ted Schulz) had a line of Sherlockian dialogue: Tommy Dix (playing Winsocki Military Academy cadet Bud Hooper) says, "But I have the whole thing solved." To which Lucille Ball (as herself) replies, "Keep on solving, Sherlock." M. C. Black reports that he has organized first-Friday-of-the- month "club nights" for The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, on Oct. 5, Nov. 2, and Dec. 7, at the New Commonwealth Club at 18 Northum- berland Avenue (between Trafalgar Square and the Embankment underground station); members, prospective members, visitors, and friends are welcome: just show up at any time between 6:00 and 9:00 pm. There's no charge ex- cept for drinks or food purchased from the bar. There's no formal agenda, and if the gatherings attract a good turn-out, there will be more of them. The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has an extensive sales list, offering interesting items such as THE VICTORIAN CRICKET MATCH (a souvenir of their cricket match against the Wodehouse Society in June) (L3.00 postpaid to the U.K./L3.50 to Europe/$6.50 to the U.S./L4.50 elsewhere); HELPING OUT HOPE- LESS HOPKINS (a 36-page handbook for their summer tour of the locations of "The Golden Pince-Nez", "Black Peter", and "The Abbey Grange") (L7.00/L8.00 /$14.50/L9.00); its 50th-anniversary medal (golden color with blue ribbon) (L19.50L20.00/$29.50/L21.00); a "Swiss Navy" knife (in royal blue, with the Society logo inlaid in white metal) (same prices); a ladies' "Swiss Army" knife (in red, with the logo and slip case) (L10.50/L11.00/$16.00/L12.00); and a woollen scarf (60" long and 9" wide) in navy blue with their logo em- broidered in silver at each end (L16.95/L17.95/$29.50/L18.50). Request the list from Lynne Godden at Apple Tree Cottage, Smarden, Ashford, Kent TN27 8QE, England; their web-site URL is . Sep 01 #3 "Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes: The Pa- tient's Eyes" aired on BBC-1 on Sept. 4, starring Ian Richard- son as Dr. Joe Bell and Charles Edwards (instead of Robin Laing) as Arthur Conan Doyle; the 90-minute program is set in Southsea, five years after the opening show that was broadcast in 2000, it's the first of four scheduled by the BBC. The opening show aired in the U.S. on BBC America two months after it aired in the U.K., so cable viewers can watch for it; in the mean- time, the series has a web-site at . "Murder Rooms" faced strong competition in its time slot: "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" with a special edition featuring "Coronation Street" cast members had 10.6 million viewers and a 47% audience share; "Murder Rooms" had only 4.9 million viewers and a 22% audience share, according to a re- port in The Guardian. The second program ("The Photographer's Chair") aired on Sept. 18, and the third program ("The Kingdom of Bones") aired on Sept. 25. The fourth (and last) program ("The White Knight Stratagem") is scheduled to air on Oct. 2. Donald Thomas' THE SECRET CASES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES was published in Britain in 1997, and in the United States in 1998, and reissued as a trade paper- back (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999; 343 pp., $12.95); it's a collection of seven short stories that involve Holmes and Watson in mysteries in Lon- don, Dublin, Paris, and Yokohama. And (reported) his SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RUNNING NOOSE (London: Macmillan, 2001; 339 pp., L16.99) is a new coll- ection of short stories. Reported: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE LIMEHOUSE HORROR, by Philip Pullman (Lon- don: Nelson Thomas, 1999; 99 pp., L5.50); a short pastiche for children. Mona Morstein spotted the "Secret Hideaways" item in the October issue of Realm, about The Island at Newquay in Cornwall: it's a five-bedroom house that stands on a 70-foot-high slab of rock, accessible via its own suspen- sion footbridge from the adjacent clifftop (or you can climb 70 feet from the beach at low tide). According to Realm, "The house's inspiring views and unusual position appealed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who stayed there frequently when the house belonged to his friend, Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, inventor of the spark-plug." And it's for sale, offered for L500,000 by Lillicrap Chilcott (The Old Chapel, Greenbottom, Truro, Cornwall TR4 8QP, England . Sep 01 #4 Sherlockian philatelists (and philatelic Sherlockians) can re- quest a copy of Bruce Holmes' sales list, which includes photo- copy studies of postage stamps showing Sherlockian saints and dogs, actual "CPR" and "VR" perfins, and other interesting material; his address is 3170 Dutch Village Road #7, Halifax, NS B3L 4G1, Canada . That's the dress that Ida Lupino wore (as Ann Brandon) in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939); it's "designed by Gwen Wakeling, light blue floral bouquet gown with dark blue velvet pleated trim (top has been altered)". It was offered at auc- tion at eBay in January with a $2,000 minimum, and didn't sell, and again in August with a $750 minimum (as noted by Paul Sing- leton) and again didn't sell. If you're interested, the owner is Profiles in History (345 Maple Drive #212, Beverly Hill, CA 90210) (800-942-8856) . Doug Wrigglesworth discovered a Canadian radio dramatization of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", dramatized by Marian Waldman and broadcast by the CBC on "Adventure Theatre" in 1968, with Henry Comor (Sherlock Holmes) and Gerard Parkes (Dr. Watson); it's nicely done indeed, and offered on two one-hour cassettes for $23.99 or CA$26.99 postpaid by Scenario Productions (831 Glencairn Avenue #276, Toronto, ON M6B 2A4, Canada) (877-625- 5379) . Scenario also off- ers (at the same prices) "Mystery Theatre Vol. 1" with four 30-minute pro- grams aired by the CBC in 1966 and 1967; the stories are "The Noble Bache- lor" (with Robert Clothier as Holmes and Roy Brinson as Watson), Dorothy Davies' "Sight Unseen", Alan King's "The Kitchen Table", and Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart" (all nicely done as well). Reported: THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (VOLUME 2) from MPI Home Video ($14.98) with "The Crooked Man" and "The Speckled Band"; if you can't find it locally, MPI is at (800-777-2223) . The next DVD (with "The Blue Carbuncle" and "The Copper Beeches") is sched- uled for Nov. 27 ($14.98). Tony Earnshaw's AN ACTOR, AND A RARE ONE: PETER CUSHING AS SHERLOCK HOLMES (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2001; 146 pp. $26.50) is a splendid addition to Scarecrow's "Filmmakers Series"; Earnshaw has long been an admirer of Cush- ing's work, and has interviewed many people who worked with Cushing in his Sherlockian (and Doylean) films, television shows, and tape recordings, and the book is full of interesting comments and new information. And yes, he did make tape recordings: 13 one-hour readings of the stories in THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, for the Royal National Institute for the Blind in 1971 (not for sale, and loaned only to the visually handicapped). Certainly we would love to hear the radio series that the BBC offered Basil Rathbone in 1967, and to see the new film of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" that Cush- ing was considering at the end of the 1970s with the Hound created by stop- motion expert Ray Harryhausen (who made some brief test footage), and Cush- ing in a guest role he was offered in Granada's "The Last Vampyre" (a bro- ken hip prevented him from traveling to Manchester). Order from Scarecroww at Box 191, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214 (800-462-6420); shipping extra, and there's a 15% discount on web-site orders . Sep 01 #5 Reported: THE DANES OF SEND MANOR: THE LIFE, LOVES AND MYSTERY OF GORDON STEWART, by Robert Heal (Erin: Boston Mills Press, 2001; 320 pp., CA$34.95/ $25.95/L17.00); Gordon Stewart was an entrepreneur involved with aviation, motor cars, the theater, and Send Manor, which he designed as the world's best kennel. His Champion Egmund of Send starred in the film "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1932), and the book includes stills from and discussion of the film. The publisher is 132 Main Street, Erin, ON N0B 1T0, Canada . The current catalog from Roe of Books (Ponderosa Plaza, 209 Oswego Street, Liverpool, NY 13088) (877-286-0544) offers amusing Sherlockian "Bookworms" products that range from miniature replica books ($9.95) to table lamps ($98.95); that's the 8 in. high shelf sitter ($29.95) in the illustration. Thanks to Joe Coppola for spotting the catalog. Stephen Kendrick's HOLY CLUES: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SHERLOCK HOLMES was well-received two years ago (Jun 99 #1), and he has now turned to pastiche: Jeff Bradway has noted a publisher's forecast for Kendrick's NIGHT WATCH (due from Pantheon in November, $23.00); Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown investigate a murder mystery. The recreation of the sitting-room commissioned by Adrian Conan Doyle for the Chateau de Lucens in 1965 was designed by Michael Weight, who had done excellent work on the earlier version on display in Baker Street during the Festival of Britain in 1951; he had much room to work with in the chateau, and his second version was delightful. The chateau was closed to visitors in the 1990s, and it is nice to be able to report that the sitting-room has been installed in the Maison Rouge in Lucens, where it is again on view in the Musee Sherlock Holmes, which opened to the public on July 19. There is more information available at the web-site at . John Chaffin's dramatization of "A Study in Scarlet" premiered at Chaffin's Barn Dinner Theatre on Sept. 18, and it will run through Oct. 27; the thea- ter address is 8204 Highway 100, Nashville, TN 73221) (615-646-9977) (800- 282-2276) . Further to my earlier mention (Aug 01 #5) of The Passengers' Log (published by The Sydney Passengers), editor Rosane McNamara doesn't neglect the minor (but interesting) items: in the January issue she reported on an interview (in the Sydney Sunday Telegraph) with Kevin Spacey, who noted that Sherlock Holmes influenced Spacey's choice of a career: on a trip to London, at the age of 10, he saw a production of Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" in which the revolving scenery fell on Dr. Watson; the actor extracted himself, strolled upstage, lit a cigarette, and declared, "I knew I should never have moved to Kensington." Spacey recalls, "I thought it was incredible, the funniest thing I'd ever seen; that's what I wanted to do." And when Spacey told the story in the dressing room during a 1998 revival of "The Iceman Cometh" in London, Tim Pigott-Smith turned and said, "Yes, Dr. Watson was me." Infor- mation on subscriptions is available from Bill Barnes (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly NSW 2095, Australia) . Sep 01 #6 TALES FOR A WINTER'S NIGHT, which was first published in 1989 (Dec 89 #5), has a reprint edition (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1999; 207 pp., $14.95); it offers of eight of Conan Doyle's non-Sherlockian stories from ROUND THE FIRE STORIES (Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Tay- lor suggested in their CATALOG OF CRIME that the stories in that book "are worth reading even around a radiator". WHITE CHAPPEL, SCARLET TRACING was Iain Sinclair's first novel, published in Britain in 1987 (Jan 88 #6); it's a complex novel about antiquarian-book dealers, Jack the Ripper, and a hitherto-unknown first issue of A STUDY IN SCARLET. Sinclair is a well-known author now, and the book has been reiss- ued as a trade paperback (New York: Granta, 2001; 210 pp., $12.95). There's amusing Sherlockian artwork on and in a booklet ("Tak- ing the Mystery Out of Vaccines") found at a doctor's office; the booklet's available from Aventis Pasteur (Discovery Drive, Swiftwater, PA 18370) "Sherlock Holmes probably copied these studies for his own use from the '24 Caprices' by John Scott Eccles, written as a tut- or of the Fiorillo grade of difficulty which was also used by Charlie Peace, the famous 19th century violin virtuoso," Belg- ian composer Boudewijn Buckinx suggests, in the notes for his "Etudes Sherlock Holmes", recorded by violinist Paul Klinck on a PKP Produkties CD (PKP 009) that was issued in 1998. It's nicely done, and pleasantly evocative of the Sherlockian era, and the CD is available from Paul Klinck (Keizervest 24, B-9000 Gent, Belgium) for $12.00 postpaid (in U.S. currency, please). The sheet music also is available (in case you're a violinist, or merely a fanatic collector), from Chiola Music Press (29 via De Cesaris, I-651 Spoltore, Italy); the cost is E14.75 post- paid (payment in Euros, please). The Modern Library first published THE ADVENTURES AND MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES in 1946, and it has been in print ever since; there is now a revised edition with a new introduction by John Berendt (New York: Modern Library, 2001; 483 pp., $24.95). Roger Johnson reports that BBC Worldwide is considering issuing videocass- ettes of at least some of the surviving programs from the 1968 "Sherlock Holmes" series that starred Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock, and it would be nice if potential buyers let BBC Worldwide know that there's some interest in the programs, and that it would be a good idea to issue NTSC cassettes (for the U.S. and Japan) as well as PAL cassettes (for the U.K.). Comments can be sent to Gavin Collinson, BBC Worldwide (room A-3022), 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT, England . BBC Worldwide's earlier videocassette (PAL format only) with Douglas Wilmer and Nigel Stock in "The Speckled Band" and "The Illustrious Client" still is available (L14.99), along with two-cassette sets of the BBC Radio series starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams (L9.99 each) and a DVD of the Merrison/Williams "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (L12.99) from BBC Spoken Word (A-1047 Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT, England); there's a web-site at . Sep 01 #7 The Norwood Building Inspectors offer a day-by-day Sherlockian Calendar for 2002, book-size (8.5 x 11 in.) with two dates per page (four dates when the book is opened), and information for about cases and events; $16.00 postpaid (checks payable to the Sherlock Holmes Society of Charleston, please), and the society's address is (305 Highland Avenue, South Charleston, WV 25303) . The Calendars will be shipped in November to those who have ordered and paid. The animated television series "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" began in repeats on some (but not all) Warner Bros. channels at 7:30 am on Satur- day, Sept. 22. I'd appreciate hearing from people who get the series on their local stations. "The crate upon which I sit contains 2,000 napoleons packed between layers of lead foil," said Mr. Merryweather (in "The Red-Headed League"). And you can now have one for your very own: Frank Darlington spotted a mail-order catalog from Treasures from a Bygone Era (Box 81347, San Diego, CA 92138) (800-482-4179) that offers the 20-franc coins. minted in 1812 and in very fine condition (item 204541) for $295.00 each. Admirers of the Brigadier Gerard will find other items of interest in the catalog. Ken Lanza reports a new DVD title "Legendary Sherlock Holmes Movies" with three of the Rathbone/Bruce films ("Dressed to Kill", "The Woman in Green", and "Terror by Night"), scheduled from BFS Entertainment & Media on Oct. 9, ($9.98). Paul Martin spotted a discussion (in a catalog from The Common Reader) of David Markson's THIS IS NOT A NOVEL (Washington: Counterpoint Press, 2001; 188 pp., $15.00); it's a collection of "literary and artistic anecdotes" such as "Montaigne could not swim. Unfortunately neither could Shelley." Of special interest: "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was evidently the first person in England ever to receive a ticket for speeding." But: Daniel Stashower notes (in TELLER OF TALES, 1999, p. 249-250) that ACD was an enthusiastic motorist, and was "one of the first men in Britain ever to receive a speeding ticket, prompting an angry letter to the Daily Mail." The letter was published on Sept. 21, 1905, and reprinted in LETTERS TO THE PRESS, 1986, p. 108-109), and he reports that he had been caught "recently" by police in a speed trap at Folkestone. He also comments on "the energy of the police in seizing motorists, and that of the magistrates in taking their money," in and around Andover and Guildford during the summer, with 71 captures and 71 convictions in each district, and it is clear that there were others who were ahead of him in deserving the honor (if it was indeed an honor) of being the first to receive a speeding ticket. John Baesch has kindly forwarded a report from the Sunday Telegraph (Sept. 9, 2001) about a new advertising plan for Coutts, a 309-year-old bank that now styles itself as a dream team of bankers (pops stars and nearly half of the England football squad have accounts at Coutts, according to the bank, which several years ago abolished its famous frock coats). One of the ad- vertisements shows an office door with a sign for Coutts' "dream team" pri- vate detective agency: Holmes, Poirot & Marlowe. Sep 01 #8 Carl Heifetz reports that PBS Home Video (1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314 (800-645-4727) offers the Granada "Sherlock Holmes" series: "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" and "More Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (each with five programs on five cassettes) cost $99.98 each, and "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" (six pro- grams on six cassettes) costs $119.98; all three sets for $289.94. Ray Betzner reports that Moonstone Comics has begun a new series of "Sher- lock Holmes" comic books, with stories by Joe Gentile and artwork by Rich Gulick and Mike Bianco; 32 pp., $2.95 each, and at least two issues due. Warren Randall (15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauket, NY 11720-1346) offers a new lapel pin suitable for everyone who attends the birthday festivities in New York in Jan- uary: the pin is 2" in diameter, with the Statue of Lib- erty in green on a silhouette of Sherlock Holmes in yel- low. $7.50 at the dealers' room at the Hotel Algonquin in January, or $9.00 postpaid now from Warren. "The West End Horror" is a new play, based on the novel by Nicholas Meyer and dramatized by Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge; it will open off-Broadway at the CAP21 Theater in New York on Oct. 30, and run through Nov. 25. The theater is at 15 West 28th Street, and tickets will cost $40.00 (or $35.00 if you order by Oct. 20); a 15% discount is available for groups of ten or more people. You can order by mail from CAP21, 18 West 18th Street (6th floor), New York, NY 10011 (212-807-0202) . Forecast from Carroll & Graf: SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA, by Alan Vanneman (in December, $24.00); SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE FROM THE CRYPT AND OTHER TALES, by Donald Thomas (in March, $25.00). Roger Llewellyn continues to tour in Britain in David Stuart Davies' play "Sherlock Holmes - The Last Act!", and next January will have a week's run in Antibes in the south of France. The fall issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has Cliff Goldfarb's article on "Brigadier Gerard" material in the collection, and Victoria Gill's report on the library's spiritualist material related to Conan Doyle's family after his death. The newsletter is available from Doug Wrigglesworth (16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada) . Doug also sends word that the "Footprints of the Hounds" conference will be held as scheduled, on Oct. 19-21, at the Delta Chelsea in Toronto, and that space still is available. You can request de- tails from Ted Gurr . And for those wondering about what the birthday festivities in New York will include: watch this space. As usual, the next issue will include a forecast of events from Thursday (Jan. 10) to Sunday (Jan. 13, 2002). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Oct 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The September issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sher- lock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota has Julie McKuras' report on this summer's conference (with many photographs of exhibits and participants), Daniel Stashower's "100 Years Ago" response to an accusation that Conan Doyle was a plagiarist, and notes on recent acquisitions such as include artifacts from annual dinners of the Maiwand Jezails, and the Sher- lockian scrapbook kept by Katherine McMahon. You can request a copy of the newsletter from Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . Sorry about that: the Clive Merrison/Michael Williams radio version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is not available on a DVD (as noted Sep 01 #6), but rather as a two-CD set (Bert Coules reports) for L12.99 from BBC Spoken Word (A-1047 Woodlands, 80 Wood Lane, London W12 0TT, England); their web- site is at . Forecast: MORE HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenber, and Carol-Lynn Waugh (Nov 99 #5), reprinted as a trade paper- back by Berkley in November ($13.00); eleven short-story pastiches by auth- ors such as Anne Perry, Daniel Stashower, Peter Lovesey, Jon L. Breen, Bar- bara Paul, L. B. Greenwood, and Edward D. Hoch. Also: DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HOLMES, by Loren D. Estleman (Jun 79 #1); reprinted as a trade paperback by Pocket Books in November ($12.00); "Holmes uses his expertise as a chemist to explain a mysterious gap" in Robert Louis Stevenson's story. Bruce Southworth reports that the first edition of Stephen Kendrick's HOLY CLUES: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO SHERLOCK HOLMES (1999) now is available at Barnes & Noble discounted at $4.98; it's an interesting discussion of the faith, reason, mystery, and philosophy one can find in the Sherlock Holmes stories, especially with an expert guide. The production of "The West End Horror" scheduled for this fall (Sep 01 #8) has been postponed; the play will open off-Broadway at the CAP21 Theater in New York on June 11, and close on July 7, 2002. The theater is at 15 West 28th Street, and the box office address is 18 West 18th Street (6th floor), New York, NY 10011 (212-807-0202) . The British Royal Mint's Victorian anniversary crown (Feb 01 #3) with the reverse showing a young Victoria (based on the William Wyon portrait used on the world's first postage stamps), and a backdrop representing the iron- work of the famed Crystal Palace, is still available in an illustrated pre- sentation folder for $16.50 (plus shipping), and in other formats such as a silver proof ($49.95) and a gold proof ($925.00), and you can request their illustrated brochure: British Royal Mint, Cheyenne, WY 82008-0031 (800-221- 1215) (Canada 800-563-5943) (U.K. 01443-623322) . Daniel Stashower's TELLER OF TALES: THE LIFE OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1999), read unabridged by Richard Matthews on 11 90-minute audiocassettes, now is available from Books on Tape (Box 7900, Newport Beach, CA 92658 (800-626- 3333) for purchase ($66.00) or 30-day rental ($16.95); shipping extra, and there's a 5% discount if you order on-line. Oct 01 #2 Fats Waller mentioned Sherlock Holmes in the lyrics of his re- cording of "Somebody Stole My Gal" for Victor in 1935 (as Lord Donegall noted in the Sherlock Holmes Journal in 1972), and it was the ear- liest known record with Sherlockian lyrics. But Ken Lanza has found Sher- lockian lyrics on an earlier and different recording: "Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes" (by the Spirits of Rhythm for Decca in 1934). Leo Watson and Doug- las Daniels founded the group, and Otis Ferguson's enthusiastic tribute to them was published in The New Republic (Feb. 3, 1941); it's also available at . The electronically- enabled can hear the piece at , and it also is available on two CDs: SPIRITS OF RHYTHM 1933-1945 (Classics 1028) and SPIRITS OF RHYTHM 1932-34 (Retrieval RTR 79004 JAZZ); $17.97 each. There is some overlap on the two CDs, of course, but the Retrieval CD is of special interest (it offers two slightly different recording-session takes of "Dr. Watson and Mr. Holmes"). The sixth issue of the new Strand Magazine has arrived, with editor Andrew Gulli's interesting interview with Christopher Lee, and fiction (including a Sherlockian pastiche by David Ellis, and a W. G. Grace pastiche by Judith Cutler), and reviews and articles. Subscriptions (four issues) cost $24.95 (U.S. and Canada) or $35.95 (elsewhere); the address is Box 1418, Birming- ham, MI 48012 (800-300-6652) (UK: 800-961-280) . The deerstalkered Santa sold last year in the "Stuff- ins" soft-toy "The Island of Misfit Toys" series (Oct 00 #6 and Dec 00 #3) is now offered (greeting Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer) as the first in a monthly ser- ies of "Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys" figur- ines ($26.99 each postpaid) (you can cancel your sub- scription at any time) from The Hamilton Collection at 9204 Center for the Arts Drive, Niles, IL 60714) (877- 268-6638) . Reported in a "19th Century Studies" catalog at hand from Ashgate (131 Main Street, Burlington, VT 05401) : ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE AND THE MEANING OF MASCULINITY, by Diana Barsham (2000, 320 pp., $84.95); Barsham suggests that Conan Doyle "used his fame as the creator of Sherlock Holmes to refigure the spirit of Brit- ish Imperialism." Also: GEORGE NEWNES AND THE NEW JOURNALIST IN BRITAIN, 1880-1910, by Kate Jackson (2001, 342 pp., $79.95); Newnes' "new journal- ism" included The Strand Magazine, The Westminster Gazette, Tit-Bits, and The Wide World Magazine (all contained material by and about Conan Doyle). Dagmar died on Oct. 9. She was born Virginia Ruth Egnor, and took the name Dagmar when she joined "Broadway Open House" on NBC-TV in 1950. She was a statuesque blonde, described in the N.Y. Times as combining "the voluptuous curves of a Venus, the provocative grace of a young Mae West, and the vir- tue of a Girl Scout." She also performed in the theater, summer stock, and Las Vegas; and she was a regular on "Hollywood Squares" and recorded a duet with Frank Sinatra. And in 1954 she appeared on "The Buick Berle Show" in a 17-minute skit with about a stolen car, with Milton Berle, Mickey Spill- ane, and Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Oct 01 #3 The centenary of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is getting a lot of attention this year, but Sherlockians can also celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of a man whose vocabulary was described by Holmes as "nervous and tense." That was George Bradshaw, of course; he was born on July 29, 1801, according to an article in the October issue of The Railway Magazine (kindly forwarded by John Baesch), and died in Norway on Sept. 6, 1853, a victim of Asian cholera, but his railway guides contin- ued to be published until June 1961. Ron Fish (Box 4, Circleville, NY 10919) is work- ing on a new reference work that will include information on Sherlockians, and on Sherlockian societies and their meeting dates in 2002 (The Common- place Book will be available in January). Questionnaires, for individuals and societies, are available on request from Ron. It's a bit late, but: further to the report (Feb 01 #2) about the L18 bill- ion bid by Lloyds TSB Group to acquire Abbey National, thus becoming Brit- ain's second-largest bank, the takeover was blocked by the British govern- ment on July 10. Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Patricia Hewitt accepted the findings and recommendations of the Competition Commission and the advice of the Director General of Fair Trading that the merger would be against the public interest because of its adverse effect on competition. Herbert L. Block died on Oct. 7. He used the sig- nature "Herblock" for his editorial cartoons, and he began his career with the Chicago Daily News in 1929; he joined the Washington Post in 1946, and he was widely regarded as one of the best journalists ever to have picked up a pen. He won three Pulit- zer Prizes and shared a fourth, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1994. His first known use of the Sherlockian image came in 1947, in a lampoon of Reps. Rankin and Thomas and the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigation of Hollywood, and he drew many more S'ian cartoons over the years; the most recent on ran on Feb. 18, 2001, with a comment on voting machines. John le Carre, once asked about "writers who mean the most to you," and replied, "P. G. Wodehouse for rhythm and timing. Conan Doyle for thrust and in- stant atmosphere." And le Carre has included Sher- lockian allusions in many of his books, including his novel OUR GAME (Aug 95 #5) (and available in a paperback edition from Ballantine); it's an ex- cellent book about secret service agents involved with and in the conflict on the southern border of Russia (and offering some real insight into the reasons for that conflict). Further to the item (Jun 01 #3) about the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London (where you can view two paintings by Sherlock Holmes' great-great-grand-un- cle Claude-Joseph Vernet), Lottie Cole reports that "An Italianate Harbour Scene" has been adopted for conservation (at a cost of L4,000). The gall- ery's web-site is at . Oct 01 #4 This has been a banner year for Sherlockians who like to attend major seasonal events, hither and yon: the grand gourmet dinner at the Culinary Institute of America was held last spring, and there was a fine Sherlockian conference in Minneapolis this summer, and about 140 Sher- lockians and Doyleans were on hand for "Footprints of the Hound" in Toronto this month, when it was easy to see how simple it is to put on an wonderful conference, if a lot of locals spend two or three years arranging it. The conference was delightful, and I expect there will be a long report on the festivities in Canadian Holmes, so I will tell only one story here, about Canadian immigration: Sir Christopher Frayling, knighted earlier this year for his contributions to arts and letters (including an hour on "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in his 1996 television series "Nightmare: The Birth of Victorian Horror"), was one of the featured speakers; he arrived from England and explained to Canadian immigration that he coming to lecture at a conference, and wasn't being paid, and (asked what the conference was about) decided that he ought to give a suitably dignified answer, and said, "crime fiction." And he was led off to an interrogation room and questioned thoroughly. Other visitors (including this reporter), when asked about the conference, mentioned Sher- lock Holmes and were zipped through with a wave and a smile. Visitors to Toronto will also enjoy the splendid exhibition at the Toronto Public Library (at 789 Yonge Street) through Dec. 2. There are manuscript pages from "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on display (from public and pri- vate collections, and other rare and interesting Sherlockian and Doylean material, and it's always possible to tour (by appointment, please) the Ar- thur Conan Doyle Collection itself. Canadian Holmes (mentioned above) is the quarterly journal of The Bootmak- ers of Toronto, costs $20.00 a year; checks payable to the society can be sent to Derek Thorpe (5 Brownlea Avenue, Toronto, ON M9P 2R5, Canada). The U.S. postal service has continued its annual tributes to the stars of Warner Bros. cartoons, this year honoring Porky Pig, who appeared in "Deduce, You Say!" (1956) as Dr. Watkins (with Daffy Duck as Dorlock Homes); Daffy was honored earlier (Apr 99 #5). The complicated relationship between Conan Doyle and Houdini continues to intrigue authors of all sorts: "Listen Houdini" is a new play that opened on Oct. 18 at the Axis Theatre in New York; it runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 pm un- til Dec. 22, run through Dec. 22, starring Jim Sterling (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and Robert Cucuzza (Houdini) in a confrontation about the medium Margery Crandon. The Axis Company is an off-Broadway experimen- tal theater group, and the theater is located at One Sheridan Square (near Seventh Avenue) (212-807-9300) . Herbert Ross died on Oct. 9. He began his theatrical career as a choreo- grapher, with the American Ballet Theatre and on Broadway and in film, and became a film director in 1969; he directed more than two dozen films over the years, and produced and directed "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (1976). Oct 01 #5 John Linton's splendid Sherlockian and Pontine prints delighted collectors in the 1970s (you can see some of his earlier art- work in the Sept. 1973, Dec. 1973, and June 1974 issues of The Baker Street Journal), and he has a new print, honoring "The Hound of the Baskervilles", with a properly fearsome hound, and Holmes and Watson, and (look carefully) a self-portrait of John; it measures 18 x 12 in. and it costs $13.00 post- paid from John Linton (704 Burgundy Drive, Rockville, MD 20850). And my use of the word "Pontine" is a nice excuse to mention Luther Norris, who had a wonderful time presiding over The Praed Street Irregulars, which was his way of paying tribute to The Baker Street Irregulars, in the same way that August Derleth, at the end of the 1920s, created Solar Pons (who lived in Praed Street) as a tribute to Sherlock Holmes. Derleth wrote more tales about Pons than Conan Doyle did about Holmes, and Solar Pons was only a small part of what Derleth wrote. There's an August Derleth Society, and a newsletter; membership costs $15.00 a year (Box 481, Sauk City, WI 53583) . The society also offers reprints of many of Der- leth's books, including the Solar Pons stories. Hirotaka Ueda's continuing "EQ Sherlockiana" column (each with an imagina- tive Sherlockian sketch by the author) appeared in every issue of issue of the bimonthly Japanese edition of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine from Mar. 1980 to May 1999 (the Japanese magazine ceased publication in July 1999); the first collection of his columns was SHERLOCK HOLMES DAIHAKURANKAI (Jul 89 #4), and the second collection is SHERLOCK HOLMES YUYU GAKUGAKU [A JOY- FUL STUDY ON SHERLOCK HOLMES] (Tokyo: Thodo-sha, 2001; 241 pp., Y1,700). Reported: THE TRUE CRIME FILES OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, edited by Stephen Hines and with an introduction by Steven Womack (New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 2001; 304 pp., $22.95); a collection of what he wrote about his in- vestigation of crimes such as the George Edalji and Oscar Slater cases. GRAMERCY PARK, by Paula Cohen (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002; 357 pp., $24.95); due in Jan/Feb, and already picked up by the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Doubleday Book Club, and there will be a British edition (from The Fourth Estate) and Italian and Spanish editions. Paula calls the book "historical suspense", closest in spirit to Daphne du Maurier's REBECCA, but set in Edith Wharton's New York. The novel opens in New York in 1894, when Mario Alfieri, the world's greatest tenor, moves in- to an elegant mansion facing Gramercy Park and encounters a bewitching or- phan named Clara Adler. Paula is "Lady Mary Brackenstall" amongst the Ad- venturesses of Sherlock Holmes. Bert Coules reports that "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" goes into studio at the end of October, for broadcast by BBC Radio in January and February next year. Clive Merrison returns as Sherlock Holmes, and An- drew Sachs will be Dr. Watson; Sachs played the King of Bohemia in the BBC version of "A Scandal in Bohemia" (and to show just how interesting radio can be, many of you have seen Sachs on television in the John Cleese series "Fawlty Towers", playing the Barcelonan waiter Manuel). There will be five program: "The Peculiar Persecution of Mr. John Vincent Hardin", "The Star of the Adelphi", "The Singular Inheritance of Miss Gloria Wilson", "The Sa- viour of Cripplegate Square", and "The Madness of Colonel Warburton". Oct 01 #6 Plan ahead: Laurie R. King, author of the Mary Russell series and other mystery novels, will be the guest of honor at Left Coast Crime 12, on Mar. 21-24, 2002, in Portland (Box 18033, Portland, OR 97218 . And Bouchercon 2002 ("Longhorns of the Law") will be in Austin on Oct. 17-20, 2002; Mary Willis Walker and George Pelecanos will be guests of honor (Box 27277, Austin, TX 78755) . Further to the report (Sep 01 #8) of a new series of comic books from Moon- stone, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CLOWN PRINCE OF LONDON now is in the shops ($2.95); written by Joe Gentile and illustrated by Rich Gulick. Moonstone is at 582 Torrence Avenue, Calumet City, IL 60409 . This year's Christmas Annual of The Baker Street Journal is "On the Shoul- ders of Giants: Jack Tracy and the Encyclopaedia Sherlockian", by Christo- pher and Barbara Roden, offering a history (based on Jack's correspondence) of how Jack's splendid reference work was conceived, created, and (after a long struggle) published. The annual is not part of subscriptions to the BSJ, and you'll need to place your orders by Dec. 1 in order to be sure of getting a copy. Orders can be sent to The Baker Street Journal (Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331); $11.00 postpaid in the U.S. (checks only, please), and $12.00 postpaid to other countries (credit-card orders welcome). George Gately died on Sept. 30. His "Heathcliff" was a stylish cartoon cat who debuted on the comic pages in 1973 (and is thus five years older than Garfield), and then appeared on TV. His brother said that Gately had once hoped to be a musician, but Heathcliff became so popular that he was too busy drawing. This panel ran on July 1, 1989. Philip J. Carraher's SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEAD RABBITS SOCIETY: THE LOST REMINISCENCE OF JOHN H. WATSON, MD (Bloomington: 1stBooks Libra- ry, 2001; 142 pp., $13.98) has Holmes in disguise in the United States during the Great Hiatus (with- out Watson, who managed nevertheless to write the story in 1908 and tuck it away for discovery now). You can order the book from bookstores, or from the publisher (2595 Vernal Pike, Bloomington, IN 47404 (800-839-9640) . Fans of the "Nero Wolfe" series running on Arts & Entertainment cable will be glad to hear that production has started on "Death of a Doxy" (scheduled for broadcast on Apr. 30). Sharon Doyle (who dramatized the story) reports that it will be set circa 1965, the year it was written. Further to the report (Aug 01 #5) about Laurie R. King's appreciative essay about Arthur Conan Doyle ("Art in the Blood?") that Penguin Classics made available at its web-site, the essay vanished from the web-site soon after- ward. But it's now available elsewhere, and still nicely written, at Lau- rie's own web-site , along with a link to the Mary Russell electronic mailing list, and lots of new about Laurie, her tours, and her books. Oct 01 #7 Sherlock Holmes' 148th birthday will be celebrated on Friday, Jan. 11, with the traditional festivities in New York, but the festivities actually will begin on Thursday at 9:00 am at the Hotel Algon- quin (59 West 44th Street), whence Jim Cox will lead the annual Christopher Morley Walk, which ends with lunch at McSorley's. The BSI's Distinguished Speaker Lecture begins at 6:15 pm on the 6th floor of the Williams Club at 24 East 39th Street (between Madison and Park Avenues); the speaker will be Bert Coules, who dramatized most of the Canon for the BBC radio broadcasts starring Clive Merrison and Michael Williams as Holmes and Watson ($10.00); seating is limited, and you are advised to reserve early; details below). Friday begins with the Martha Hudson Breakfast, from 7:00 to 10:00 in the Oak Room at the Hotel Algonquin at 59 West 44th Street; the hotel provides its guests with a continental breakfast, and others are welcome to attend each day (and pay $16.00; details below). The William Gillette Memorial Luncheon starts at noon, at Moran's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant at 146 Tenth Avenue at 19th Street; $37.00 (Susan Rice, 125 Washington Place #2-E, New York, NY 10014). And Otto Penzler will hold his traditional open house at The Mysterious Bookshop (129 West 56th Street) from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm; Sherlockian authors will be on hand to sign their books. The Baker Street Irregulars will gather at 6:00 pm at the Union League Club at 38 East 37th Street. The Baskerville Bash (open to all Sherlockians and their friends) offers dinner and entertainment at 6:30 pm at the Manhattan Club at 201 West 52nd Street (between Broadway and Seventh Avenue); $75.00 until Dec. 15, then $85.00 (Paula J. Perry, 346 East 87th Street #4-A, New York, NY 10128) (please tell her your e-mail ad- dress, and primary Sherlockian society affiliation). Early reservations are advised for the William Gillette luncheon and the Baskerville Bash. Those who wish to have seasonal souvenirs in the dinner packets can send 175 copies (for the BSI) to James B. Saunders (3011 47th Street, Astoria, NY 11103) and 125 copies (for the Bash) to Francine Kitts (35 Van Cortlandt Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10301); your material should arrive by Dec. 15. On Saturday a wide variety of Sherlockiana will be offered in the dealers' room on the 2nd floor of the Hotel Algonquin (59 West 44th Street), 9:30 am to 12:30 pm; Ralph Hall 2906 Wallingford Court, Louisville, KY 40218 (502- 491-3148) has information on dealers tables. The Clients of Adrian Mulliner (devotees of the works of both John H. Wat- son and P. G. Wodehouse) will hold a Junior Bloodstain (a rather less than totally reverent gathering) at the Hotel Algonquin at 12:30 pm (possibly in the lobby, or elsewhere, depending on how many people show up). If you're planning to attend, please let Anne Cotton know (12 Hollywood Street, South Hadley, MA 01075) . The BSI annual reception, open to all Sherlockians and their friends, will be held on Saturday afternoon from 2:30 to 5:30, at the National Arts Club at 15 Gramercy Park (on 20th Street between Park and Third Avenues); there will be an open bar, and hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, and the usual tradi- tional and untraditional entertainment, and the cost of the event is $45.00 (details below) or $55.00 at the door. Oct 01 #8 And the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes will hold an informal brunch on Sunday, at 11:30 am at the Baker Street restaurant at 1152 First Avenue (at 63rd Street); it's open to all, and reservations are advised, to Marina Stajic (425 East 51st Street #4-A, New York, NY 10022) . The Baker Street Irregulars are a tax-exempt organization, and Mike Whelan has arranged with the Hotel Algonquin for single or double rooms at $179.00 a night (Tuesday through Sunday); this is the total cost, since there is no tax due on reservations arranged by the BSI (the special rate is the equiv- alent of $156.00 plus tax). Other charges (room service, telephone calls, meals, drinks, etc.) are not covered. The offer is available to all Sher- lockians; contact the Algonquin directly (there's a firm mid-December cut- off deadline) and ask for the Baker Street Irregulars rate (212-840-6800). And here are the details: you can request a reservation form for the Thurs- day lecture, the Martha Hudson breakfast, and the Saturday reception, from Michael F. Whelan, 7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278; please see that your reservations are received by Mike by Dec. 15. Mary Ellen Rich has kindly provided a list of hotels that offer reasonable (as defined by New York landlords) rates, along with a warning about non- optional extras: $2.00 a day occupancy tax, 8.25% state tax, and 5% city tax. Ask for the lowest available rate, don't be shy about asking for dis- counts (AAA, senior, corporate), and if you plan to arrive on Thursday you should confirm that weekend rates apply, and request written confirmation. Quality Inn (59 West 46th St.) $80 corporate single/double) (212-719-2300); Best Western President (234 West 48th St.) $84 single $92 double (212-246- 8800); Vanderbilt Y (224 East 47th St. at Second Ave.) $85 single/$95 doub- le (shared baths) (212-756-9600); Red Roof Inn (6 West 32nd St.) $90 corpo- rate single/$100 double (212-643-7100); Hampshire Hotel (157 West 47th St.) $99 single/$109 double/$139 suite (212-768-3700); Wellington Hotel (55th St. at 7th Ave.) $119 "America's special" single/double (212-247-3900); Pickwick Arms Hotel (230 East 51st St.) $125 single/double (212-355-0300); Hotel Pennsylvania (401 7th Ave. at 33rd St.) $129 single/double (212-736- 5000); Holiday Inn (440 West 57th St.) $129 "great rate" single/double (212 -581-8100). Mary Ellen also recommends for spec- ials and general information, and for last-minute bargains. The Dr. John H. Watson Fund offers financial assistance to all Sherlockians (membership in the BSI is not required) who might otherwise not be able to participate in the weekend's festivities. A carefully pseudonymous John H. Watson presides over the fund and welcomes contributions, which can be made by check payable to John H. Watson and sent (without return address on the envelope) to Dr. Watson, care of The Baker Street Irregulars, at 7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278; your letters are forwarded unopened, and Dr. Watson will acknowledge your generosity. Requests for assistance can also be mailed to Dr. Watson at the same address. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Nov 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Bouchercon 2001 ("A Capital Mystery") attracted 1,600 fans and authors to Washington; Sue Grafton was the American guest of honor, Peter Lovesey was the international guest of honor, and Edward D. Hoch was honored for life- time achievement. There was a panel on "Sherlock Holmes and His Creator", another on "Gaslight Detectives", and Daniel Stashower did an excellent job of impersonating Harry Houdini on the panel on "Keeping in Character". And Peter Lovesey spoke at the awards banquet and brought a letter from a dis- tinguished Briton who couldn't attend the convention because he was a hun- dred years old. The letter was from Baskerville Hall, and Lovesey read it: "Woof! Woof!" Audiocassettes of all the Bouchercon 2001 panels and interviews are avail- able from the Audio Recording Service, 1414 John Brown Road, Queenstown, MD 21658) . Bouchercon 2002 ("Longhorns of the Law") will be in Austin, Oct. 17-20; the guests of honor will be Mary Willis Walker and George Pelecanos (Box 27277, Austin, TX 78755) . Bouchercon 2003 ("Where the Odds Favor Mystery") will be held in Las Vegas, Oct. 16-19; the guests of honor will be James Lee Burke and Ian Rankin (SHP, 507 South 8th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147) . And (planning well ahead) Bouchercon 2004 will be in Toronto, Oct. 7-10 (Box 7, Thornhill, ON L3T 3N1, Canada) . Trevor Raymond reports that the anthology STORIES AND POEMS FOR EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT CHILDREN OF ALL AGES, edited by Harold Bloom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001; 578 pp., $27.50), is arranged by season, and includes (in the section for "Autumn") "The Problem of Thor Bridge". Spradlin & Associates (Box 863, Lapeer, MI 48446) offer an attractive deck of playing cards, with Paget and Steele portraits of principal characters on the court cards (Moriarty's on the jokers), and Canonical quotations on the others; $12.00 a deck, plus shipping. Also available are three differ- rent coffee mugs with Paget artwork and appropriate quotations; $8.00 each, plus shipping. Credit-card orders per order, and you can write for an il- lustrated flier. Sorry about that: 1stBooks Library is at 2595 Vernal Pike, Bloomington, IN 47404 (088-938-8640) . Don Izban's SBIOS (Sherlockians by Invitation Only Society) has a new lapel pin (in pewter), available for $20.00 postpaid from Classic Specialties, Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219. The conference in Toronto last month was an occasion for exhibits at three different sites: the Toronto Reference Library showed its delightful "Foot- prints of the Hound" display of manuscripts and other material; the Merril Collection (of science fiction and fantasy) offered "Mysterious Worlds: A Tribute to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" with four display cases of books in that genre, by Conan Doyle and others; and the Osborne Collection (of children's books) showed some interesting Conan Doyle material and related items. The catalog for the "Footprints of the Hound" exhibit is well written and well illustrated; copies are available on request (and free) from Victoria Gill, Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON M4W 2G8, Canada . And one of the conference souvenirs offered Peter Calamai's careful histor- ical research: "MASTERLY INACTIVITY": THE CANADIAN BASKERVILLES: THE COUN- TRY'S FIRST SHERLOCKIAN SCION, 1945-1961 is a 32-page pamphlet that costs $10.00 (or CA$13.00) postpaid from The Bootmakers of Toronto, 5 Brownlea Avenue, Etobicoke, ON M9P 2R5, Canada. It also was interesting to see just how cosmopolitan a city Toronto is: the Toronto Public Library system offers children's programs in Cantonese, Eng- lish, French, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, and Vietnamese. There has been discussion among some of the subscribers to the electronic Sherlockian mailing list The Hounds of the Internet about how to pronounce the word "S'ian" (a usage found occasionally in this newsletter). "S'ian" is, of course, a contraction rather than a word, and it is a contraction I use (to avoid confusion) only if the word "Sherlockian" has appeared ear- lier in the same paragraph. For those who feel a need to pronounce (rather than merely read) the contraction, I would suggest that the pronunciation "sher-lock-i-an" will serve nicely. "Agatha Christie and Archaeology: Mystery in Mesopotamia" is a new exhibi- tion at the British Museum, about her work with her husband Max Mallowan at sites such as Ur, Nineveh, and Nimrud. The exhibition opened on Nov. 8 and runs through Mar. 24, according to the flier at hand from John Baesch, and during the first month (act quickly) you have an opportunity to explore an Orient Express carriage in the forecourt of the museum. There's a web-site at . Nov 01 #3 Bits & Pieces (1 Puzzle Place, Stevens Point, WI 54481) (800- 544-7297) continues to offer its mystery jigsaw puzzles in "The Continuing Adventures of Sherlock Holmes": "The Watson Inheritance" and "The Case of the Fallen Actress" cost $10.95 each, or $16.95 for the pair. Charles J. Blinderman, whose THE PILTDOWN INQUEST (1987) covered the hoax in great detail, with discussions of all the likely and unlikely suspects (one of the unlikely being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), has joined with David Joyce to create at web-site at that off- ers thorough cover of the affair. They have another web-site about T. H. Huxley, whose work influenced Darwin and others, and might have influenced Sherlock Holmes (although that's not covered at the web-site); "The Huxley File" is at . Jerry Wachs offers lapel pins for the 25th an- niversary of The Sir James Saunders Society, and for The Epilogues of Sherlock Holmes; they cost $10.00 each (plus $1.00 for shipping per order) from Jerry (One Lincoln Plaza, 20 West 64th Street #32-J, New York, NY 10023. Further to the report (Sep 00 #6) about Rodger Garrick-Steele's claim that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a plagiarist and a murderer (he allegedly coll- uded with his publishers to deny B. Fletcher Robinson recognition for de- vising the plot and supplying much of the local detail for THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, and then in 1907, worried that his affair with Fletcher Rob- inson's wife Gladys would be discovered, poisoned Fletcher Robinson with laudanum), Garrick-Steele never did find a publisher for his book detailing his expose. Now, according to a story, in the Torquay Herald Express (Nov. 2), reported by Jon Lellenberg, Garrick-Steele has charged Conan Doyle with the murder of British naturalist Charles Dawson, the motive being that Daw- son was aware that Conan Doyle had perpetrated the Piltdown hoax. Garrick- Steele's evidence was found during an excursion to the Northern Territories in Australia, and he plans to send a dossier to Scotland Yard. He also has challenged "devoted Sherlockians" to refute his charges: "If this is true, they are covering for a serial murderer. If they don't know this then they are fools indeed." The eleventh volume of The Shoso-in Bulletin, published by The Men with the Twisted Konjo and edited by Yuichi Hirayama and Mel Hughes, is a fine coll- ection of articles, essays, pastiches, parodies, and artwork from contribu- tors in 14 countries on four continents, with 226 pages (and everything's in English). $12.00 plus postage from Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cin- cinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) ; credit- card orders welcome. Or L9.00 postpaid (in the U.K.) from John Hall, 20 Drury Avenue, Horsforth, Leeds LS18 4BR, England. The Shoso-in Bulletin also has a web-site at . Mark Alberstat's 2002 Sherlock Holmes Calendar is illustrated with artwork from The Strand Magazine, and displays important Sherlockian birthdays and William S. Baring-Gould's dates for the cases. The cost is US$12.00 post- paid, and his address is 5 Lorraine Street, Dartmouth, NS B3A 2B9, Canada. Nov 01 #4 "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" debuted this month on a record-breaking 6,000 screens in the United States, according to Alona Wartofsky's story in the Washington Post (Nov. 11); the story was filed from London and said that "one recent report detailed survey findings that Harry Potter is the most famous character in all of British literature (ahead of Sherlock Holmes, Oliver Twist, James Bond, and, alas, Winnie the Pooh)." The survey, conducted by the marketing research group NOP World, involved asking 1,000 people of all ages to name the first fictional char- acter that came into their heads; 22 percent said it was Harry Potter (not all that surprising, in view of the deluge of publicity for the film). And Elvis Mitchell, in a review in the N.Y. Times (Nov. 16), suggested that the film was "'Young Sherlock Holmes' as written by C. S. Lewis from a story by Roald Dahl." Further to the mention (Oct 01 #5) of "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (the five-part radio series now in production for BBC radio with Clive Merrison as Sherlock Holmes and Andrew Sachs as Dr. Watson), script- writer Bert Coules notes that information about cast and crew, and studio photographs, can be seen by the electronically enabled at his web-site at . Michael S. Greenbaum (Janus Books, Box 40787, Tucson, AZ 85717) (800-986- 1165) has issued a new catalog (List H) of detec- tive fiction and Sherlockiana (and there's a lot of S'iana); it's available at his web-site, and by mail. "Sex and Drugs and Sherlock Holmes" was the headline on a story in the Sep- tember issue of the British Airways in-flight magazine High Life, at hand from Ev Herzog. The story was about Marylebone, described as "the central London village no one knows. So the area has long been a perfect hide-out for pop stars, poets, society pimps -- and fictional detectives." Accord- ing to Simon Kuper, Christine Keeler drank whisky and messed around at Wim- pole Mews with a Soviet intelligence officer named Ivanov, and then engaged in an affair with Britain's Secretary of State for War, John Profumo. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were busted for cannabis in Ringo Starr's flat on Mon- tague Square (Lennon later claimed that the drugs had been left behind by a previous resident, Jimi Hendrix), And Sherlock Holmes was "a natural Mary- lebonian." Kuper also notes that Conan Doyle modelled did not model 221b on the building that houses the Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, but rather what is now 48 Baker Street, across the road from the head office of Marks and Spencer. Jenny Laird died on Oct. 31. Her acting career on stage, screen, and tele- vision lasted from the 1930s into the 1980s, and she was a director and a writer as well. She played Mrs. Hudson in Peter Cushing's television film "The Masks of Death" (1984). Marco Zatterin reports that a new play "Sherlock Holmes e il Mistero della Tomba Egizia" (which he wrote with Raffaele Castria) will be performed at the Teatro Stabile del Giallo in Rome from Dec. 21 to Feb. 4. Holmes, on his way from Khartoum to Alexandria and Montpelier, stops at Thebes, meets a young Howard Carter, and solves the mystery of the Egyptian tomb. The theater's address is 871 via Cassia, 00198 Roma, Italy. Nov 01 #5 Naxos AudioBooks offers four sets of THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (with four stories, abridged) read by David Timson, each on three CDs (L13.99) or three cassettes (L9.99); Hesketh Pearson's ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: A LIFE (abridged) read by Tim Pigott-Smith on two CDS (L10.99) or two cassettes (L8.99); and FOUR SHORT STORIES by Conan Doyle (abridged) read by Carl Rigg (the stories are "The Horror of the Heights", "The Terror of Blue John Gap", "Lot No. 249" and "The Sealed Room") on two CDs (L10.99) or two cassettes (L8.99). 34 Holmethorpe Avenue, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 2NN, England) . The Practical, But Limited, Geologists gathered for dinner at Cornwall's in Boston on Nov. 7, during the annual meeting of the Geological Society of Am- erica, to honor the world's first forensic geologist. Scott Monty welcomed the visitors on behalf of the locals. Our next dinners will be in Houston in March, and in Denver in October. Convention activities included honors for Sarah Andrews, whose series of mystery novels starring forensic geolo- gist Em Hansen won her an award from the National Association of Geoscience Teachers: the James H. Shea Award is given "in recognition of exceptional contributions in the form of writing and/or editing of earth science mater- ials that are of interest to the general public." Sarah's next book will be FAULT LINE, due from St. Martin's Press in January, just in time for the Winter Olympics, and appropriately so, since the novel is set in Salt Lake City during the Winter Olympics. Peter Lovesey's pastiche "The Four Wise Men" (previously published in the anthology MORE HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS) (Nov 99 #5) has been collected in his THE SEDGEMOOR STRANGLER AND OTHER STORIES OF CRIME (Norfolk: Crippen & Landru, 2001; 200 pp., $42.00 signed in cloth, $17.00 in paper); Box 9315, Norfolk, VA 23505 (877-622-6656) . Sotheby's next sale of "valuable printed books and manuscripts" on Dec. 13 (34-35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA, England) includes interesting books by Conan Doyle, many of them inscribed (some to his first wife Touie or to his second wife Jean), and books by other auth- ors (from Conan Doyle's library, and often signed), and a presentation copy of Bram Stoker's THE MYSTERY OF THE SEA (1902) inscribed by the author to Conan Doyle. And some original watercolors by Richard Doyle (Conan Doyle's uncle). Much of the material was sent to auction by "a great nephew of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle." Varro E. Tyler died on Aug. 22. He was an internationally recognized ex- pert on herbal medicine, and the author of more than 270 publications, in- cluding three popular books in the field, and was on the faculty at Purdue University for more than 30 years, including 20 years as dean of its School of Pharmacy and Pharmacal Sciences; he also was a renowned philatelist, and the foremost expert in the field of philatelic forgeries (in the foreword to his book FOCUS ON FORGERIES he suggested: "If you, too, enjoy the thrill of the hunt and wish to avoid the disappointment felt when the forgery you purchased turns out to be genuine, I believe this volume will be helpful to you"). His contribution to our literature was including a section on "The Devil's Foot Root" in a presentation on "The Physiological Properties and Chemical Constituents of Some Habit-Forming Plants" to the American Society of Pharmacoognosy (it was published in the Dec. 1966 issue of Lloydia). Nov 01 #6 Roger Johnson's "The Great Detective: The Private Life of Sher- lock Holmes" is an interesting play with an intriguing concept: Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hold a press con- ference, talking with reporters about Conan Doyle and Watson and Holmes; the play was written for the Chelmsford Theatre Workshop and performed last month, and the 46-page script is available from The Pyewacket Press (Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DE, England); L4.00 postpaid (checks payable to Roger Johnson) or $8.00 postpaid (checks payable to Jean Upton). Further to the report (Sep 01 #6) on BBC Worldwide's plans to issue video- cassettes of some of the "Sherlock Holmes" series that starred Peter Cush- ing and Nigel Stock, Roger Johnson happily notes that the first release is to be "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1968). They also will issue cass- ettes of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1976, with John Gielgud and Jeremy Brett) and "Count Dracula" (1977, with Louis Jourdan). It's likely that the releases will be on PAL-format cassettes, and multi-region DVDs. The Ferret Company's calendar for 2001 featured an amusing photograph of a deerstalkered ferret with a magnifying glass, and the photograph's now off- ered on a Grin&ferret greeting card ("Do I detect a birthday?"); $1.95 each (with envelope). Box 7161, Redwood City, CA 94063 . The Sherlock Holmes Pipe Tamper Collection is a set of six pipe tampers in a velvet-lined black-walnut case (with tampers showing Holmes, Watson, Mor- iarty, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and Wiggins), available for $130.00 postpaid from the Catnip Hill Trading Co. (2201 Catnip Hill Road, Nicholasville, KY 40356) ; you can request their full-color illus- trated flier. June Thomson's Sherlock Holmes pastiche "The Case of the Scottish Tragedy" (previously available only on a Random House audiocassette) (Jul 98 #6) was published last year in a mystery anthology edited by Otto Penzler: CRIMINAL RECORDS (London: Orion, 2000; 465 pp., L10.99). Further to the item (Apr 01 #2) about the BBC's new television version of "The Lost World" (starring Bob Hoskins, Peter Falk, James Fox, Elaine Cass- idy, and Matthew Rhys), Catherine Cooke reports that the two 75-minute epi- sodes will air on BBC-1 over Christmas. And of course there's a web-site, at . Volume two of William S. Dorn's A STUDY GUIDE TO SHERLOCK HOLMES (Denver: Pencil Productions, 2001; 301 pp., $19.95) offers quizzes, questions, and exercises in chronology, and illustrations by Nancy Beiman, for THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, HIS LAST BOW, and THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES; it is based on the courses on Sherlock Holmes that Bill has taught at the Uni- versity of Denver for more than 25 years, and it offers welcome guidance to both teachers and students. The publisher's address is 2045 South Monroe Street, Denver, CO 80210, and the postpaid cost is $21.45 (to the U.S.) or $22.45 (to Canada) or $24.45 (elsewhere) postpaid. A CD-ROM disk with both volumes of the study guide costs $11.45/$12.45/$14.45 postpaid. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Dec 01 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Late-breaking news about the birthday festivities: Judith Freeman reports that the video compilation "What a Hound It Was" (produced by Paul Single- ton and Maribeau Briggs and premiered for an enthusiastic audience at the "Footprints of the Hound" conference in Toronto in October) will be shown on Saturday at 7:00 pm in St. John's Hall at St. Mary the Virgin Church at 145 West 46th Street; $5.00. Richard Bernstein's "A Reading List for a Troubled Land" (in the N.Y. Times on Nov. 8) noted that "Afghanistan, for centuries a country of brutal wars between local tribes and foreign armies, has inspired a substantial litera- ture, fiction and nonfiction, military history, and semicomic fantasy." He began with Rudyard Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King" and then mentioned James Bond and Dr. Watson, and praised Henry Hanna's THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR: ITS CAUSES, ITS CONDUCT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES (that's the war in which Wat- son was wounded), and Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac's TOURNAMENT OF SHADOWS: THE GREAT GAME AND THE RACE FOR EMPIRE IN CENTRAL ASIA (Watson is in the book, likely thanks to Meyer, who is a member of The Baker Street Irregulars), and George MacDonald Fraser's FLASHMAN. Bernstein's discussed many other books of interest to those who would like to know more about the history of Afghanistan. The eleventh annual Watsonian weekend will be a joint event with The STUD Sherlockian Society on May 3-5, 2002, starting with a gathering at the home of Susan Diamond and Allan Devitt on May 3, and continuing with the Solar Pons/Fortescue Honours Brunch in Oak Park and the STUDs' annual dinner in Chicago on May 4, and the 43rd annual running of The Silver Blaze at Haw- thorne Race Track in Cicero on May 5. Details are available from Susan Z. Diamond (16W603 3rd Avenue, Bensenville, IL 60106) . The Pleasant Places of Florida offer their lapel pin, window decal, water glasses, and Wanda and Jeffery Dow's RODGER BASKERVILLE'S LONELY HOUND FROM HELL; and an illustrated sales-list is available from Wanda Dow, 1737 Santa Anna Drive, Dunedin, FL 54698 . Spencer Holst died on Nov. 23. He was an award-winning writer and story- teller who once said: "In the geography of literature I have always felt my work to be equidistant between two writers, each born in Ohio - Hart Crane and James Thurber - but my wife says don't be silly, your stories are half- way between Hans Christian Andersen and Franz Kafka." Holst's parody "The Giant Rat of Sumatra" appeared in Oui (Nov 1973) and was collected in SPEN- CER HOLST STORIES (1976). "I am a little nervous," Thaddeus Sholto said (in "The Sign of the Four"), "and I find my hookah an invaluable sedative," He had brought his hookah with him from India, and Indian water pipes were included in an exhibition of "Water Pipes from the Islamic World" at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem from fall 2000 to fall 2001. "Have a Nargileh" was the alternate title of the exhibition. The catalog offers interesting discussion of hookahs and other waterpipes, in English and Hebrew, and full-color illustrations, and costs $5.00 postpaid (currency only, please) from the Israel Museum (attn: Mrs. Na'ama Brosh), P.O. Box 71117, Jerusalem 91710, Israel. Dec 01 #2 Dick Wright reports that Joe Bell still is remembered in Edin- burgh, where (to quote from a web-site), "The Joseph Bell Cen- tre for Forensic Statistics and Legal Reasoning has been set up to evalu- ate, present, and interpret evidence. The Centre draws on skills in stat- istics, law and artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow Caledonian University, and the Lothian and Borders Police Force. Researchers from Australia, Belgium, England, and the United States are collaborating with the Scottish researchers. Dr. Joseph Bell was a profes- sor of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, when he encountered Arthur Conan Doyle, the future author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Bell was the man who inspired the character of Sherlock Holmes and shared many qual- ities with the famous detective." There's more information about the Cen- tre at . Peter Ackroyd's LONDON: THE BIOGRAPHY, published last year by Chatto & Win- dus in London, has an American edition (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2001; 801 pp., $45.00), and it's a delightful book. "The image of London as a human body is striking and singular," Ackroyd notes, and his book is full of anecdotes and insight and fine writing (and there are occasional mentions of Conan Doyle and Holmes, of course). Bill Ward ("Major Prendergast") died on Nov. 22. He was born in Oklahoma, and as a child was a movie star, from the age of three in "The Amazing Mrs. Holliday" (1943) to the age of seven in "The Foxes of Harrow" (1947), and thus was one of the few members of The Baker Street Irregulars to have ap- peared in movies as an actor. He had a career in resort management in St. Petersburg Beach, and was an energetic and enthusiastic member of The Plea- sant Places of Florida (in which his alias was "Red Indian" in tribute to his being half Cherokee), and a fine Sherlockian poet; he received his In- vestiture from The Baker Street Irregulars in 1984. "There are no exact details to hand, but the event seems to have occurred about twelve o'clock in Regent Street, outside the Cafe Royal" (according to the newspaper quoted in "The Illustrious Client"); John Baesch reports that visitors to the Cafe Royal will find a portrait of Conan Doyle on the wall in Daniel's (the restaurant's coffeeshop/bar), with an explanation of the reference in the story, and the assertion that Conan Doyle came there often and liked it. Patrick Horgan has played both Sherlock Holmes and William Gillette on the stage, and his unabridged readings of A STUDY IN SCARLET, THE SIGN OF FOUR, and THE VALLEY OF FEAR are available on ten audiocassettes in BEST OF SHER- LOCK HOLMES, VOLUME 1 from The Literate Listener (Redmond: CounterTop Soft- ware/Topic Entertainment, 2000; $29.98). They're nicely done. Colin Bruce's CONNED AGAIN, WATSON!: CAUTIONARY TALES OF LOGIC, MATH, AND PROBABILITY, published earlier this year (Mar 01 #1), now is available as a trade paperback (Cambridge: Perseus Publishing, 2001; 290 pp., $15.00). He uses Holmes and Watson to explain scams, game theory, and statistics, and does a good job of making it all sound easy; his earlier THE EINSTEIN PARA- DOX AND OTHER SCIENCE MYSTERIES SOLVED BY SHERLOCK HOLMES (Dec 98 #1) used a similar approach for scientific paradoxes. The author has a web-site at . Dec 01 #3 SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY TALES, by Frank Thomas (New York: Gry- phon Books, 2001; 154 pp., $16.00), offers 13 stories, most of them adapted from pastiches published in Popular Bridge in the 70s and 80s; shipping extra, and the publisher's address is Box 209, Brooklyn, NY 11228 . The new film of "The Lord of the Rings" is getting lots of publicity, and of course there's an official web-site at , Ratana Ngin reports, where the section on the cast has a nice biography of Christopher Lee, who is noted as the only actor who has portrayed Sherlock Holmes and his brother Mycroft (Lee plays the wizard Saruman in "The Lord of the Rings"). You'll also see John Rhys-Davies (Gimli); he played Prof. Challenger in "The Lost World" and "Return to the Lost World" (1994). The other notable film this season ("Harry Potter") also has some Sherlock- ian actors: Alan Rickman (Prof. Severus Snape) has played Sherlock Holmes on stage and Prof. Moriarty on screen, and John Cleese (Nearly Headless Nick) has played both Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Sherlock-Holmes on tele- vision, and Richard Harris (Headmaster Albus Dumbledore) has played James McParlan on screen (perhaps not strictly Sherlockian, but McParlan was the real Birdy Edwards). Further to the report (Nov 01 #6) on BBC Worldwide's plans to issue video- cassettes of some of the "Sherlock Holmes" series that starred Peter Cush- ing and Nigel Stock, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1968) is advertised at their web-site, with the two 50-minute episodes on videocassette (so far only in PAL format) or DVD (multi-region); L19.99 each plus shipping (which varies depending on your country); you can order by mail (Video Offer, BBC Learning, Room A3022, 80 Wood Lane, London, W12 0TT, England) or on-line at and credit-card orders are welcome. M. C. Black reports that The Sherlock Holmes Society of London's informal first-Friday-of-the-month Club Nights have been successful, and they will continue each month through June at the New Commonwealth Club at 18 North- umberland Avenue (between Trafalgar Square and the Embankment underground station); members, prospective members, visitors, and friends are welcome: just show up at any time between 6:00 and 9:00 pm. There's no charge ex- cept for drinks or food purchased from the bar. There's no formal agenda. Grave Matters' catalog #143 (mystery and detective fiction) featured Toni L. P. Kelner's amusing Sherlockian poem "The Crime Before Christmas", and the electronically-enabled can read it on the World Wide Web at their web- site . Catalog #144 (available in January) also will have Sherlockiana for sale; Box 32192, Cincinnati, OH 44232. The Hansom Wheels will hold the first Intergalactic Sherlockian Festival in Columbia, S.C. on Apr. 26-28, offering the world premiere of English actor Howard Burnham's dramatic monologue "Dr. Watson Recalls Sherlock Holmes", distinguished speakers, and (of course) wining and dining. Additional in- formation is available from Robert E. Robinson (6117 Lakeshore Drive, Col- umbia, SC 29206, or at . Dec 01 #4 David P. Phillips and five colleagues at the University of Cal- ifornia at San Diego wondered whether Sir Charles Baskerville's death was based on medical intuition or literary license: "are fatal heart attacks and stress linked in fact as well as in fiction?" Their methodol- ogy was ingenious: determining whether cardiac mortality is abnormally high on days considered unlucky (Chinese and Japanese people consider the number 4 unlucky, while white Americans do not). And they concluded, in an arti- cle on "The *Hound of the Baskervilles* effect: natural experiment on the influence of psychological stress on timing of death" in the Dec. 22 issue of the British Medical Journal, that "the Baskerville effect exists both in fact and in fiction." They also concluded that "Conan Doyle was not only a great writer but a remarkably intuitive physician as well." The article is available on-line (with a photograph of Christopher Lee as Sir Charles) at . Boys' Life has been published by the Boy Scouts of America since 1911; the first known Sherlockian item in the magazine was Percy K. Fitzhugh's "Sher- lock Nobody Holmes" (Mar. 1918), and the most recent is "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (Nov. 2001), adapted by Shannon Lowry and illustrated by Mike Vosburg; it's a 16-page graphic novel, and the artwork is spectacular. You don't need to be a Boy Scout to subscribe to the magazine ($18.00 a year), and they've kindly agreed to supply single issues with the "Hound" to Sher- lockians: send a self-addressed 9" x 12" envelope (without postage), a note requesting the Nov. 2001 issue, and a check payable to Boys' Life for $3.00 (or $6.00 for two copies, the maximum allowed), to Boys' Life (S-302), Boy Scouts of America, 1325 West Walnut Hill Lane, Irving, TX 75038. Thomas A. Sebeok died on Dec. 21. He was a pioneer in semiotics (the study of the nature of signs in language), and taught at Indiana University for almost 50 years, becoming chairman of its Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies before he retired in 1991. His "'You Know My Method': A Juxtaposition of Charles S. Peirce and Sherlock Holmes" (written with his wife Jean Umiker-Sebeok) was published in Semiotica in 1979 and reprinted by Jack Tracy's Gaslight Publications in 1980, and he was co-editor (with Umberto Eco) of the collection THE SIGN OF THREE: DUPIN, HOLMES, PEIRCE for the Indiana University Press in 1983. Spotted by Stu Shiffman: Ruse #1, a comic book from Crossgen (Nov. 2001; $2.95); it's not directly Sherlockian, but there's lots of good Victorian flavor, and some nice artwork (Stu describes the beautiful Baroness Miranda Cross as "a subtle mixture of Isadora Klein, Professor Moriarty, and Mor- gaine le Fay"). There's a web-site at . Jack Tracy's THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA SHERLOCKIANA was and still is a valuable and interesting reference work; it was published in 1977, and is still in print (and soon to have a new Japanese edition), and Christopher and Barbara Rod- en's "On the Shoulders of Giants" (this year's Christmas Annual of The Bak- er Street Journal) offers excellent insights into Jack's life and career, and into the trials and tribulations (for both Jack and his publisher) in- volved in getting the book into print. The annual costs $11.00 postpaid in the U.S. (checks only, please), and $12.00 postpaid elsewhere (credit-card orders welcome) from the BSJ (Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331); you also can or- der at the BSJ's web-site . Dec 01 #5 Nigel Hawthorne died on Dec. 26. He was a splendid actor, best known as the suave (and all too often frustrated) civil servant Humphrey Appleby in the television series "Yes, Minister" (1980-1883) and its sequel "Yes, Prime Minister" (1986-1987), and as the King on stage and screen in Alan Bennett's "The Madness of George III" in 1992 and 1994; his obituary in The Guardian noted that it was once said that Hawthorne "spent the first 20 years of his distinguished career being ignored and the rest of it being discovered." He was awarded a CBE in 1987, and he was knighted in 1999. In 1982 he made guest appearance on television on "The Morecambe and Wise Show" as the butler in a murder-mystery skit, with Eric Morecambe (as Holmes) and Ernie Wise (as Watson). More news about the broadcast of the new dramatization of "The Lost World" by the BBC this month: Catherine Cooke reports that the BBC has announced that the show is the most pre-sold drama they've ever done, and that Peter Falk was cast in the program because of funding from the U.S. And there's to be a DVD release likely in multi-region format. Stephen Kendrick's NIGHT WATCH (New York: Pantheon, 2001; 258 pp., $23.00) is an interest dual pastiche: it's Christmas in 1902, and a gruesome murder has been committed in a church in London, and Sherlock Holmes is called in to solve the mystery, and meets a young Catholic priest named Paul Brown, whose deductive prowess is impressive, and who at the end of the book calls at Baker Street to explain a clue that Holmes overlooked. Kendrick's HOLY CLUES (1999) was an interesting exploration of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and NIGHT WATCH also is interesting, and well-written. Barbara and Christopher Roden report that they've seen the shooting script ("remarkably faithful," they note) for a new version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" that's now in production in Britain, with broadcast scheduled for Christmas in 2002. They believe the company is Tiger Aspect (which has produced some fine series, including "The Vicar of Dibley" and "Mr. Bean"), and that the writer is Allan Cubitt (whose credits include "Prime Suspect 2" and the recent mini-series "Anna Karenina"). The latest issue of Scarlet Street (#43) continues the magazine's explora- tion of the dramatizations of "The Picture of Doran Gray", which is a story of more than passing interest to Doyleans and Sherlockians: in August 1889 Arthur Conan Doyle met Oscar Wilde at dinner in London, where editor J. M. Stoddart asked both men to write stories for Lippincott's. Wilde's story was "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and Conan Doyle's story was "The Sign of the Four" (in which careful readers will find echoes of Wilde). And there is the usual coverage of the mystery-and-horror genre. $42.00 a year (six issues); Box 604, Glen Rock, NJ 07452 . White Chapel Productions (Muse) filmed in Montreal in December, Wilfrid de Freitas reports, for their fourth television film starring Matt Frewer as Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Watson. "It is 1892 and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are on the prowl through the streets of East London investigat- ing a series of murders at a monastery. Is the killer really a vampire, as people are saying, with vengeance on its mind and grudge against the monk?" Wilfrid notes that they say "The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire" will be broadcast next fall. Dec 01 #6 One of the nicer things about the birthday festivities in New York is that they offer an opportunity to arrive a bit early for the Saturday-afternoon cocktail party at the National Arts Club, and stroll around Gramercy Park and think about what a genteel New York neigh- borhood was like in the 1890s: when Arthur Conan Doyle visited the city in 1894, he would have seen almost exactly what we see today. Paula Cohen's GRAMERCY PARK (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002; 357 pp., $24.95) is set in 1894, and opens in a Gramercy Park mansion, it and offers a delightful picture of what life was like in that era, for people who could afford it. It's also a story of dark secrets and bitter revenge, and a young woman in real danger. And it's a well-written page-turner, and it's easy to see why it has been picked up by four major book clubs. GRAMERCY PARK is not Sher- lockian, but it's a good read, and recommended. The Sir James Saunders Society (for Sherlockian dermatologists) is one of the older "professional" S'ian societies, meeting for lunch (with toasts, papers, and a quiz) each year; their next meeting will be in New Orleans on Feb. 25, from noon to 2:00 pm, at the Ernst Cafe, and details are available from Don Hazelrigg, 15 Victoria Drive, Newburgh, IN 47630. The famous (perhaps infamous) "tent joke" has been voted the world's funni- est joke, in an on-going "Laughlab" experiment that was launched in Septem- ber by British psychologist Richard Wiseman. According to a story in The Guardian (Dec. 20), more than 100,000 people from 70 countries have visited the Laughlab web-site, submitting and rating 10,000 jokes. The "tent joke" (which was rated the funniest by about 47,000 people) it isn't new, to the despair of some Sherlockians who can't stand to hear a joke more than once, or perhaps more than twice or thrice; Les Moskowitz has noted that it was posted to The Hounds of the Internet on July 2, 1998 (without credit to a source), and it first appeared in print in "Laughter, the Best Medicine" in the Reader's Digest (Nov. 1998), credited to . And for those who haven't yet heard the joke, or who would like to see the Reader's Digest version, here it is: Sherlock Holmes and Watson were camping in the forest. They had gone to bed and were lying beneath the night sky. Holmes said, "Watson, look up. What do you see?" "I see thousands of stars." "And what does that mean to you?" Holmes asked. "I suppose it means that of all the planets in the universe, we are truly fortunate to be here on Earth. We are small in God's eyes, but should struggle every day to be worthy of our blessings. In a meteoro- logical sense, it means we'll have a sunny day tomorrow. What does it mean to you, Holmes?" "To me, it means someone has stolen our tent." The experiment will continue until September 2002, and the electronically- enabled are welcome to participate at . There is quite a bit to see at the web-site, including the other jokes, and an analysis of what sort of people like which kinds of jokes. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808)