Jan 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Those attending this year's birthday festivities in New York enjoyed pleas- ant weather (unless something other than wintry cold was expected), without a sign of the predicted snow and sleet. The first event was an ASH Wednes- day supper at O'Casey's for dedicated enthusiasts, and Thursday's featured the Christopher Morley Walk led by Jim Cox, a rendezvous with other Morley enthusiasts at McSorley's for lunch, and the Baker Street Irregulars' Dis- tinguished Speaker, John Berendt, who entertained his audience at the Will- iams Club with witty and intriguing tales about and from his next book. Friday began with an informal Mrs. Hudson Breakfast at the Hotel Algonquin, and more than 140 people attended the William Gillette Luncheon at Moran's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant, where the Friends of Bogie's (Sarah Montague, Andrew Joffe, Paul Singleton, and Elyse Locurto) performed their Sherlock- ian version of "The Miracle of Birth". And that afternoon Otto Penzler's open house at the Mysterious Bookshop provided the usual opportunities to browse and buy. There were more than 170 on hand for the annual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars at the Union League Club, where Julie Rosenblatt delivered the cocktail-party toast to the Woman: Martha McCormack, who acknowledged the toast with revelations about Irene Adler, and left to dine at the Algonquin with others who have been the Woman. The dinner agenda included the usual toasts and traditions, the Friends of Bogie's with an entertaining view of baby Sherlock and his family (with Thierry Saint-Joanis as Grandmere Vernet and John Baesch as young Mycroft), and Ray Betzner's toast to Old Irregular Edward J. Van Liere. The dinner concluded with Sherry Rose-Bond's reading of Bev Wolov's poem to "The Woman". Mike Whelan (the BSI's "Wiggins") announced the Birthday Honours: Irregular Shillings and Investitures to Gideon Hill ("Jack Prendergast"), Doug Wrigg- lesworth ("The Retired Colourman"), Michael Ross ("Von Bork"), Bernard Oud- in ("Our French Gold"), Francine Kitts ("Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope"), Nich- olas Meyer ("A Fine Morocco Case"), and Costa Rossakis ("St. Bartholomew's Hospital"); and the Two-Shilling Award (presented "for extraordinary devo- tion to the cause beyond the call of duty") to Paul Herbert. And (in the "my blushes" department) I received the Dr. John H. Watson Afghan Campaign Desk ("with grateful appreciation of the many contributions as society sec- retary, Sherlockian ambassador, and record keeper extraordinaire". Mike also reported on the creation of The Baker Street Irregulars' Archives at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Archives will be admin- istered by The Baker Street Irregulars Trust. Additional details will be forthcoming during 2004 about how Sherlockians will be able to support this important archives with BSI archival material and cash contributions. There were more than 80 people on hand for the Baskerville Bash at the Man- hattan Club, enjoying Victorian (and Canonical) music hall. Audrey Epstein researched the music and songs, and provided the piano accompaniment, and there were performances by characters who included Kitty Winter (aka Elyse Locurto) singing "She Was Poor But She Was Honest" and Isadora Klein (aka Susan Dahlinger) singing Stephen Sondheim's "I Never Do Anything Twice". Jan 04 #2 And for those not quite ready for bed, Paul Singleton presided over a brew-hall get-together at midnight at St. Andrew's, con- veniently on 44th Street not far from the Algonquin, with about 40 people present to sample the many varieties of beer available. On Saturday morning the dealers room at the Algonquin was as usual crowded with sellers and buyers, and at 12:30 The Clients of Adrian Mulliner (devo- tees of the works of both Watson and Wodehouse) assembled for their Junior Bloodstain, which featured a reading of a Marilyn MacGregor's dramatization of Robert L. Fish's parody "The Adventure of the Odd Lotteries". The BSI's Saturday-afternoon cocktail party attracted more than 220 people to the National Arts Club, where Mary Ann Bradley 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 year and the previous even- ing. Andy Solberg and Don Pollock shared honors as the winners of the Mor- ley-Montgomery Award (attractive certificates and checks for $250 each) for the best contribution to The Baker Street Journal last year (their article, as by D. K. Andrews, M.D., on Sigmund Freud, in the autumn issue). And the Dr. John H. Watson Fund benefited from the raffle of Jean-Pierre Cagnat's original artwork showing Holmes and Watson in a Turkish bath, and from en- thusiastic bidders in the traditional auction. The Watson Fund (administered by a carefully anonymous Dr. Watson) offers financial assistance to all Sherlockians (membership in the BSI is not re- quired) who might otherwise not be able to participate in the birthday fes- tivities. The generous donors to this year's auction included Jean Upton (original artwork for a Sherlockian advertisement in Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine), Dorothy Stix (an animation cel from "Snooper and Blab- ber" that shows Snooper in silhouette in Sherlockian costume), Mel Ruiz (a hand-painting cigar-store sculpture of Sherlock Holmes), and Ken Lanza (a handsome reproduction of one of Jean-Baptiste Greuze's paintings of a young woman). On Sunday about 45 locals and visiting long-weekenders gathered at the Bak- er Street Restaurant for a brunch arranged by the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. And now for next year: for those who wish to plan ahead, the next birthday dinners will be held on Friday, Jan. 7, 2005. If you've been con- sidering participating in the BSI weekend in the Valley of Fear on Oct. 22- 24, 2004, there's no room at the inn (or perhaps in the mine), but there is a waiting list. I've not reported on everything, I hasten to add; if you want more details than I've provided here, there will be much more in The Baker Street Jour- nal, which is published quarterly and costs $24.95 a year ($27.50 outside the U.S.), and checks (credit-card payments accepted from foreign subscrib- ers) should be sent to the BSJ (Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331); there's a web- site at . There's much of interest at the web-site, including an opportunity to read some of the papers that have won a Morley-Montgomery Award for their authors, and to order copies of the BSI's manuscript series (including this year's THE NAPOLEON BUST BUSINESS AGAIN), some volumes in the BSI's archival-history series, and some of the BSJ's Christmas Annuals. Jan 04 #3 New York is not the only place where Sherlock Holmes' birthday is celebrated: The Sherlock Holmes Society of London held its annual dinner on Jan. 10 at the House of Commons, where Simon Brett was the featured guest (speaking on the importance of Conan Doyle and Holmes to all subsequent writers of detective stories), Pam Bruxner was made an honorary member of the Society, and Richard Lancelyn Green received the first Tony Howlett Award (a maquette of John Doubleday's London statue of Holmes, do- nated by Tony's widow Freda). Japanese publishers continue to offer a wide variety of Sherlockiana: MUR- DER, MY DEAR WATSON (edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower) has been translated into Japanese by Masamichi Higurashi Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 2003; 400 pp., Y1,800); and he also has translated six stories (Devi/Bruc/RedC/Lady/Dyin/Veil) and written an introduction and ex- planatory notes for a new volume in the MEITANTEI HOLMES children's paper- back series illustrated by Hitoshi Wakana and "Ki" (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003; 294 pp., Y670). There's also DETECTIVE CONAN: THE PHANTOM OF BAKER STREET in two volumes (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2002; 208 pp., Y781 each; they're graph- ic-novel adaptations of a film based on the manga comic-book series created by Gosho Aoyama. And GOLGO 13, by Takao Saito (Tokyo: Leed Sha, 2004; 256 pp., Y524) in his series about Duke Togo, a Japanese comics hero who is one of the best snipers in the world; in this volume he is involved in a dis- pute between members of the Baker Street Irregulars over the manuscript of "The Speckled Band". Sara Berger reports that Michael Breuer has built a fine HO-scale model of the SBB/Brunigbahn station in Meiringen, and you can see two views of the model at . HO-scale, for those who have never lived in the world of model railroads, is 1:87 (about seven feet to the inch). Jack French reports that there's a section on "Jane Sherlock of Meet Miss Sherlock" in his new PRIVATE EYELASHES: RADIO'S LADY DETECTIVES, due from BearManor Media in February. "Meet Miss Sherlock" was a 30-minute series about private detective Jane Sherlock that was broadcast by CBS in 1946 and 1947. $18.95 (plus shipping) from BearManor Media, Box 750, Boalsburg, PA 16827 Joan Aiken died on Jan. 4. She wrote more than 100 books over her 50-year career, telling grand tales of mystery and adventure for adults and chil- dren, and won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for her novel NIGHT FALL (1970); in 1999 she was made a member of the Order of the Brit- ish Empire for her contributions to children's literature. And she wrote the article on Arthur Conan Doyle for Richard Cavendish's MAN, MYTH & MAG- IC: AN ILLUSTRATION ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SUPERNATURAL (1970). The December issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers news from the collections, Julie McKuras' "100 Years Ago" tribute to cartoonist John McCutcheon, and John Bergquist's "50 Years Ago" discussion of A. Car- son ("Deak") Simpson. The newsletter is available from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . Jan 04 #4 1,001 MORE FACTS SOMEBODY SCREWED UP, by Deane Jordan (Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1997; 138 pp., $7.95), is still in print; it has corrections of three Sherlockian "facts" (one of them is "Dr. Watson, pal of Sherlock Holmes, was not shot in the leg. He was shot in the shoul- der, according to 'A Study in Scarlet'. Later Doyle wrote that Watson was shot in the leg, perhaps because it is an easier affliction to depict."). Colonel Sebastian Moran's Secret Gun Club's annual Mongoose Hunt will take place at the Forest Preserve in Wilmette, Ill, at approximately 9:15 am on Sunday, Feb. 29; no firearms are needed, and there will be a breakfast at 10:30 am at Hackney's Restaurant in Glenview, Ill. The Gun Club meets ev- ery four years, on Leap Day, and Don Izban has offered to lead his infamous walking tour of Graceland Cemetery after the breakfast. Reservations are required, and more information is available from Elliott Black (2511 Wind- sor Lane, Northbrook, IL 60062) Don Pollock has discovered a new source of Sherlockian miniature books: Lee Ann Borgia has created 1/12-scale editions of 14 Canonical stories, and you can them at (go to member-name leeann1948). Her ad- dress is Box 1057, Pennington, NJ 08534 , and she'll be happy to send you a flier in return for a #10 SASE; the stories cost from $10.00 to $25.00, plus shipping. The Christopher Morley Knothole Association's newsletter The Knothole notes two losses in the world of Morley's family and enthusiasts. Blythe Morley Brennan died in mid-2002; she was the daughter of Christopher Morley, and the author (as "Stanley Hopkins, Jr.") of two Morleyan mystery novels, MUR- DER BY INCHES (1943) THE PARCHMENT KEY (1944). And Helen McK. Oakley died in Jan. 2003; she was one of the founding members of the association, and one of its early presidents, and her biography THREE HOURS FOR LUNCH: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHRISTOPHER MORLEY (1976) has a chapter about The Baker Street Irregulars and many other mentions of Sherlock Holmes. The Associa- tion keeps Morley's memory alive on Long Island and elsewhere; membership costs $20.00 a year, and its address is c/o The Bryant Library, Paper Mill Road, Roslyn, NY 11576. The East Lynne Theater Company will present a staged reading (with live pi- ano accompaniment) of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" on Mar. 5 and 6, during a "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" in Cape May, N.J.; the box-office phone number is 609-884-5898 . "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (based on the comic-book mini-ser- ies, with story by Alan Moore) was in theaters last year, with Richard Rox- burgh as M (and there's a Canonical connection), and now it's available on DVD from Twentieth Century-Fox Home Video ($27.98) with extras that include 12 scenes that weren't used in the film. Dinsdale Landen died on Dec. 29. His first appearance as an actor was at school, as the rear end of a pantomime horse, and he went on to a long car- eer on stage, screen, radio, and television. He was Dr. Watson (with Rob- ert Powell as Holmes) in "A Study in Scarlet" on BBC Radio 4 in 1974, and Sherlock Holmes (with John Moffatt as Watson) in Charles Marowitz's "Sher- lock's Last Case" on the BBC World Service in 1987. Jan 04 #5 Further to the item (Dec 03 #1) about the GAME game at Laurie R. King's web-site , the first content has ended; the prizes were signed copies of the first edition and the audio re- cording, and the winners will be announced in February. And there will be a drawing in March (save your sales receipts for THE GAME), with different interesting prizes. "The landscape is a genuine Corot," Thaddeus Sholto said (in "The Sign of the Four"), "and though a connoisseur might perhaps throw a doubt upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school." The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. recently acquired a set of Old Master drawings, including an attractive sheet of studies by Rosa, which will be on display through Feb. 16. The Clark Institute also has two Corots ("The Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome" and "Washerwomen in a Willow Grove") and two Bouguereaus ("Nymphs and Satyrs" and "Seated Nude"), so you have a chance to see all three artists in one museum. Phil Attwell reports that the Queen's New Year's honours list included an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for comed- ian and writer Roy Hudd, who starred as Sherlock Holmes in "The Newly Dis- covered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" (a six-episode series) on BBC Radio 2 in 1999. Further to the item (May 02 #3) about the publishing firm John Murray hav- ing been sold to Hodder Headline, the current John Murray (there has always been a John Murray running the firm) has offered the Murray archives to the National Library of Scotland at a discount: L33.2 million (about L10 mill- ion less than the archives' assessed value). The archives contain letters and manuscripts from authors that include Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, David Hume, John Betjeman, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Thanks to Gary Thaden for spotting the story in The Scotsman (Dec. 29). THE ORIENTAL CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Ted Riccardi, published last year at $24.95 (Sep 03 #3), is discounted to $16.95 in the latest catalog from Edward R. Hamilton (Falls Village, CT 06031). And he has a web-site at ; a search for "sherlock" in the title turned up 23 hits. And, speaking of Anna May Wong (Dec 03 #2) there's a new biography by Gra- ham Russell Gao Hodges: ANNA MAY WONG: FROM LAUNDRYMAN'S DAUGHTER TO HOLLY- WOOD LEGEND (New York: Palgrave, 2004; 284 pp., $27.95); with two pages of discussion of the film "A Study in Scarlet" (1933). Carolyn See wrote an interesting (and amusing) review of the book for the Washington Post (Jan. 2); the review should still be available at . Phil Attwell has reported that BBC 7 Digital Radio aired "Sherlock Holmes with Carlton Hobbs" (a series of ten programs dramatized by Michael Hard- wick) in January. The series will repeat in April with new one-minute in- troductions recorded by Nicholas Utechin, who will do the same for a second series later this year. The electronically-enabled can listen to BBC 7 on the Internet, and you can find more information about this from the BBC at . Jan 04 #6 GRAVES GATE, by Dennis Burges (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003; 419 pp., $25.00), is set in 1922, when Conan Doyle hires an Am- erican journalist to investigate a case that turns into a suspenseful tale of supernatural possession. "Quick, Watson...!" is the interim sales-list from Carolyn and Joel Senter, and it offers a nice variety of news, books, jewelry, audio, mugs, and oth- er Sherlockiana. Classic Specialties is at Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219 (887-233-3823) . "Villains in the Canon" is the title of the 23nd annual Sherlock Holmes/Ar- thur Conan Doyle Symposium, in Dayton on Mar. 14-16; there will be presen- tations, vendors, a quiz, and a reader's theater event. Additional infor- mation is available from Cathy Gill (4661 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223) . Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has continued its long tradition of honor- ing Sherlock Holmes' birthday: the February issue has a new parody by Arth- ur Porges ("Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot"), Jon L. Breen's Sher- lockian book reviews, and a tribute by editor Janet Hutchings. Communication (the newsletter of The Pleasant Places of Florida) continues to offer amusing and timely news; the year-end issue offered some interest- ing recommendations for "eleventh hour shopping" such as "Asteroids by the Dozen" (large or small, spinning clockwise or counterclockwise: the perfect gift for your physics or mathematics professor). $12.00 a year ($13.00 ov- erseas) for membership, including a subscription, from Carl Heifetz, 1220 Winding Willow Drive, New Port Richey, FL 34655; if you want just the one issue, that's $2.00 postpaid. There's a new society (with a new pin): Scott Monty is Head- Light of The Beacon Society ("supporting educational experien- ces that introduce young people to the Canon and recognizing exemplary efforts that do so"); they held their annual meeting during the birthday festivities, and the pin is offered in re- turn for a contribution of $10.00, which you can send to Scott (1836 Columbia Road, Boston, MA 02127) . THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA, by Daniel Gracely (Pitman: Grandma's Attic Press, 2001; 117 pp., $13.95); another pastiche "from the lost cases of Sherlock Holmes," notable for some Paget illustrations photo-shopped to match scenes in the story. MURDER AT THE CHESSBOARD, edited by P. T. Houdunitz, published by Sterling in 2001, has been reprinted by Barnes & Noble ($8.95); it's an anthology of 43 "whodunit puzzlers" that includes ten Sherlockian puzzles by Tom Bulli- more that appeared in his books in the 1990s. GOOD FOR THE CAUSE: SHERLOCKIANS IN THE NEWSPAPERS, by Karen Murdock, is an interesting review of often erroneous newspaper and magazine articles about Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian societies; the 20-page pamphlet (Occasional Paper Number 4 from The Bootmakers of Toronto) is available from the author (1212 Yale Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414) for US $7.00 postpaid. Jan 04 #7 The comic-book series RUSE ended its run with issue #26 (Jan. 2004; $2.95), and there was a Sherlockian cover on issue #25 (Dec. 2003). And there's a second issue of ARCHARD'S AGENTS (Nov. 2003). According to the series publisher (CrossGen), RUSE is "Victorian mystery with a fantastic edge"; see their web-site at . One of the more interesting souvenirs published for the birthday festivi- ties was the "Christmas Annual 2003" edited by John Bergquist for the Nor- wegian Explorers of Minnesota; the contents include Andrew Malec's article about the Frederic Dorr Steele illustrations for the Limited Editions Club edition of the Canon, and the story is a fascinating one: some of the art- work was recycled from non-Sherlockian stories (now identified), and that's only part of the intriguing history of Steele's work. A few copies of the 62-page pamphlet are available from John Bergquist, 3665 Ashbury Road, Eag- an, MN 55122; $10.00 postpaid (checks payable to the society, please). Another of the interesting souvenirs distributed during the birthday week- end was the first issue of Canonier's Household Number for Christmas, pub- lished by The Dark Lantern League; the 32-page collection of articles writ- ten by Horace Harker, Violet Hunter, Mrs. Hudson, and others, is available (free) from Brad Keefauver (4009 North Chelsea Place, Peoria, IL 61614). The winter issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has another installment in its continuing series of reports on other libraries' special collections: Elizabeth Chenault's discussion of the University of North Carolina's holding, which include two collections of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockiana, and the Barzun-Taylor Mystery-Detective Collection. Plus the usual news from and about the Conan Doyle collection in Toronto. Cop- ies are available from Doug Wrigglesworth (16 Sunset Street, Holland Land- ing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada) . Bob Keeshan died on Jan. 23. He began his on-screen television career as Clarabell the Clown on the "Howdy Doody Show" and went on to star as Cap- tain Kangaroo on the long-running children's series that began in 1955 and continued for decades on CBS-TV. There was a report in 1980 that "Captain Kangaroo" frequently had skits involved a sleuth named Sherlock House and his cohort Dr. Whatsup; are there any recordings of the skits out there? And a few commercials: a 16-page list of the Investitured Irregulars, the Two-Shilling Awards, the Women, and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes costs $1.25 postpaid. An 81-page list of 826 Sherlockian societies, with names and addresses for contacts for 439 active societies, is $4.70 post- paid. A run of address labels for 359 individual contacts (recommended to avoid duplicate mailings to those who are contacts for more than one soci- ety) costs $10.55 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 . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Feb 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The fourth volume in The Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Series is "THE NAPOLEON BUST BUSINESS AGAIN", edited and with an introduction by William Hyder, offering a facsimile and transcript of the manuscript of "The Adven- ture of the Six Napoleons", and discussion of the manuscript, some of the dramatizations of the story, Conan Doyle's investment in a machine designed to create multiple copies of sculptures, the Borgias and black pearls, Vic- torian journalism, Italians in Victorian London, all by knowledgeable Sher- lockian scholars. The cost is $35.00 plus shipping ($8.00 or $9.50 outside North America) from The Baker Street Irregulars, Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada . "'The Strength and Activity of Youth': The Junior Sherlockian Movement" is the title of The Baker Street Journal's 2003 Christmas Annual, and it off- ers a delightful review of what the junior Sherlockians were up to and into in the 1960s and 1970s. It's edited by Steve Clarkson, who has assembled a fine roster of now-somewhat-older Sherlockians who have contributed remini- scences (and some ancient photographs) from their early days. $11.00 post- paid to the United States (by check) or $12.00 elsewhere (by check or cred- it card); and you can also order from the BSJ web-site (see above). Reported: SHERLOCK HOLMES: SOME UNPUBLISHED CASES, by Robert A. Kisch (from the Institution of Diagnostic Engineers, 7 Wier Road, Kibworth, Leicester LE8 0LQ, England) ; L9.99 plus shipping. "Was Sherlock Holmes a diagnostic engineer?" their web-site asks. The sixth volume of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY is THE SIGN OF FOUR, with a delightful introduction by Bernard Davies, who offers an essay that is both personal and scholarly (Indianapolis: Gasogene Books, 2004; 121 pp., $19.95); as in previous volumes, the annotations and appendices are based on Sherlockian scholarship both old and new. The book costs $22.70 postpaid (or $25.70 outside the U.S.) from the publisher (Box 68308, Indianapolis, IN 46260). "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" (the interactive exhibit with much Victorian flavor, and a mystery that visitors can solve) is now at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque, through May 9 (505-841-2800) . Peter B. Spivak died on Dec. 8. He served as first chairman and first com- missioner of the U.S. Football League and was an owner of 1983 USFL champi- ion Michigan Panthers, and he was elected twice to the Third Judicial Cir- cuit Court of Michigan, and he was an active and enthusiastic member of The Amateur Mendicants of Detroit. Chris Redmond (523 Westfield Drive, Waterloo, ON N2T 2E1, Canada) has off- ered copies of his "Sherlock Holmes Reference Card" (1982); it's a conven- ient bookmark-size list of the stories, Christ's four-letter abbreviations, the first publication dates, and the page numbers in THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES. Also "The Mysterious Affair at Great Orme Street" (1988); it's an entertaining essay examining the affair of Mr. Fairdale Hobbs. Send Chris $1.00 in currency and let him know (either or both) what you need. Feb 04 #2 THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, VOL. II (Wildstorm/Amer- ica's Best Comics, $24.95) is a collection of the six issues of the comic-book mini-series, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. There's no appearance by "M" (nor anything else Sherlockian), but plenty of Victorian atmosphere and Martian aliens and literary allusions. Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (Mar 03 #1) is one of five books nominated for an Edgar for Best Fact Crime. The winners will be announced at the Mystery Writers of America annual dinner in New York on Apr. 29. Issue #58 of SHERLOCK has its usual coverage of crime fiction (Sherlockian and otherwise), including Alan Perry's comparison of Harry Potter and Sher- lock Holmes ("Harry Potter: Wizard Detective") and the second part of Rob- ert Sanderson's commentary on Sherlockian fantasy ("Planetary, My Dear Wat- son"). SHERLOCK is published bimonthly, and subscriptions cost L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . And you can order from the magazine's American agent: Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) ; credit-card orders are welcome at both addresses, and back issues are available. SHERLOCK also has a full page advertisement from Martin Breese, offering to sell Breese Books to potential Sherlockian publishers. Additional informa- tion is available from Martin (10 Hanover Crescent, Brighton, East Sussex BN2 9SB, England) . MADAME BOVARY, C'EST MOI, by Andre Bernard (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003; 128 pp., $19.95), discusses "the great characters in literature and where they came from," and (of course) Sherlock Holmes is included. Christopher and Barbara Roden have added three new titles to list of Sher- lockiana published by their Calabash Press (Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada) . The oldest, and perhaps most unusual, item is THE QUESTIONABLE PARENTAGE OF BASIL GRANT, by R. Bostoun Cromer, originally published in The Monthly Review (July 1905) and now re- printed as a 27-page pamphlet with an introduction by Jack Adrian. It's a wide-ranging literary parody, written by D. K. Broster and M. Croom Brown and published under a pseudonym, and Andrew Lang, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rob- ert Louis Stevenson, and G. K. Chesterton are only a few of the authors who works are parodied. CA$10.00/US$7.50/L5.00 plus postage. Barbara Roden's 'I AM INCLINED TO THINK...': MUSINGS ON SHERLOCK HOLMES AND ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE is a collection of essays published from 1988 to 2001 in S'ian and D'ean periodicals, on topics that range from Saucy Jack to Oliver Onions to "The Captain of the Pole-Star". CA$13.00/US$10.00/L7.50. And VIOLETS & VITRIOL: ESSAYS ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES AND CONAN DOYLE, edited by Susan Dahlinger, is an imaginative tribute to the role of women in the Sherlockian world, from 1903, when an editor of The Bookman first used the word "Sherlockian" (describing a lady who had written a letter commenting on Carolyn Wells) to current scholarship. All the authors are women, from many nations and continents; some of the articles are reprints, but most of them are new, and all are interesting. CA$30.00/US$23.00/L15.00. Feb 04 #3 Mollie Hardwick died on Dec. 13. She joined the BBC as a radio announcer in 1940 and in 1946 moved to their drama department, where she met and married Michael Hardwick. Mollie wrote mysteries, novel- izations of television classics such as "Upstairs, Downstairs", THE WORLD OF UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, and Sherlockian poems; and with her husband wrote a 30-minute radio program ("The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes") about Sir Ar- thur Conan Doyle for the BBC in 1963 and dramatized some of the Peter Cush- ing "Sherlock Holmes" shows broadcast by BBC-1 in 1968. Undershaw, the home that Conan Doyle built in Hindhead in Surrey, is now a hotel and restaurant, and the Independent's restaurant critic Richard John- son has reported (Feb. 7) on a recent visit: the food was enjoyable and in- expensive (about L30 for two without drinks) and the atmosphere pleasant, although there's little left in the house from Sir Arthur's times. The Ob- server's restaurant critic Jay Raynor reviewed the restaurant earlier (Jan. 25) and recommended it, describing the house as a "huge lump of Victorian Gothic." Johnson called it an "Arts and Crafts house, built of red brick and tile." One wonders about Victorian Gothics enjoying Arts and Crafts. The U.S. Postal Service has continued its "Chinese New Year" series, honoring the Year of the Monkey, and the Canon has many mentions of monkeys; one of them is "It was the monkey, not the Professor, whom Roy attacked, just as it was the monkey who teased Roy." ("The Adven- ture of the Creeping Man"). Further to the report (Mar 03 #6) on plans for a film starring Malcolm Mc- Dowell as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Moriarty, the planners are still at work planning: Randall Stock spotted an interview in the Toronto Star (Jan. 30) with McDowell, who was in Toronto for its international film festival. "I'm supposed to be doing Sherlock Holmes to his Moriarty. But he can't do it now, because of this 'Star Wars' thing he's doing." McDowell then imi- tated Lee's formal British accent: "I kahnt do it now, we'll have to do it next year. When will you be free? We want you to do it." The Modern Library has published THE LOST WORLD (2003, 227 pp., $8.95) with an introduction by Michael Crichton and notes by Julia Houston. It's taken almost ten years since Crichton's own THE LOST WORLD was published, for him to comment at length on Conan Doyle's book, and the commentary is insight- ful and interesting. "Conan Doyle did something far more influential than invent a character," Crichton suggests, "he invented a particular kind of fantasy story, and demonstrated a successful way to tell it." Cator Court, one of the many candidates as the inspiration of the original of Baskerville Hall, is for sale. Russ Mann spotted a notice in the [Ply- mouth] Western Morning News (Feb. 14), describing the house as having three reception rooms, a conservatory, a study, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a two-bedroom cottage wing, mature gardens, landscaped grounds, two paddocks, and stabling, on 12 acres; the agents are quoting a "guide price in the re- gion of L1.2 million. Cator Court is located in Widecombe, in Dartmoor Na- tional Park, and it was Bernard Davies who identifies it as a Baskerville Hall contender in "Radical Rethinks on Hound and Horse" (the guidebook for the Sherlock Holmes Society of London's expedition to Dartmoor in 2002). Feb 04 #4 "Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini: A Spirited Friendship" is the title of Daniel Stashower's talk at the Library of Congress in Washington on Mar. 17 at 12:10 pm in the Madison Building (room LMG-45 on the ground floor); the talk will be presented by the Library of Congress' Professional Association's "What If... Science Fiction & Fantasy Forum" and copies of Dan's TELLER OF TALES and THE FLOATING LADY MURDER will be avail- able for purchase. And of course he will be happy to sign his books. "Sherlock and Shaw: The Adventure of the Missing Vampire Diaries" is a new play by Audrey Hampton, scheduled at the Gorilla Theatre in Tampa, Mar. 4- 21. According to a story in Playbill , spotted by Pat Ward, the play is set in London in the 1880s, and producer William Terriss has been murdered outside the stage door of the Lyceum Theatre [that really happened]. "The blood has been drained out of him. . . . Henry Irving's business partner, Bram Stoker, had given Terriss a copy of his manuscript 'Vampire Diaries', and now the papers have disappeared. . . . George Ber- nard Shaw hires master sleuth Sherlock Holmes to track down the sanguinary killer." The theater is at 4419 North Hubert Avenue, Tampa, FL 33614 (813- 879-2914) . Arnie Matanky died on Jan. 5. He began his career in journalism in 1947 at the Chicago Sun, and in 1956 founded the Near North News, which he edited and published for more than 40 years. He was an enthusiastic member of the Sherlockian world in Chicago, and a philatelist who delighted in his coll- ection of stamps showing people and places mentioned in the Canon, and of course made sure his newspaper reported often on Sherlock Holmes and Sher- lockians. Pat Ward spotted a report by Peter Filichia at on Feb. 16 that offers some nice background information on the musical "Baker Street" (1965), and an explanation of why there is no CD of the original- cast album: Decca Broadway, which now owns the MGM catalog, can't find the original contracts, and company lawyers are worried about being sued. Welcome news for Jeremy Brett fans: Warner Home Video has issued a two-DVD set of "My Fair Lady" ($26.00) with a new high-definition transfer from the 1994 restoration; the added-value material includes the documentary "More Loverly Than Ever: The Making of 'My Fair Lady'" narrated by Brett, and the recently discovered test sequences of Audrey Hepburn singing "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" and "Show Me" (Marnie Nixon dubbed Hepburn's songs in the final version of the film). Alas, there was no similar discovery of tests with Brett doing his own singing (it was in the documentary that Brett first ad- mitted that he was dubbed by Bill Shirley). Reported: RAFFLES: THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN, by E. W. Hornung, with an intro- duction by Richard Lancelyn Green (London: Penguin Classics, 2003, 240 pp., L7.99); Richard's introduction includes discussion of the stories literary context, and the relationship between Raffles and Holmes. Bjarne Nielsen's Sherlock Holmes Museet Antikvariatet is open again, at a new address (Egebjergvej 206, 4500 Nykoebing Sj., Denmark), and he has sent a new catalog of Sherlockian books (his last, since he has decided to move his business to his web-site) . Feb 04 #5 "Thank you for the card about THE EYE OF OSIRIS. I don't want any book I can't put on my bookshelves that is not equal in ap- pearance to the COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES you sent." From a letter from the writer (and collector) Raymond Chandler to a bookdealer in 1949, advertised ten years ago by Kenneth W. Rendell for $3,500. The winter 2004 issue of the Tonga Times offers a rare one-on-one interview with Tonga, news from the world of miniatures, and a colorful photograph of Nancy Garces' model of the reconstruction of the sitting-room at the Chƒt- eau de Lucens in Switzerland. Membership in the society includes the news- letter, and the cost is $10.50 a year (or $11.50 to Canada or $13.50 else- where) from Trish and Jay Pearlman (1656 East 19th Street #2-E, Brooklyn, NY 11229) . Paul Robeson has been honored on the new stamp in the U.S. Pos- tal Service's "Black Heritage" series, and yes, there's a Sher- lockian connection for Paul Robeson, reported by Jim Vogelsang: in the British film "The Big Fella" (1937), Robeson (as Joe) is asked by the police to help find a missing boy, and when he ex- plains this to a friend, his companion replies, "Mr. Joe blink- in' Sherlock, head of the lost kid department." One of the more interesting things that Sherlockian societies do is engage in a bit of propaganda, and a fine way to explain to people how much fun is to be found in the sometimes strange world of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockians is to present programs at local libraries; members of Watson's Tin Box will do that on Mar. 25 (from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm) in the Miller Branch Library in Ellicott City, Md. (charac- ters from the Canon will appear to share some experiences with and opinions about Sherlock Holmes). The library's telephone number is 410-313-1950 (in case you need directions). Sherlock Holmes appears in "Humpty Dumpty: Did He Fall? Or Was He Pushed?" in Victor G. Ambrus' DRACULA'S BEDTIME STORYBOOK (Oxford University Press, 1982), one of two books collected as DRACULA'S OMNIBUS (1983); Ambrus has written and illustrated his own version of the saga, with great humor and delightfully grotesque artwork. "Concerning the Spiritual in Photography" is an exhibit at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University through Mar. 14, displaying contempor- ary art and historical spirit photographs and ephemera from the Harry Ran- som Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas (Austin), includ- ing photographs of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini and the Boston med- ium Mina (Margery) Crandon). Thanks to Randall Stock for spotting a report on the exhibit; the Center is located at 832 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston (617-875-0600) . Gideon Hill has noted the web-site promotion for the 2004 edition of Whita- ker's Almanack : "Published annually in Brit- ain since 1868, Whitaker's Alamanck is the ultimate single-volume reference source. Such is its reputation that a copy of the 1878 edition was includ- ed in the time capsule beneath Cleopatra's Needle, and Sherlock Holmes used it when decipering a code in *The Valley of Fear*." Feb 04 #6 Harry Bartell died on Feb. 26. He acted on stage, screen, rad- io, and television (he worked on 185 radio series and 77 tele- vision series), and he was the genial announcer for "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) in the 1945-46 sea- son. He also provided interesting commentary for the audiocassette series produced by Ken Greenwald and distributed by Simon and Schuster from 1988 to 1994, and he wrote a delightful series of columns for an old-time radio web-site ; click on "On Auditions" to read his story about how he auditioned for the Sherlock Holmes series. Beaten's Christmas Annual has been published for 21 years by The Sound of the Baskervilles (the Sherlockian society in Seattle), and the latest issue includes warm tributes to long-time member Frank Darlington, and other mat- erial by the society's members. The 45-page booklet is available from Dav- id Haugen, 3606 Harborcrest Court NW, Gig Harbor, WA 98332; $5.00 postpaid ($6.00 outside the United States). The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes began publishing a newsletter in 1975, and it quickly involved into the journal The Serpentine Muse, which contin- ues to offer news about the ASH as toasts and presentations at the dinners, and papers submitted to the Muse. And now Susan Z. Diamond and Marilynne McKay have edited an anthology, SERPENTINE MUSE-INGS (Indianapolis: Gaso- gene Books, 2004; 163 pp., $19.95), that offers a fine and nicely decorated look at what the ASH (and their friends) have been up to. It's available from the publisher (Box 68303, Indianapolis, IN 46268); $23.70 postpaid (to the U.S.), $25.70 (elsewhere). If you want to know more about the Adven- turesses, their web-site is at . Maurice F. Neville's collection will be sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York in two parts, on Apr. 13 and Nov. 16. And it's a fine collection in- deed (Neville is a book dealer as well as a collector): the highlights in- clude the first 40 pages (in two exercise books) of the manuscript of "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" (the last two pages, in a third exercise book, are owned by another collector); and the original artwork for Sidney Paget's illustration of Holmes and Moriarty grappling at the Reichenbach. The manuscript is estimated at $150,000-200,000 and the artwork at $50,000- 75,000 (the two Sherlockian items will be in the second sale on Nov. 16). The catalog's not yet up at the web-site, but other items include a nine- page letter from Charles Dickens to Washington Irving, and Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA inscribed to Spencer Tracy. Sotheby's is at 1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 . Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel THE AMAZING ADVEN- TURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY (Apr 01 #3), was ten years old when he wrote, try- ing for Conan Doyle's style, a story about Sherlock Holmes meeting Captain Nemo. And now he has written an intriguing mystery story ("The Final Solu- tion"), set on the Sussex Downs and in London in the summer of 1944, that features an aged beekeeper detective; it was published in The Paris Review (summer 2003), and it will be included in his TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINA- TION, forthcoming from Fourth Estate. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Mar 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Russ Mann spotted the story in Newsday (Mar. 6), about a foolish gunman who attempted to rob a man who was visiting his mother in the East Village; the intended victim was a federal agent who works for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and who pulled out his wallet with one hand and his weapon with the other hand. The robber, critically hurt but expected to survive, has three prior convictions and served time for each one; he was paroled in Oc- tober after serving six and a half years for weapons possession. When he began serving his most recent sentence he told prison authorities his name was Sherlock Holmes. The Parallel Case of St. Louis will hold its second "Holmes Under the Arch" symposium on May 20-22, 2005; their first symposium took place in 1999, and it was quite successful. Their mailing list is maintained by Barbara Ros- coe (7101 Mardel, St. Louis, MO 63109) . Tom Dunn is the editor and publisher of The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris, an ir- regular quarterly published for The Universal Coterie of Pipe Smokers, and of course the Coterie has many Sherlockian members. The latest issue (win- ter-spring 2004) includes a report on Dunhill's decision to resume produc- tion (in 2003) of their oversized "magnum" briers for the first time since 1939. Dunhill's press release noted that one of the earliest examples of such an oversized pipe is a shell-finish classically-shaped bent billiard that was fitted with a sterling silver band engraved for a 1921 presenta- tion to H. A. Saintsbury, celebrating his 1,200th performance as Sherlock Holmes. The pipe was eventually owned by Stanley MacKenzie, and was in his collection when it was sold at auction in 1995. The current issue of the Ephemeris is the 40th, with 116 pages; Tom's address is 2037 120th Street, College Point, NY 11356. "The Cottingley Fairies Dupe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" is the cover blurb on the May issue of British Heritage, promoting Bruce Heydt's article "The Ad- venture of the Cottingley Fairies". $5.99; 741 Miller Drive SE #D-2, Lees- burg, VA 20175 . THE PARTIAL ART OF DETECTION, edited by Balaji Narasimhan (Tokyo: Shoso-in Press, 2003; 32 pp., $8.00), offers 235 quotes from the Canon, identified by story and indexed for subjects from "alternative" to "wrong"; the author is a journalist in India and an active Sherlockian, and this is his interim attempt at creating Sherlock Holmes' THE WHOLE ART OF DETECTION. Available from Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (887-233-3823) . It was Steve Clarkson who first reported (in The Passengers' Log, published by The Sydney Passengers) in 1998 on Sherlock Homes, a then-new residential development in southeastern Carroll County, Maryland. The development now is called Sherlock Holmes Estates, and the residents live in rather expens- ive (upper six figures) houses on Conan Doyle Road, Elementary Drive, Wat- son Court, Hudson Drive, Sherlock Holmes Street, Baskerville Drive, Mycroft Street, and Silver Blaze Drive. The development is in Sykesville, and you can find the streets easily using . There's also a Sher- lock Homes Estates in West London . Mar 04 #2 The Red Circle of Washington keeps a careful watch for politic- ians who are familiar with the Master Detective's abilities. A story in The Hill (Feb. 11), reports that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), a former prosecutor whose resume includes both the Warren Commission and the Water-gate investigation, has his own ideas about who sent ricin to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) office last week and who mailed an- thrax-laced letters to then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. "I think it was the same guy," he said. "I see him as a potential serial offender. Now he's going after Frist, so there's a pattern." But after floating his theory, Specter seemed to make light of his own gumshoe abilities. "They put Sherlock and me on the case, we'll solve it in a matter of ten days," he said. "Manga" are the graphic novels that have been popular in Japan for many years, and they're now becoming popular here in English transla- tions. Ratana Ngin has noted THE KINDAICHI CASE FILES: THE MUMMY'S CURSE, with story by Yozaburo Kanari and art by Fumiya Sato (Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP, 2003; 252 pp., $9.99); the Sherlockian frontispiece is unrelated to the story, but a good example of the manga style. The publisher's web-site offers a good look at manga series. Further to the report (Sep 03 #8) on MCLEVY: THE EDINBURGH DETECTIVE (2001) and MCLEVY RE- TURNS: FURTHER DISCLOSURES OF THE EDINBURGH DETECTIVE (2002), there's a companion volume: THE MCGOVAN CASEBOOK: EXPERIENCES OF A DETEC- TIVE IN VICTORIAN EDINBURGH, by James McGovan [a pseudonym used by William Crawford Honey- man] (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2003; 198 pp., L9.99); the McGovan memoirs, published from 1878 to 1884 to great acclaim, may well have been read by Conan Doyle during his years as a student in Edinburgh. Paul Winfield died on Mar. 7. He launched his acting career as a contract player at Columbia Pictures in 1966, and went on to award-winning roles on stage and in films and television, and was nominated for an Oscar for his work in "Sounder" (1972). He participated in a reading of "Sherlock Holmes and the Hands of Othello" (1987) in Los Angeles in 1999, and according to playwright Alex Simmons, Winfield "did a sterling and dignified performance as the ghost of Ira Aldridge (a real-life 'Negro tragedian' actor from the 1880s)." Fans of Michael Kurland's Moriarty pastiche THE GREAT GAME (2001) who have been waiting impatiently for the sequel THE EMPRESS OF INDIA, Michael re- ports that it "is being finished even now," and that his second anthology SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS is scheduled late this year from St. Mar- tin's Press, with stories by Dick Lupoff, Bill Pronzini, Peter Beagle, and others. He has a web-site at . Mar 04 #3 Jim Hillestad runs The Toy Soldier (1343 Paradise Falls, Cres- co, PA 19326 ; it's both a shop and a museum, and he has many dioramas and other displays (and of course Holmes and Watson are on display, and for sale). His newest diorama is "The Ad- venture of Repulse Bay" (60" x 30") featuring a 50" battleship "Britannia" docked in Hong Kong Harbor; "On board are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who have come to foil the opium dealings of Professor Moriarty--you can see him lurking in the shadows of the crowded streets." And crowded they are: there are more than 200 figures (including Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty). Mike Berdan has reported on his visit to Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Conn.: the park is devoted to displays of dinosaur footprints (no one has found anything other than footprints in the Connecticut Valley), and one of the signs states: "There is no branch of detective science so important and so neglected as the art of tracing footsteps." The quote is attributed to A. Conan Doyle 1891/Study in Scarlet. DISNEY ANIMATION: THE ILLUSION OF LIFE, by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981), is a fascinating book (written by two of Disney's original "nine old men"); it's a coffee-table volume with 575 pag- es and 489 full-color plates, and although it was published too early for a discussion of "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), it does offer some infor- mation for fans of Basil Rathbone: when "The Jungle Book" was being devel- oped, they decided that Shere Khan should be an aristocratic, regal monarch "reminiscent of Basil Rathbone." But when the time came to record a voice, "we felt that the intellectual refinement in a voice like Rathbone's would no longer be quite right," and "found the perfect combination of traits in the voice of George Sanders." Prescott's Press, published by The Three Garridebs, offers a nice mixture of scholarship and whimsy, including Warren Randall's amusing lyrics for "The Irregular March of Michael Whelan's Band" (to be sung to the tune of "MacNamara's Band"). Subscriptions cost $14.00 for four issues ($16.00 to Canada, $18.00 elsewhere), from Warren (15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauket, NY 11720. Martin Booth died on Feb. 12. He was a poet and a teacher, and then a suc- cessful novelist, and a publisher and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Lit- erature. His biography THE DOCTOR, THE DETECTIVE, AND ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE was published in Britain in 1997 and in the United States in 2000, and was well received. Further to the report on Hodder Headline's acquisition of John Murray (May 02 #3), when John Murray (the seventh of that name to head the firm) said that its archives (which include quills used by Dickens and locks of hair of Byron's lovers) would be preserved, the National Library of Scotland an- nounced on Mar. 2 that it will acquire the archives for just over L33 mill- ion, considerably less than the assessed value of L45 million; the Murray family will create a charitable trust that will use the proceeds from the sale to preserve, explore, and expand the collection, and is pleased that it "is going home" (the first John Murray was born in Edinburgh). Murray's archives include its correspondence with its authors, one of which was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mar 04 #4 More politics: Laura Kuhn has reported the remarks by Rep. Phil Gringrey (R-Ga.) on Mar. 9 about a joint resolution that would express the sense of Congress that Kids Love a Mystery [a program sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America] "promotes literacy and should be encour- aged." Gingrey said: "Whether it is Sherlock Holmes or Dick Tracy or Harry Potter or my childhood favorite, the Hardy Boys mysteries, our support for reading and writing mystery books is a worthy cause." I don't necessarily report on the most important news first, and for those who have been reading impatiently in search of information about the upcom- ing auction of Conan Doyle material at Christie's salesroom in King Street, London, on May 19, here's the story: there was a flurry of publicity in the media starting on Mar. 14, when the Sunday Times broke the news that Conan Doyle archival material that had been owned by Adrian, and then by his wid- dow Anna, and by Anna's heirs, is being sent to auction by her heirs. Much (and perhaps all) of the material is described briefly by John Dickson Carr in the "Biographical Archives" section at the end of his biography of Conan Doyle, but the auction will not have all of the material described by Carr. The archival material in the auction is interesting indeed: the name plate that he set up outside his medical practice in Southsea in 1882 (estimate L10,000-15,000); three Southsea notebooks that include his sketch for "A Study in Scarlet" (estimate L100,000-150,000); a Norwood notebook in which he wrote "Killed Holmes" (estimate L20,000-30,000); research notes and dia- ries; correspondence with notables such as Oscar Wilde, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, W. G. Grace, and P. G. Wodehouse; the gold medal he had struck for his wife shortly before his death, engraved "To the best of nur- ses" (estimate L800-1000); and much more. Christie's estimates the total value of the material at L2 million. Christie's web-site at has some information (and will have more soon, and eventually a display of the catalog); to find the press release about the auction, click on "About Christie's" and "Press Center" and search for press releases for May 2004 and click on "Read" at 19 May. The material will be on view at Christie's salesroom at Rockefeller Center in New York from Mar. 30 to Apr. 1, and at King Street in London from May 14 on until the auction on May 19 (and there will be an evening of readings on "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--The Man Revealed" on May 18). Sorry about the short notice about the viewing in New York; I posted a message about this to The Hounds of the Internet earlier this month, and I hope that the news spread quickly and widely. The text of the two stories in the Sunday Times is available at the Sher- lock Holmes Society of London's web-site at : Click on "News Archive" and then "Conan Doyle's secret plan for troops in armour". Reported: THE NIGHT ORCHID: CONAN DOYLE IN TOULOUSE, by Jean-Claude Dunyach Encino: Black Coat Press, 2004; 280 pp., $20.95); a collection of stories, translated from the French. In the title story "Arthur Conan Doyle takes Professor Challenger to the south of France, where he encounters the famous Professor Picard, Irene Adler, and an ancient horror." The publisher's ad- dress is Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416 . Mar 04 #5 David Stuart Davies reports that his new novel THE VEILED DE- TECTIVE will be published by Robert Hale in London on Apr. 29 (240 pp., L18.99); the dust-jacket blurb says that the book "takes a fresh, exciting and controversial look at the relationship between the great de- tective Sherlock Holmes, his friend and chronicler, Doctor John H. Watson, and Professor Moriarty." The book can be pre-ordered at Amazon, and it's also offered (L17.99) at the SHERLOCK web-site . Bouchercon 2004 ("Murder Among the Maples") will be held in Toronto on Oct. 7-10, organized by Al Navis . Bouchercon 2005 will take place in Chicago on Sept. 1-4, organized by Deen Kogan and Sonya Rice . And Bouchercon 2006 ("A Prairie Plot") will be held in Madison on Sept. 28-Oct. 1, organized by Al Abramson and Mary Helen Becker . You can listen to two versions of Mark Haddon's novel THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME: the American version, read by Jeff Woodman, was issued by Recorded Books on CDs ($24.99) and audiocassettes ($19.99); and British version, read by Ben Tibber, was issued by Random House Audio- books on CDs (L16.99) and audiocassettes (L12.99). William S. Dorn's COOKING FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR. WATSON: BRITISH RECI- PES FOR TWO PERSONS is sufficiently up-to-date to have nutritional values for each of the 60 recipes, many of them (including ships biscuits, toad in the hole, and Sussex fritters) not found in more traditional cookbooks; it is spiral-bound to open flat, with coated pages to allow spills to be wiped off easily, and the postpaid cost is $23.80 (to the U.S.)/$24.35 (Canada)/ $24.40 (elsewhere). Bill's address is 2045 South Monroe Street, Denver, CO 80210 . The Practical, But Limited, Geologists will meet for drinks and dinner, in honor of the world's first forensic geologist, at 7:00 pm on Apr. 21, at La Calle Doce Ristaurante in Dallas during the annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Our tradition discourages scholarly papers, slide shows, and quizzes (our agenda consists entirely of toasts, some scholarly, but many not). The restaurant is at 415 West 12th Street, and locals and visitors are welcome. Catching up with news from last year: Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of the long-running PBS-TV series "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Mystery!", is an honorary OBE [Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire]; the award was presented to her by the British ambassador in Washington on Dec. 10. The OBE is awarded to people who have made an important contribu- tion to British interests, and people who are not British citizens receive honorary OBEs; Eaton was honored for "her services to Anglo-American film and television." EARTH COLORS, by Sarah Andrews (New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2004; 304 pp., $23.95), is the latest title in her continuing series about forensic geologist Em Hansen; Sarah travels for book events that include a dinner on Apr. 22 in Mount Joy, Pa., at Bube's Brewery (which is in a limestone cave 44 feet underground). Details on this and other events, and on her books, and on Sarah, are available at her web-site . Mar 04 #6 For those who like captivating opening sentences in books, here is a fine example: "It was a dramatic setting for a human sac- rifice, give my murderer credit." And it's not until you're well into the book that you discover just how Mary Russell has become a candidate for hu- man sacrifice. In Laurie R. King's THE GAME (New York: Bantam Books, 2004; 368 pp., $23.95), she tells a story that's set in 1924, when Mycroft Holmes has sent Mary and her husband to India in search of Kimball O'Hara, better- known to the world as Kim. "He's real, then? Kipling's boy?" Mary asked. "As real as I am," said Sherlock Holmes. The novel is an excellent contin- uation of the Mary Russell series, written with style and humor, and inter- esting characters and plenty of adventure. Further to the report (Nov 02 #2) on a film based on Allan Knee's play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan" (about how J. M. Barrie was inspired to write "Peter Pan"), "J. M. Barrie's Neverland" film is scheduled for release by Miramax on Oct. 22, starring Johnny Depp as Barrie, Ian Hart as Conan Doyle, Dustin Hoffman as Charles Frohman (who also produced William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes"), Julie Christie, and Kate Winslett. Ian Hart was Watson in Rich- ard Roxburgh's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (2002); Hart isn't the first actor to play both Watson and Conan Doyle, but the list is quite short. Mycroft's League is planning "A Practical Symposium on Sherlock Holmes and the U.S. Constitution, with Observations on the Segregation of Her Majesty, the Queen" in Philadelphia on May 8. The "investigation into the Constitu- tion, Sherlock Holmes, and the Anglo-American Union" will feature a morning session at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall, lunch, a chance to tour Independence Hall, the Library Bell Pavilion, and the Betsy Ross House, and a guided tour of Christopher Morley's Colonial Philadelphia led by Frank Ferry. The deadline for reservations is Apr. 30, and more in- formation is available from Gideon D. Hill . Chris Redmond spotted the story in the Toronto Star (Mar. 23) about politi- cians and cormorants (alas, there's no mention of a lighthouse): the prov- ince of Ontario is under fire for its plan to authorize shooting of almost 7,000 double-breasted cormorants in Presqu'ile Provincial Park. According to Thomas Walkom's column, the birds' alleged crime is that they often kill the trees in which they nest, but their real crime is that they've made en- emies in the lucrative sport fishing industry. It has been some months since Stephen Rullman posted to the Hounds of the Internet about the custom-built carriages available from the Justin Carri- age Works (7615 South M-66, Nashville, MI 49073) ; they off- er hansoms ($6,870), broughams ($14,500), wagonettes, surreys, buckboards, and other appropriate vehicles (seatbelts optional, at additional cost). I've reported from time to time (most recently May 00 #2) on Skeletons in the Closet (their profits help support the Los Angeles County Coroner's De- partment's Youthful Drunk Driver Visitation Program), and (of course) they now have a web-site at where you can find Sher- lock Mugs (displaying a skeleton in Sherlockian costume) and other inter- esting merchandise. Their postal address is 1104 North Mission Road, Los Angeles, CA 90033); thanks to Gayle Harris for the tip. Mar 04 #7 "Cops are hunting a conman who dresses like Sherlock Holmes and pretends to be a policemen," according to Mike Sullivan in the [London] Sun (Mar. 23). The article, noted by Phil Attwell, reports that a man wearing a deerstalker and pretending to be buying a fleet of cars for an operation involving Scotland Yard and MI5, stole a L20,000 Toyota from a showroom in Coulsdon, Surrey. A salesman accompanied him on a test run to the Croydon police station, where the man tricked the salesman into getting out to fetch one of the man's "colleagues", and then sped off. Richard Lancelyn Green ("The Three Gables") died on Mar. 27. He was both a Doylean and a Sherlockian, am enthusiastic bibliographer and collector, an energetic editor and writer, and an excellent speaker. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A. CONAN DOYLE (1983), written with John Michael Gibson, was and is an in- valuable resource for collectors and scholars, and their careful research resulted in Conan Doyle's UNCOLLECTED STORIES (1982) and ESSAYS ON PHOTO- GRAPHY (1982), and his LETTERS TO THE PRESS (1986), making available mater- ial that had never been reprinted and in some cases had not been known to have been written by Conan Doyle. For Sherlockians, he edited an anthology of pastiches, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1985); a selection from mail sent to Holmes at 221B Baker Street, LETTERS TO SHERLOCK HOLMES (1985); an anthology of early reviews, letters, and articles, THE SHERLOCK HOLMES LETTERS (1986); and an anthology of associated Conan Doyle writings, THE UNCOLLECTED SHERLOCK HOLMES (1993). He also wrote articles and intro- ductions and commentary for Sherlockian societies, and spoke to delighted audiences at Sherlockian symposiums, and he served as chairman of The Sher- lock Holmes Society of London from 1996 to 1999. As a collector he was in- formed and relentless in pursuit of unique material; anyone who was able to visit his home in London to see his treasures was fortunate indeed. He re- ceived his Investiture from The Baker Street Irregulars in 1985. Jerry Margolin has reported a television commercial for Fisher-Price's new "Learn Through Music" set (product 89452, ages 18 months and up, $34.99); one of the four cartridges is "Elmo's ABC Scavenger Hunt" with Elmo shown in Sherlockian costume. Their web-site is . Siegler & Co.'s Sovietski Collection catalog (3473 Kurtz Street, San Diego, CA 92110) (800-442-0002) offers a deerstalker (#151699, $65.00), a magnifying glass and stand (#151631, $79.95), and "classic de- tective bookends" (#151630, $39.95), as well as Bobby helmets, nightsticks, and whistles. "Indeed, British weather is more temperate than that of the northeastern United States. There one finds really frigid winters, with annual ghostly blizzards killing scores of people and occasioning total stoppage of activ- ity for days at a time; and really torrid wet summers, when everyone who can afford it either flees abroad or moves to the seashore. Fall brings hurricanes; spring, floods. The weather of Boston, New York, and Washing- ton is so bad that if the United States had been colonized from west to east instead of the reverse, the northeastern United States today would be populated as sparsely as North Dakota. The main cities would be somewhere else, and the northeastern area would be planted out in soybeans." Thanks to Karen Murdock, who spotted the passage in Paul Fussell's ABROAD: BRITISH LITERARY TRAVELING BETWEEN THE WARS (1980). Mar 04 #8 Admirers of the film "The Quiet Man" (1952), and there are many who are fans of the only Irish western, may be learning for the first time (as I just have) that one of the actors in "The Quiet Man" also has played Sherlock Holmes. It's not John Wayne, nor Barry Fitzgerald, nor Victor McLaglen. And it's not Maureen O'Hara. Credit Dean Clark for his article on early Sherlock Holmes films in the March issue of The Dispatch (published by the Afghanistan Perceivers of Oklahoma) and his reminder of the supporting character Dan Tobin (the old man with a grand white beard) and the actor who played him: Francis Ford, who played Sherlock Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet" (1914). "Jailhouse Rock Concert for Dartmoor Prisoners" was the headline on a story in the Daily Telegraph (Mar. 22), kindly forwarded by John Baesch. Claudia Stuart, the first woman governor of Dartmoor prison, will allow 26-year-old folk-rock musician Seth Lakeman to launch his new album "Kitty Jay" with a live concert for about 100 of the 600 inmates in the prison chapel on May 5. Lakeman, who lives in Yelverton, only five miles from the prison, said that the songs he wrote for the album "are inspired by the mysterious and haunting background of Dartmoor and deal with all kinds of extremes of hu- human behaviour and emotion. I am sure these are things that prisoners in- side Dartmoor can identify with." Dartmoor Prison has housed some of Brit- ain's most notorious convicts, and was condemned two years ago by the Chief Inspector of Prison as "the prison that time forgot" before Stuart was ap- pointed as to reform the prison. She is seeking more contact with the out- side world for the prisoners, and approved the concert (music fans may re- call the similar concert by Johnny Cash at San Quentin). I Scream Records will release the album (L11.99); it's available at , where you can also hear samples of some of the tracks. And Lakeman's web- site is at . Craig Wichman's Quicksilver Radio Theater has recorded "The Speckled Band" (broadcast by WBAI-FM on Oct. 31, 1999) and "The Blue Carbuncle" (Dec. 28, 2003), and they have two live events coming up: the first is "Fibber McGee Meets Sherlock Holmes" for the Episcopal Actor's Guild in New York on May 20; this will feature recreations of a "Fibber McGee and Molly" episode and a "Sherlock Holmes" episode ("The Hindu in the Wicker Basket") with assist- ance from Bill Nadel; the Guild is at 1 East 29th Street in New York (212- 685-2927). The second event will be a performance of one of Edith Meiser's classic "Sherlock Holmes" scripts at the Friends of Old Time Radio Conven- tion in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 21-24 . Audiobuch (Lambertusstrasse 5, 79104 Freiburg, Germany) offers Quicksilver's "The Speckled Band" on a CD (E14.90), and this winter will issue a CD with "The Blue Carbuncle" and "The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes". They also offer tales read in German by Hubertus Gertz- en: "Der Hund von Baskerville" on 3 CDs (E24.90), "Der Katechismus der Fam- ilie Musgrave" and "Der blaue Karfunkel" on single CDs (E14.90 each), and "Sherlock-Holmes-Geschichten" ("Der Mann mit der Narbe" and "Der blaue Kar- funkel") on 2 cassettes (E19.90). You can hear samples of most of the re- cordings at the web-site. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Apr 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Further to the report (Mar 04 #4) on the auction and viewing of Conan Doyle material at Christie's sales-room in New York: it was delightful to be able to see some (but not all) of the things that will be at auction in London on May 19. There were three cases of Conan Doyle material in the gallery at Christie's in New York (their London staff was still at work cataloguing the material, Christie's representative explained, and the requirement for export licenses for everything that left London prevented them from bring- ing more material). What we got to see included: Richard Doyle's portrait of his young nephew Arthur; the manuscript of Conan Doyle's first short story, written when he was six and proudly preserved by his mother; two handwritten issues of his schooldays "Feldkirchian Gazette"; log-books of his voyages on the Hope and Mayumba; his pencil portrait of Professor Challenger; his manuscript notes for "The White Company" and "Sir Nigel"; letters from Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells; and a Christmas card from William Gillette inscribed from Sherlock Holmes. The material, once owned by Adrian Conan Doyle, and then by his widow Anna, has been sent to auction by her heirs Richard Doyle, Catherine Doyle, and Charles Foley. And it's grand to think that so much that's so interesting will soon be in public or private collections, and available to those who wish to enjoy learning more about Sir Arthur. By way of example, his log- book from the S.S. Hope is wonderful, with daily comments on life on board and on the ice, and his sketches of the ship and the crew and their activi- ties. He seems to have spent a lot of time falling into the ocean, what with the difficulty of moving about on ice floes, and on one day he happily recorded that he hadn't fallen in. There's also considerable humor in what he wrote (as there was in later years in his professional writing): in one report on a storm at sea he wrote (and I paraphrase) about the violent wind and seas, and straining masts and yards and shrouds, and one of the crew almost being swept overboard, and one tremendous wave carrying off a crate from the deck . . . and then he noted, "But seriously . . ." If you want to see material before the sale, there will be another viewing at Christie's in London (8 King Street, St. James's); the catalog ($30.00/ L20.00) can be ordered from Christie's in New York (800-395-6300) or London (20-7389-2820), and the catalog descriptions of the lots should be avail- able at their web-site . There were other nice things on display in Christie's gallery in New York, including "Important English Drama including Shakespeare from the Estate of Mary, Vicountess of Eccles" scheduled for auction on Apr. 14. One item in her collection was a copy of the third quarto edition of "Hamlet" published in 1661 and described as the "earliest obtainable copy of 'Hamlet' remain- ing in private hands" and estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million; the Fol- ger Shakespeare Library in Washington did not bid on the book, because the Folger already has three copies of the third quarto. If you're interested in the book, it's still available: bidding did not reach the reserve. Apr 04 #2 And there is more auction news: the manuscript of "The Sussex Vampire" will be offered at auction at Christie's in New York on June 9. Noted as "unrecorded" in my census of Canonical manuscripts, it is described by Christie's as purchased from a New York antiquarian dealer by a New York collector, and given it to the lady who has sent it to auc- tion. According to the catalog, there are 24 leaves are on two different paper stocks: 11 sheets of printed ship's stationery (the versos headed "On board S.S.....") and 13 sheets of good-quality lined paper; there are scat- tered corrections and revisions (among them some 160 crossed-out words de- scribing Holmes and Watson's first meeting with the Ferguson family). The manuscript, bound for the author in white buckram boards is signed and tit- led on the front cover, and the estimate is $150,000-200,000. The ship's stationery also is printed with the house flag of the White Star Line, and It seems likely that Conan Doyle began the story on the S.S. Adriatic, in which he returned to England in August 1923 after his "second American ad- venture" (the story was published in January 1924). Sherlock G. Holmes died on Mar. 24. He thought his name was Gordon Holmes until he was 17 years old and needed a copy of his birth certificate in or- der to play baseball with the American Legion his name, and discovered that his parents had named him Sherlock Gordon Holmes (they hadn't told him be- cause they didn't want him to be teased). And he never regretted his name, and thoroughly enjoyed using it during his long career as an investigator for the Washington state auditor's office. "Hello Kitty" is quite popular with youngsters in Japan (and elsewhere), and she was available last year (and no longer) in Sherlockian costume on a tag that comes with KitKat chocolate, Naomi Tanaka reports from Osaka. Ac- cording to the label, the tag could be attached to your cell phone. Many years ago (Jul 91 #1) the Daily Mail reported that there were plans for a Sherlock Holmes series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, but it was merely a rumor. Now there's a new report in the Daily Mirror (Mar. 30) that Fry and Laurie are to reunite as Holmes and Watson in a new ITV television film that will air next year; the story quoted ITV1's drama chief Nick Elliott as saying that "Stephen is ab- solutely passionate about Sherlock Holmes, and Hugh will make a superb Wat- son." The BBC picked up the story, noting that "ITV has yet to confirm the project." So here are the facts (just the facts, ma'am). from London-based Company Pictures (you might have seen their "Anna Karenina" on PBS-TV, and their "Nicholas Nickleby on Bravo): they are developing a pilot script for a possible series for ITV1, starring Fry and Laurie, possibly to shoot this fall, but: "at this stage we have no further information on the project." It's out-of-print, but available in used-book shops and at web-sites such as : THE CASE BOOK OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, a 72-page book published by the Quality Paperback Book Club in 1994. There's an in- troduction and a discussion of Conan Doyle and his works (both anonymous), and reprints of Sherlockian essays by G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, and A. E. Murch, and eight illustrations. Gale Research seems to have put the book together, without credit to an editor, and it's nicely done. Apr 04 #3 Another interesting opening for a story: "I swallowed my fairy when I was twelve years old. It was an accident." That's from Jean-Claude Dunyach's "Watch Me While I Sleep", one of thirteen stories in THE NIGHT ORCHID: CONAN DOYLE IN TOULOUSE (Encino: Black Coat Press, 2004; 279 pp. $20.95). Dunyach's genre is science fiction and fantasy, and the Doylean story in the collection is the title story, set in 1890, when Conan Doyle and Challenger travel to France to help solve a murder mystery; Dun- yach does an excellent job of capturing Challenger as he would have been in his younger days. The publisher's address is: Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416 . Scott Monty spotted Molly Melloan's illustration in the Wall Street Journal (Apr. 13), accompanying George Melloan's opin- ion piece on "We Already Know Why al Qaeda Succeeded". Registration is now open for the third meeting of The Sher- lock Holmes and All That Jazz Society, to be held this year in Davenport, Iowa, on July 22-25. Davenport is the birth- place of Dixieland great Bix Beiderbecke, and the meeting co- incides with Davenport's Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival. More details are available from Donald B. Izban, 1012 Rene Court, Park Ridge, IL 60068. Peter Wood has noted a travel piece from the Apr. 8 issue of the Vancouver Georgia Straight with the headline "KGB Relics Recall the Days of Baltic Spooks" in which Peter Neville-Had- ley reported from Estonia that "In Tallinn, those employed to detect and discourage dissidents had their headquarters at an appropriate address: Pagari (Baker) Street. The Soviet Sherlocks' building sits at the junction with a road that is lined with magnificent medieval structures in creams and ochres, its grey dolomite and terra cotta facade comparatively drab and ready to be overlooked like some rain-coated spy on a street-corner stakeout." Peter Ustinov died on Mar. 28. He was an actor, playwright, novelist, film director, and newspaper columnist, and his acting career spanned six dec- ades; he won Oscars as supporting actor in "Spartacus" (1960) and "Topkapi" (1964). He also participated in the BBC Home Service's centenary "Tribute to Sherlock Holmes" broadcast in 1954, reminiscing as Professor Willi Not- enschlager, Holmes' old violin teacher. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a "Astronomy Picture of the Day" at its web-site, and Scott Monty notes that on Apr. 4 the picture shows "The Lost World of Lake Vida" (a lake hidden beneath 19 meters of ice and gravel in Antarctica). "In a modern version of Sir Arth- ur Conan Doyle's classic book," NASA-funded scientists plan to drill into the lake and remove a sample of water for analysis. Lake Vida, buried un- der the ice for more than 2,500 years, is liquid only because of its high salt content, and it may contain microbes. If living organisms are found in Lake Vida, they may indicate that life might still exist under similar frozen ice-sheets on Mars or moons of Jupiter. A photo of a robot meteoro- logical station above ice-sealed Lake Vida can be seen at NASA's web-site at . Apr 04 #4 Alistair Cooke died on Mar. 30. He went to work for the BBC in 1934, and in 1946 started his "Letter from America", which was broadcast to more than 50 countries, with 2869 programs, the last one air- ing in February. He wrote a Sherlockian parody "The Case of the November Sun-Tan" and hosted the television series "Omnibus" on ABC-TV (they aired "The Fine Art of Murder" in 1956, with Dennis Hoey as Conan Doyle), and in 1971 he became the first (and only, for 22 years) host of "Masterpiece The- atre". In 1994 Jeremy Brett told Nicholas Utechin: "Alistair Cooke said to me about two years ago, 'The three most memorable men of the twentieth cen- tury so far are Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Sherlock Holmes.'" The World Wide Web offers a spectacular variety of sources for information: the N.Y. Times provides index access to its archives (you just click on "archive" at the top of the first screen), and you can search the 1851-1995 or the 1996-present archives. The archive for 1851-1995 dis- plays 1,208 citations for "William Gillette" and 2,663 citations for "Conan Doyle" and 5,723 citations for "Sherlock Holmes". Of course you don't get free access to the complete articles, but you can take a list of citations to a library that has the N.Y. Times on microfilm and read without charge. Thanks to Gayle Harris for tip on these archives. The U.S. Postal Service has honored Henry Mancini, who called himself simply a composer; he won four Oscars and twenty Grammies, and his albums sold more than 30 mill- ion copies. His Sherlockian films were "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986) and "Without a Clue" (1988), and (not quite Sherlockian) "The Molly Maguires" (1970). The latest news about Charles Dickens has no connection with Conan Doyle (although Sir Arthur did once converse with Dickens, during a seance), but Andrew Blau noted a report by Alex Beam in the Boston Globe (Apr. 6) that Stanford University has been mailing facsimile editions of Dickens' novels in weekly serial form so that readers can experience the books as Dickens' readers did in the 19th century. The chapters are printed on cheap news- print, with the original illustrations. This year's book is "A Tales of Two Cities" and the mailings are sent free to some 5,000 households as part of a community outreach program now in its second year. You can read more about this imaginative project at . Further to the report (Nov 03 #4) about the continuing battle over Liberton Bank House (where Arthur Conan Doyle once lived as a child), a story in the Edinburgh Evening News (Mar. 25), at hand from Jay Hyde, reports that the house will be restored and used as a permanent home for the Dunedin Special School, according to a development proposal that will be submitted to the local council. Ken Lanza has reported the story in the Guardian (Apr. 16): "The rich Scots brogue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle recounting how he came to create Sherlock Holmes is one of thousands of sound recordings from the British Library to be made available online to universities and further education colleges in a L1 million programme." And the Guardian's web-site has a link to a 1:56 recording of Conan Doyle with grand fidelity. Go to and search for "Conan Doyle" and scroll down to the story. Apr 04 #5 Abbey National, long resident in Baker Street, and with a long history of providing a secretary to answer mail sent to Sher- lock Holmes at 221b, has closed its headquarters there, and no longer ans- wers Sherlock Holmes' mail. Bill Barnes reports that his nephew wrote to Sherlock Holmes at 221b, and received a form-letter reply from Grace Riley, director of The Sherlock Holmes Museum, enclosing one of the leather book- marks stamped with Abbey's name that Abbey used to send with their replies to Sherlock Holmes' mail. The letter is quite similar to those sent from Abbey National, explaining that Mr. Holmes receives too many letters to re- ply personally, and that he has retired to a bee-farm in the English coun- tryside, and with a final paragraph noting that his old rooms are now open to the public as The Sherlock Holmes Museum. Reported: a trade paperback edition of MY SHERLOCK HOLMES: UNTOLD STORIES OF THE GREAT DETECTIVE, edited by Michael Kurland (New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2004; 370 pp., $14.95); it's an anthology of pastiches, written to Kurland's rule: while Holmes must appear, the viewpoint character is not Watson, but some other figure from the Canon (May 03 #1). The March issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers an inter- esting review by Julie McKuras of the books presented to those who attended the 1944 "Trilogy Dinner" (there are multiple copies in the collections, of course) and Dick Sveum's "100 Years Ago" tribute to Andrew Lang, plus other news from and about the collections. And the spring issue of the semi-ann- ual newsletter published by The Friends of the Library uses an appropriate quote from Christopher Morley' friend Don Marquis to introduce a report on "An Evening of Ribald Literature" with Garrison Keillor, and has stories by Tim Johnson on the arrival of "Detective Linus" at the Special Collections (Aug 03 #3) and on Tim's series of "Compleat Scholar" continuing-education classes on the four Sherlock Holmes stories. You can request copies from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, Un- iversity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . SHERLOCK has been redesigned but continues to offer excellent coverage of crime fiction (Sherlockian and otherwise); issue #59 features David Stuart Davies' discussion of "Mrs. Hudson of the Movies", June Thomson's new pas- tiche "The Case of the Conk-Singleton Forgery", and Gavin Collinson's re- view of "Infinite Villainy" (Holmes' adversaries in the films). SHERLOCK is published bimonthly, and subscriptions cost L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincin- nati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) is their American agent; credit-card orders are welcomed at both addresses, and back issues are available. Robin Hunter died on Mar. 8. The son of actor Ian Hunter (who was Dr. Wat- son with Arthur Wontner in "The Sign of Four" in 1932), he spent his child- hood in Hollywood, where he made the set of "Tarzan" films a favorite play- ground. He moved to London as a versatile juvenile, and at the age of 23 was the youngest chairman ever at the Players' Theatre, where he excelled in their pantomimes. He went on to a career on stage and screen and tele- vision, and played Major Sholto in Granada's "The Sign of the Four" (1987). Apr 04 #6 "Sky's the Limit for Sculpture" is the headline on P. J. Lass- ek's front-page story in the Tulsa World (Mar. 9), kindly for- warded by Dean Clark. Tulsa plans to create an Oklahoma Centennial Botan- ical Garden at a wooded area about seven miles northwest of downtown Tulsa at a site that includes Holmes Peak, described as being the highest point in Tulsa, Osage, Creek, Washington, and Pawnee counties. There also is a plan to use the site for a 176-foot bronze sculpture of a Native American that is to be the largest free-standing bronze monument in the world (the Statue of Library is 152 feet high). Shan Gray, the artist who is design- ing the statue, announced this month that he has chosen Holmes Peak as the site; the $26-million statue will be funded privately, and Tulsa is being asked only to provide the site and infrastructure. The statue won't put Holmes Peak on the map, of course: Dick Warner, head sherpa of The Holmes Peak Preservation Society, won government approval for that some years ago, and Holmes Peak still is the only geographical feature on Earth named in honor of Sherlock Holmes. Dick will of course revise his "Guide Book and Instructions for the Ascent of Holmes Peak" in time for the formal dedication of the statue in 2007, when Oklahoma celebrates its cen- tennial. It's not new, but completists may want to look for THE HOUND OF THE BASKER- VILLES (New York: Alladin Classics/Simon & Schuster, 2000; 246 pp., $3.99); with a six-page foreword by Bruce Brooks and a four-page reading guide. MPI Home Entertainent has released remastered DVDs ($19.98 each) with Basil Rathbone's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939); the DVDs also have production notes and commentary by Rich- and Valley, and "The Hound of the Baskervilles" has additional commentary by David Stuart Davies. Norman M. Davis ("The Grosvenor Square Furniture Van") died on Apr. 7. He was a free-lance writer and a stalwart member of Sherlockian societies in Washington and Chicago. His first S'ian paper appeared in The Baker Street Journal in 1969, and he received in Investiture from The Baker Street Ir- regulars in 1972. In Washington he happily impersonated Dr. Watson in the productions of The Red Circle Players, and he was proud to share with Wat- son what Holmes once described as a "pawky vein of humor." Norm delighted in puns and word-play, shown to great advantage in A PAWKY QUIZ (1983) and AMUSING HOLMES! (1992), and his presentations to bewildered and bemused so- ciety meetings were spectacular. Elizabeth Peters' mystery novels about Amelia Peabody Emerson often include allusions to the Sherlock Holmes stories, and fans of the series will wel- come AMELIA PEABODY'S EGYPT: A COMPENDIUM, which she has edited with Kris- ten Whitbread (New York: William Morrow, 2003; 334 pp., $29.95). The book has a chapter on "The Best of Wonder: An Authoritative Analysis of Victor- ian Popular Fiction" in which Barbara Michaels includes references to the Canon. Note: Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels are both Barbara Mertz, and you can find all three of them at . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) May 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press "The Devonshire Inheritance: Five Centuries of Collecting at Chatsworth" is an exhibition (through June 20) at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (18 West 86th Street in New York) (212-501-3000), according to a report by Sue Vizoskie in the April issue of the Foolscap Document (the newsletter of The Three Garridebs). There are more than 200 works of art from the family's private collection in the ex- hibition, including Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Georgiana, 5th Duchess of Devonshire; a different portrait, by Thomas Gainsborough, showing the Geor- giana in the fashionable hat mentioned by Watson (in "A Case of Identity") was stolen by Adam Worth (sometimes called "the Napoleon of crime"). The Chatsworth web-site display the Gainsborough portrait; look for a link to "Devonshire Collection" (the web-site mentions Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Professor Moriarty). William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" will be performed at the Barnstormers Theatre, July 6-10. The theater's address is Box 434, Tamworth, NY 03886 (603-323-8500) . The Historical Journal, published by the Cambridge University Press and de- voted to coverage of "all aspects of British, European, and world history since the fifteenth century," has in its Sept. 2003 issue Michael Saler's 24-page article "'Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes': Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c. 1890-c. 1940". Saler has interesting things to say about the two types of Holmes believers: the "naive believer" (who genuinely believed that Holmes and Watson were real) and the "ironic believer" (who pretended that Holmes was real, "but for whom this pretence was so earnest that the uninitiated might not recognize it as pretence"). The distinction seems to be as real today as it was then. Reported by Roger Johnson: Christopher Downes died on Nov. 21. He was the dresser (the trusted personal assistant) for some of Britain's greatest ac- tors, and it was on his life that the film "The Dresser" (1983) was based; according to the obituary by Derek Grainger in The Independent, Robert Ste- phens insisted on Downes' services in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970), and Billy Wilder was so impressed by Downes' stylishness and verve that he wrote him into the script as a Victorian policeman. Victor Langley also died in November; he played the Prince of Wales in "Murder by Decree" (1978). And Max Harris died on Mar. 13; he was a jazz pianist, and wrote theme music for radio and television programs, including the Douglas Wilmer "Sherlock Holmes" television series (1965). All that from Roger's excellent monthly newsletter The District Messenger, which costs $15.00 a year (checks payable to Jean Upton, please) or L6.00 (checks payable to Roger Johnson); their address is Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DF, England. And you can receive his newsletter free by e-mail [yes, that's "rojer" with a "j"]. The comic-book series RUSE (with Simon Archard and Emma Bishop) has ended its run, but Crossgen continues to published occasional issues of ARCHARD'S AGENT; the latest issue (Apr 04) is not Sherlockian, but nicely Victorian. See for information on all their series. May 04 #2 "In the Privacy of Their Own Holmes: An Exhibition of Private Press and Limited Edition Sherlockiana" was arranged by Derham Groves for the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne from Apr. 5 to May 28, and there was an interesting assortment of Sherlockiana on view. Derham also edited and published IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOLMES to co- incide with the exhibition; the 46-page booklet offers nicely-illustrated essays by Peter E. Blau, Vincent Brosnan, Derham Groves, David G. Harris, Michael Jorgensen, Robert C. Littlewood, Jerry Margolin, and C. Paul Martin about private presses and other matters. It's available from Derham Groves (485 Albert Street, Brunswick West, Vic. 3055, Australia); US $30.00 post- paid hard-bound or $15.00 for the paperback. One of the many strengths of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY is the broad scope of his research; one of the problems that result from this is the fact that many of the articles he cites have appeared in society newsletters and other publications that can be difficult if not im- possible to find. The Occupants of the Empty House have offered a solution to the problem: THE OCCUPANTS WITHIN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY, with an interesting introduction by Bill Cochran, reprints 24 articles that were cited in the first six volumes of the reference library; the 70-page booklet is available ($23.95 postpaid) from Stan Tinsley (Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999). RUSS-L (the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes elec- tronic mailing list for fans of Laurie R. King's novels) has a second edition of their T-shirt (the first version was produced in 1999), and now spa- ghetti tanks, sweatshirts, camisoles, mouse-pads, and tote bags, available from CafePress.com, 1515 Aurora Drive, San Leandro, CA 94577 (877-809-1659) . The web-site offers a link to the mailing list (click on the blue logo). MS. HOLMES OF BAKER STREET, by C. Alan Bradley and William A. S. Sarjeant, has been reprinted (Edmon- ton: University of Alberta Press, 2004; 288 pp., $34.95), with a new intro- duction by Barbara Roden. When their book was first published 15 years ago (Dec 89 #6), the authors' careful and well-written examination of evidence that Holmes was female, twice pregnant, and possibly once a mother, was met with outrage from critics who apparently had never heard John Bennett Shaw explain that the one thing Sherlockians should be serious about is not tak- ing themselves seriously. There has been some discussion on the RUSS-L electronic mailing list (for fans of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series) of Sherlock Holmes' age dur- ing the decades in which the series is set. Michele Canterbury reported to the list about her grandfather, who lived to be 93 years old. "He was very fit and healthy for a man who, to the best of my knowledge, was an alcohol- ic until the day he died (homemade moonshine, no less), smoked, and chewed tobacco. He did have a massive coronary at the age of 82 (while having sex with his wife); he buried two wives, and one week before he died he walked five miles from his home to the porch of a lady to propose marriage. She told him to go to hell, and he walked home, took to his bed, and died." May 04 #3 Bert Coules' 45-minute series "The Further Adventures of Sher- lock Holmes" (with Clive Merrison as Holmes and Andrew Sachs as Watson) resumed on BBC Radio 4 on May 18, with "The Abergavenny Murder" as the first of five new weekly programs. The BBC kindly makes its broadcasts available on the Internet at (just click on "radio" and on "radio 4" and on "listen again"). Four of the five shows will be issued on June 7 as a four-CD set (L15.99) and a two-audiocassette set (L10.99); you can order on-line at . Four of the five programs from the first series (2002) also are available as a two-audiocassette set (L10.99). The series is nicely done, with interesting stories imaginatively told. Thanks to Jerry Margolin for the report on the reality series "The Restau- rant" (broadcast by NBC-TV on Mondays). In episode 203 (May 10) Mama sur- prises Rocco with a video of his graduation from the Culinary Institute of America eighteen years ago, and the next day Rocco visits the CIA to speak at their commencement and to see his old mentor Fritz Sonnenschmidt (it was Fritz who did so much work to make the CIA's grand gourmet Sherlockian din- ners so delicious). You can see a photograph of Rocco and Fritz at the NBC web-site , and while the episode certainly will repeat on NBC-TV, it will also air on Bravo cable on June 23. Kenneth Ludwig's play "Postmortem" (which premiered as "Dramatic Licence" in New Hampshire in 1983, with Patrick Horgan as William Gillette) is being performed at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre through June 6. It's a murder mystery set in Gillette's home in Connecticut, with Gillette trying to do the detecting. The box-office address is 4 River Street, Chattanooga, TN 37045 . It's not quite the same as engaging a special, as Moriarty did (in "The Fi- nal Problem"), but you can still charter "private varnish" (the name still used for private railway cars). Scott Monty spotted an interesting article ("Ride Like a Railroad Baron") in Business Week (May 10), and the experi- ence sounds grand indeed; the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners has a web-site , and publishes a Private Car Charter Guide ($7.50 postpaid). AAPRCO is at 630-B Constitution Avenue NE, Wash- ington, DC 20002. Oh yes: prices to charter a car start at around $3,000 a day and can easily top $5,000 or $6,000. Laurie R. King's THE GAME, her latest novel starring Mary Russell and Sher- lock Holmes (Mar 04 #6), is available from Recorded Books, read unabridged by Jenny Sterlin, on 8 audiocassettes ($34.99 purchase or $18.50 rental) or 12 CDs ($39.95/$18.50); 270 Skipjack Road, Prince Frederick, MD 20678 (800- 636-1304) . Reported: MURDER ON THE LEVIATHAN, by Boris Akunin (New York: Random House, 2004; 240 pp., $21.95); Erast Fandorin, a young Russian detective/diplomat, travels to India in 1878 on the maiden voyage of the Leviathan, and there are murders to solve (Dennis Drabelle reviewed the book in the May 16 issue of the Washington Post and noted echoes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in "the detective's ability to fill in a character's background by noticing what is lost on less keen-eyed observers"). And: a trade-paperback edition of Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (Apr 03 #1) (New York: Vintage Books, 2004; 240 pp., $12.00). May 04 #4 There were many Sherlockians and Doyleans who happily took ad- vantage of the opportunity to inspect the Conan Doyle material that was on view at Christie's sales-rooms in London before the auction on May 19, and there were plenty of active bidders. The catalog is spectacu- lar, and recommended to anyone who wants to learn more about Sir Arthur's life and work; $30.00/L20.00 from Christie's in New York (800-395-6300) or London (20-7389-2820), and at their web-site . Bert Coules has reported that the auction featured "a couple of hundred or so people, a rank of TV cameras, a bank of Christie's staff earnestly chat- tering into telephones, a plasma screen which displayed the lots (on occa- sion at the correct time, and various passersby who wandered in to look at (and discuss, sometimes rather loudly the entirely unrelated paintings on the walls of the auction room." The sale realized $1,678,821 (or L948,545) including the buyer's premium; this was somewhat less than half of Christie's estimate for the sale, and 31 lots (out of 135) went unsold because bids was less than the reserves. The more interesting unsold material included Conan Doyle's log-books from his voyages aboard the "Hope" and the "Mayumba", his archive on the Edalji case, his letters to his sister Lottie. The highest price paid for a lot was $247,180/L139,650 for the Southsea notebooks (with the first notes for "A Study in Scarlet"). And some material went for much more than Christie had estimated: Conan Doyle's drawings and paintings, estimated at L1,000- 1,500, brought L7,170 (a sure sign that two bidders really wanted the lot). And there have been some reports on who bought what: Cliff Goldfarb has an- nounced that the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Public Libra- ry was successful in acquiring a lot titled "Canada and the Empire" (quite appropriate for the Toronto collection). The [Edinburgh] Scotsman reported that the Glasgow City Council bought the archive on the Oscar Slater case (the Mitchell Library already has the records of the Glasgow police enquir- ies into the case). The British Library purchased ten lots, including two issues of the handwritten magazine Conan Doyle produced while at school at Feldkirch in Austria, the manuscript of his first (and unpublished) novel ("The Narrative of John Smith"), letters to his mother and his brother Inn- es, and other family papers. The auction attracted considerable interest from the press, both before and after the sale, and there were last-minute complaints that the British gov- ernment had not acted to preserve the archive for the nation. There also was a report that there was "parliamentary agitation over the possible fate of the archive." The agitation consisted of two "Early Day Motions" filed by MP Alex Salmond (SNP) [Scottish Nationalist Party] on May 14 and 18 pro- testing the auction (the House of Commons web-site at notes that early day motions are not generally expected to be debated); and a question posed by MP Pete Wishart (SNP) on May 18 to the Speaker of the House, asking whether he had been approached by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport about her coming to the House to make a statement about the auction. The Speaker responded: "There are certain things that hon. Members can do to raise these matters, but I have no powers to raise them. It is up to the hon. Gentleman to approach the Department and Minis- ters with his deep concern." And that was that. May 04 #5 The British Library has announced that it "plans in the coming weeks to mount an exhibition to display the Conan Doyle manu- scripts," and that it is "seeking to secure other items that went unsold at auction." The Library also is "keen to explore with other public collec- tions the possibility of raising funds to establish a digital archive" that would reunite as much of the original archives as possible. The British Library also now has received material bequeathed to it by Dame Jean Conan Doyle, including the manuscripts of "The Retired Colourman" and "The Stark Munro Letters". More auction news: Christie's sale of fine printed books and manuscripts at their South Kensington sales room in London on June 8 will include a series of letters and postcards to General Enesy from Sir Arthur, Lady Doyle, and their daughter Mary, 1926-1929; in one letter, discussing a proposed Spiri- tualist tour to Vienna and Budapest, Sir Arthur notes: "The idea of mixing up a religious subject with Sherlock Holmes or other stories is altogether wrong. Spiritualism is far too solemn and too important." Tony Randall died on May 17. He began his acting career on radio in New York in 1940 and made his stage debut in 1941, and moved to television in 1952, and to films in 1955, and was most famous as Felix Unger in the television series "The Odd Couple" from 1970 to 1975. In 1986 it was report- ed that he had been signed as Holmes in "Sherlock Holmes Meets Dracula" (playing opposite Sid Caesar as Count Dracula); rumors persisted, but in 1994 his publicist wrote: "Tony Randall asked me to in- form you that unfortunately, he's never heard of the project you wrote of. Although, he thought it sounded like a great idea." But he did appear as Holmes in advertisements for Smirnoff vodka (1959) and the International Paper Co. (1979); here he is in the 1979 advertisement. It's always nice to see Conan Doyle's books back in print: there is a new edition of THE REFUGEES: A TALE OF TWO CONTINENTS (Neerlandia: Inheritance Publications, 2004; 369 pp., CA$17.95/US$14.90). It's part of the publish- er's Huguenot Inheritance Series, which is thoroughly appropriate: the book tells the story of the Huguenots who escaped from France after the revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and settled in the New World. The pub- lisher's address is: Box 154, Neerlandia, AB T0G 1R0, Canada (780-674-3949) Jonathan Talbot's striking etching of "Silver Blaze" was commissioned as a souvenir of the 25th running of "The Silver Blaze" (you can see it on page 56 of the March 1977 issue of The Baker Street Journal); his artistic style has changed since then, and he'll be one of the artists included in an ex- hibition titled "The Imaginary Voyage" at the Poughkeepsie Art Museum Gall- eries (214 Main Street) (845-454-0522) , May 22 to July 4. Talbot will be at the museum for a panel discussion on June 23, and you can see his "Large Planetary Patrin" at their web-site. May 04 #6 PBS Home Video (1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314 (800- 645-4727) offers "The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes" on VHS and DVD ($19.98); it's likely the one-hour documentary first broadcast in 1986 (although the new release is listed at 120 minutes). And "Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle" on VHS and DVD ($19.98); it's a new title for the first "Murder Rooms" mini-series (2000) that starred Ian Richardson as Bell and Robin Laing as Conan Doyle. And various collections, on VHS and DVD, of the Universal films starring Basil Rathbone, and the Granada television series starring Jeremy Brett. Al Gregory notes the March-April issue of Saudi Aramco World, with a cover story by Peter Harrigan on Bedouin trackers. "There is a classic Holmesian tale," he wrote "about the Bedouin who, after four days on the trail of a camel-mounted fugitive, came upon a settlement where his quarry had taken refuge. He demanded, 'Bring out the man with the eye ailment who rode in one night ago on a white camel with no tail that's also blind in one eye.' The tracker had taken in clues: the position of the camel's droppings rela- tive to its rear footprints, the evidence of lopsided grazing on shrubs, and a tell-tale finger-smear on a campfire stone near which the pursued ri- der had applied the juice of a desert plant use to treat the eyes." You can read the full story on-line at . "Meitantei Conan" [Detective Conan] was first a Japanese manga comic-book series created by Gosho Aoyama, and then it was developed into a long-run- ning animated television series, and then animated films; Shinichi Kudo is a 17-year-old master detective who is turned by villains into a child, and assumes the name Conan Edogawa and pursues evil-doers. The 30-minute ser- ies began running (in English, as "Case Closed") on the Cartoon network's "adult swim" late-night schedule on May 24, and airs Mondays through Thurs- days at 12:30 am. You can read all about it (and see graphics and such) at two web-sites, at and ; the series is not directly Sherlockian, but you should expect echoes and allusions. Reported: Brian Freemantle's THE HOLMES INHERITANCE (Sutton: Severn House, 2004; 346 pp., L18.99); "Sebastian Holmes, estranged son of the great de- tective, sails to America on the Lusitania to investigate rumors of busi- ness magnates plotting secret weapons deals with the Germans just before WWI." It's not known whether Arthur Conan Doyle and Major-General Robert Baden- Powell actually met, in South Africa or elsewhere, but Baden-Powell is men- tioned in Conan Doyle's history of THE GREAT BOER WAR, and Conan Doyle is mentioned in Baden-Powell's SCOUTING FOR BOYS. Baden-Powell suggested that Scouts read the Sherlock Holmes stories to learn observation and deduction, in what Christopher Hitchens has called (in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly) "one of the very few books of the twentieth century that actually led to the formation of a worldwide movement." SCOUTING FOR BOYS: THE ORIG- INAL 1908 EDITION, by Robert Baden-Powell (London: Oxford University Press, 2004; 448 pp., $26.00), has been reprinted for the first time in the Oxford World's Classics series. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Jun 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Further to the report about Baden-Powell (May 04 #6), there is more to the story, as noted by Jon Lellenberg: Dame Jean Conan Doyle, in her foreword to Jon's THE QUEST FOR SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1987), wrote that her father "... had an open mind, admitting past misjudgements, such as telling the then Sir Robert Baden-Powell that his new Scout movement would prove too idealistic to last. He remembered this when he took me, age seven, to join the village Brownie pack ..." In 1980 young Harry Hallesy, as an English Literature project, wrote to ac- tors, authors, and politicians, asking them, "what are your all-time favor- ite books?" The responses were sold at auction in February in Shropshire, and the lot included a letter from former prime minister Harold Wilson, who listed Howard Springer's FAME IS THE SPUR, Dorothy L. Sayer's THE NINE TAI- LORS, and Arthur Conan Doyle's THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (according to an article in the Bristol Western Daily Press). Paranormal researcher James Ellis has spent six decades documenting spirit- ualist Leslie Flint, who used an "independent direct voice" made of ecto- plasm that would form in the air while Flint sat silently, recently donated thousands of hours of audiotape of Flint to the University of Manitoba, ac- cording to a story in the Winnipeg Sun (May 20); distinguished figures from the past who spoke to Flint included Archimedes, Rudolph Valentino, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Staff at the T. G. Hamilton Collection of the paranor- mal will spend several months indexing and transferring the audiotapes to electronic format. "Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used to correct his Sherlock Holmes proofs while sitting in the cafe," according to a review (May 29) of the InterCon- tinental Le Grand Hotel Paris at The Telegraph's web-site. The hotel was built in 1862 and recently reopened after an 18-month restoration, and it has a web-site , but the web-site has no historical information on distinguished guests. Watson's Tin Box (one of the more active Sherlockian societies in Maryland) have collected some of their scholarship in Irene's Cabinet, and a few cop- ies of the 50-page pamphlet are available ($10.00 postpaid) from Beth Aust- in (9455 Chadburn Place, Gaithersburg, MD 20886); the contents range from Steve Clarkson's "Interview with Sir Eustace Brackenstall" to Mike Berdan's "A Three-Continent Problem", and it's all nicely done. Reported: RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES I [EMPT/NORW/SIXN/3STU], read by David Timson (Naxos Audiobooks, 2004) on three CDs (L13.99) or three audiocass- ettes (L9.99); Naxos also offers Timson's recordings of A STUDY IN SCARLET, THE SIGN OF FOUR, and THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES I-VI. Naxos is at 3 Wells Place, Redhill, Surrey RH1 3DR, England . Further to the report (May 04 #2) about merchandise with the RUSS-L emblem, there's a lot more available for Sherlockians: silhouettes and artwork by Paget, Elcock, and Wiles, on everything from clothing to tote bags to lunch boxes to clocks; the CafePress.com address is 1515 Aurora Drive, San Lean- dro, CA 94577 (877-809-1659) . Jun 04 #2 Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (Mar 03 #1) won the Edgar awarded by the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime, at their annual dinner in New York on Apr. 29; the book is Sherlock- ian only for Larson's description of the arrival in Chicago of Herman Web- ster Mudgett (the serial murderer who is the book's titular devil): "There in July 1886, the year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced his detective to the world, Mudgett registered his name as Holmes." A "Happy 200th Birthday!" to Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, who was born on July 1, 1804 (the portrait is from the July issue of Smithsonian magazine), and who used the pen-name George Sand. "'L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand," Sherlock Holmes said (in "The Red-Headed League"). Casting trivia: name some actors who have played both Sher- lock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade. The spring issue of The Serpentine Muse offers news from, about, and by The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, including a splendid article by forensic toxicologist Marina Stajic on "The Aerodynamics of a Reindeer" (and if you want to know why reindeer are of special interest to the Adventuresses, and how forensic toxicology is involved, you need only subscribe to the Muse). It's published quarterly and costs $10.00 a year (checks payable to the Ad- venturesses, please) from Evelyn A. Herzog (360 West 21st Street #5-A, New York, NY 10011). An actor who has played both Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade is Rog- er Llewellyn, who is touring as Holmes in David Stuart Davies' play "Sher- lock Holmes - The Last Act"; he was Lestrade on stage in "Sherlock Holmes: The Musical" (1988). There's at least one more. Judith Flanders' INSIDE THE VICTORIAN HOME: A PORTRAIT OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND (New York: Norton, 2004; 499 pp., $34.95) was reviewed by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post (May 2) as "a useful corrective to over-romanticizing." He noted that "her attention is focused on city life, London in particular; what she shows us is a world in which dirt, vermin, and disease were nearly inescapable, and in which the labor of maintaining even the best-managed households was endless, exhausting, and often danger- ous," and it is obvious that the book will be of interest to those who wish to see what life below-stairs in Sherlock Holmes' world was like. If you want to explore the subject a bit farther, Benjamin Schwarz, in his review of INSIDE THE VICTORIAN HOME in The Atlantic Monthly (June) recommends oth- er books, including PUBLIC LIVES, by Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004; 304 pp., $45.00), for a different view of how life was lived in those times. Bill Barnes (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly, NSW 2095, Australia) notes that THE HOUNDS' COLLECTION: VOLUME 9 now is available, with 62 pages of humor, pas- tiche, scholarship, conjecture, and artwork by members of The Hounds of the Internet. $12.00/CA$16.00/L6.50/E10.00/AU$12.00 postpaid by air; payment in currency or by PayPal to preferred, but checks (made out to R. W. Barnes) are acceptable. Jun 04 #3 According to a review of Metro 3D's Xbox computer game DINOSAUR HUNTING: "The characters each have their own look and feel, but don't appear to have much of a backstory. The one exception is Arthur Con- an Doyle. Yes, the author of the Sherlock Holmes series and THE LOST WORLD is, for some reason, in the game as a hunter. Uh, okay, cool. The primary character, Malone, also gets an assist from his dog, Algo, who finds clues and also runs around dinosaurs that are absolutely spazzing out." The re- view by Hilary Goldstein at on June 2; the game was released by Microsoft in Japan last year, and Metro 3D took over publishing duties for the U.S. when Microsoft decided not to release the game, which retails for $39.99 here. "The West End Horror" (dramatized by Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge from Nicholas Meyer's novel) has been scheduled at the Asolo Theatre Festi- val from Nov. 26 to Mar. 3 ("Holmes & Watson meet Gilbert & Sullivan, Shaw, Wilde, and more," according to an announcement). 5555 North Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34243 (800-361-8388) "Not since the days of Sherlock Holmes has there appeared a collection of detective stories as clever, exciting, and continually gripping as TRENT INTERVENES; not since the Baker Street master has there been a detective as ingenious as Trent. No human encyclopaedia, but a sensible man who is not above relying on the help of those who know more than he in certain special fields, Trent is here in a collection of twelve fast-paced mysteries that are likely to put him in a place second only to that of Conan Doyle's great character." That's the enthusiastic promotion found on a wrap-around strip of paper on top of the dust jacket of the first American edition (1938) of E. C. Bentley's book. Another actor who has played both Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade is Simon Callow, who was Holmes in BBC Radio 4's "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (1993) and BBC Radio 5's series "The Unopened Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" (1993); he was Lestrade on TNT cable television in "The Crucifer of Blood" (1991). Anna Lee died on May 14, one week (according to TV Guide) before she was to receive a special Daytime Emmy for Lifetime Achievement; she played matri- arch Lila Quartermaine on "General Hospital" on ABC-TV from 1978 to 2003. She began her acting career on stage in England, and appeared in her first film in 1932, and in her first American film in 1940; she received an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1982. TV Guide's tribute to her (June 6) said she was the god-daughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in fact she wasn't: Barbara Roisman Cooper (who has been working with Anna Lee on her autobiography BEFORE THE COLOURS FADE) reported four years ago that while her father was a very good friend of Sir Arthur, she wasn't his god-daughter. Further to the report (May 04 #3) on BBC radio broadcasts being available on the Internet at , BBC Radio 7 is airing "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (with Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson) five days a week (click on "radio" and on "radio 7" and on "listen again"); the previous seven days' broadcast always are available. Thanks to Phil Attwell for his monitoring of the BBC's radio schedule. Jun 04 #4 Ronald W. Reagan died on June 5. He wrote to O. Dallas Baillio (director of the public library in Mobile, Ala.) in 1977, de- scribing his debt to public libraries and the books he read as a young boy in Dixon, Ill.: "Then came the Zane Grey phase, Horatio Alger and Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, Mark Twain with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." There was much more to his reading in those days, and you can read the en- tire letter in the Feb. 1981 issue of American Libraries. And there's more to the story: on Dec. 4, 1992, the Reagans dined at The Sherlock Holmes in Northumberland Street, and were greeted by Holmes and Watson (costumed ac- tors Stewart Quentin Holmes and John Barrett-Watson); you can read a story about that in the Sherlock Holmes Gazette (spring 1993). Malice Domestic XVII will convene on Apr. 29-May 1, 2005, at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, Va., with Joan Hess as Guest of Honor, Ellis Peters as Ghost of Honor, Carole Nelson Douglas as Toastmaster, and a Life- time Achievement Award for H. R. F. Keating; you can register with Malice Domestic at Box 31137, Bethesda, MD 20824 . Michael P. Hodel co-authored ENTER THE LION: A POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF MYCROFT HOLMES (1978) and was an active Sherlockian in Los Angeles; he also was en- thusiastic about radio, and science fiction, and it's nice that we can lis- ten to "Mike Hodel's Hour 25 (Science Fiction Radio for Southern California since 1972)" on the Internet . Mike was one of four people who started "Hour 25" in 1973, and when he died in 1986, Harlan Ell- ison took over as host and the show was renamed to honor Mike. The series continued with various hosts until 2000 which it switched to the Internet, and it's still going strong. The index of people interviewed makes it easy to pick and choose, and you might look for (and listen to) Poul Anderson, Laurie R. King, and Charles Edward Pogue, all of whom have something to say about Sherlock Holmes. The next issue of SHERLOCK (edited by David Stuart Davies) won some excell- ent publicity in the Daily Telegraph in Richard Savill's article "The Dubi- ous Pedigree of the Baskerville Hound" (June 1) about an article by thrill- er writer Phil Rickman in SHERLOCK that Conan Doyle was inspired by tales of Herefordshire's Black Vaughan of Kington, and his ghostly Hergest hound; medieval Baskervilles had a castle at Eardisley, near Kington. It remains to be seen whether Kington will supplant Dartmoor as a destination for fu- ture Sherlockian tourists. SHERLOCK is published bimonthly, and the cost of a subscription is L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (else- where); Atlas Publishing Ltd., Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hants. BH24 6QJ, England . And Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) is their American agent; credit-card orders are welcomed at both addresses and back issues are available. Of course there are other candidates. Last year "the title of baron of the castle which is said to have inspired the name of the Sherlock Holmes novel THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES" was offered for sale (Jun 03 #6). That was Pencelli Castle, near Brecon in Wales, built by 11th-century knight Ralph Baskerville; the owner noted that "Conan Doyle was a regular visitor to the castle during the reign of Queen Victoria." Oh well: "Here a Baskerville, there a Baskerville, everywhere . . .'" Jun 04 #5 Eric H. Silk ("The Blue Carbuncle") died on June 8. He was one of the founders of The Bootmakers of Toronto, and drafted the society's constitution (which Cliff Goldfarb quite correctly describes as a document that easily matches The Baker Street Irregulars' Constitution and Buy-Laws); Eric also was Commissioner of the Ontario Police for many years, and he owned the only known piece of Sherlockian pornography (a copy of the 1971 paperback THE SEXUAL ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES) smuggled across an international border by a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion. He received his Investiture from the BSI in 1977. Randall Stock has a valuable web-site called "The Best of Sherlock Holmes" at , where you will find much more information about material in the sale of Conan Doyle material in May, the sale of "The Sussex Vampire" this month, Conan Doyle manuscripts (Sher- lockian and non-Sherlockian), copies of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, and much more. The summer issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has another installment in its continuing series of reports on other libraries' special collections: Rebecca Cape's discussion of the Lilly Library at In- diana University, which has a fine collection of Sherlockiana. Plus Chris- topher Roden's warm tribute to the late Richard Lancelyn Green, and the us- ual news from and about the Conan Doyle collection in Toronto. Copies are available from Doug Wrigglesworth, at 16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada . I neglected to report earlier that Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's editor Janet Hutchings has continued EQMM's pleasant tradition of celebrating the birthday festivities: the Feb. 2004 issue offered a parody by Arthur Porges ("Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot") and Jon L. Breen's "The Jury Box" (with reviews of Sherlockian pastiches), plus an editorial "Happy Birthday" to Holmes. Sonia Fetherston reports that Lord Addison Travel is advertising a guided tour ("Masters of Mystery: On the Trail of the Great Detectives") in Eng- land, Nov. 11-20, devoted to Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Morse, and (of course) Sherlock Holmes; the company is at Box 307, Peter- borough, NH 03458 (800-326-1070) . John McGowan spotted at BBC News story (June 11) about plans by the British Library to put more than a million pages from 19th-century British newspap- ers on-line, providing a data base that will be valuable to Sherlockian and Doylean researchers. The L2 million project will cover a century of images and text from papers no longer protected by copyright and a searchable web- site "is expected to be ready in 18 months' time." Julia Stevenson reports that the Jeremy Brett Memorial Group is planning to petition the Lambeth City Council to establish memorial garden in his honor on Clapham Common; Brett lived in Clapham for many years and 2005 will mark the 10th anniversary of his death. There's more information at a web-site at , and you can sign an on-line petition at . Jun 04 #6 Jean Upton reports that she has written an introduction for a centenary reprint of THE GOLLIWOGG'S CIRCUS (1903), written by Bertha Upton and illustrated by Jean's grandfather's cousin Florence K. Up- ton, who created the Golliwoggs in 1895 (Jean also reports that she discov- ered that Florence was a friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, by way of their shared interest in spiritualism, and Dame Jean Conan Doyle recalled having some of the Golliwogg books when she was a child. The reprint is sold by Carlton Ware (Francis Joseph, 5 Southbrook Mews, London, SE12 8LG, England ; L25.00 plus shipping. You can visit Gillette Castle on the web, as well as in Hadlyme, Conn.; the URL is . Click on the "virtual photo tour" and you'll find lots of nice photographs, one of which shows Tyke and Teddie Niver as Mr. and Mrs. Gillette. Bill Barnes reports that The Sydney Passengers plan to celebrate their 20th over the weekend of June 11-13, 2005, and will be honored if visitors from abroad can attend the festivities (tentatively titled "An Excellent Voyage: Twenty Years on the Hotspur"). Additional details are available from Bill (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly NSW 2095, Australia) . Ken Lanza spotted an on-line review at of Sonic Youth's new CD "Sonic Nurse" (released by Geffen Records this month at $13.98); one of the tracks is "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" (according to the review it "uncovers the screaming waves of distortion and amplifier ab- use of the band's glory years, though it settles on a mild-mannered sonic freakout appropriate for the band's mature position in the modern-rock pan- theon.") Of course the band has a web-site, where you can hear a sample of the track . Revolver USA has scheduled a double- LP album to be released on June 28 ($13.00); 2745 16th Street, San Francis- co, CA 94103 . It's