Jan 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The schedule for the birthday festivities in New York appears to have sta- bilized at Wednesday-to-Sunday, for those who can manage (or survive) that long a weekend. This year featured dire warnings of a blizzard that never occurred, and an unusually large number of celebrants who came down with or came home with ailments that ranged from a black eye to gastroenteritis. The first event was an ASH Wednesday supper at O'Casey's for dedicated en- thusiasts. Thursday's schedule featured the Christopher Morley Walk, led by Jim Cox, and a rendezvous with other Morley enthusiasts at McSorley's for lunch; an excellent staged reading of "The Blue Carbuncle" (dramatized by Andrew Joffe and starring Paul Singleton as Holmes, Mary Ellen Rich as Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Breckinridge); and the Baker Street Irregulars' Dis- tinguished Speaker, Douglas G. Greene, who gave an entertaining and know- ledgeable lecture at the Williams Club about "female ferrets" and the books in which the early female detectives starred. The Hotel Algonquin was a nice venue for an informal Mrs. Hudson Breakfast on Friday morning, and more than 142 people were on hand for the William Gillette Luncheon at Moran's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant, where Andrew Joffe and Paul Singleton read some of the letters written to Gillette in 1929 by celebrities congratulating him on the occasion of his last farewell tour; this was the 50th anniversary of the luncheon, and the 150th anniversary of William Gillette's birth. And Otto Penzler's afternoon open house at the Mysterious Bookshop provided the usual opportunities to browse and buy. There were 170 on hand for the annual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars at the Union League Club, where Sherry Rose-Bond offered a cocktail-party toast to the Woman: Janice Fisher, who responded with comments on the two- editor home she shares with her husband Steve Rothman, and left to dine at the Algonquin with others who have been the Woman). The dinner agenda in- cluded the usual toasts and traditions, with Bill Vande Water honoring Old Irregular Haycraft and Ely Liebow leading a responsive reading of the Mus- grave Ritual in Yiddish. Other highlights of the evening included Philip Shreffler and Mary Ellen Rich enacting Holmes' dealings with a thoroughly confused travel agent arranging his itinerary for the Great Hiatus, and a grand rendition by Bruce Montgomery of a new version of "Aunt Clara" ("What Became of Old Sherlock" with lyrics by Al Rosenblatt). Mike Whelan (the BSI's "Wiggins") announced the Birthday Honours: Irregular Shillings and Investitures to Ed Christenson ("Antonio"), Al Gregory ("The Grimpen Postmaster"), Susan Vizoskie ("Mrs. Saunders"), Joe Coppola ("The Stranger's Room"), and Mia Stampe ("The Dynamics of an Asteroid"); and the Two-Shilling Award (presented "for extraordinary devotion to the cause be- yond the call of duty") to Don Novorsky. The Baskerville Bash also took place Friday evening, at the Manhattan Club and with more than 80 people on hand, and with entertainment that featured a presentation by the newsdesk of CNN (that's the Canonical News Network), a "You Bet Your Life" broadcast with Jay Pearlman starring as Groucho Marx, and an investigation of "The Case of the Missing Sherlettes" (who appear to be in Tahiti en route to the Andaman Islands). Jan 03 #2 On Saturday morning the dealers room at the Algonquin was as usual crowded with sellers and buyers, and shortly after noon The Clients of Adrian Mulliner (devotees of the works of both Watson and Wodehouse) commandeered the lobby for their now-traditional Junior Blood- stain, which featured a reading of Anne Cotton's playlet "Sherlock Holmes and the Gentleman's Gentleman". The BSI's Saturday-afternoon cocktail party attracted more than 240 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. Bob Schultz was applauded as the new winner of the Morley-Montgomery Award (an attractive certificate and a check for $500) for the best contri- bution to The Baker Street Journal last year (his article "Upon the Dating of Bloodstains" in the winter issue), and the Dr. John H. Watson Fund bene- fited from a raffle of Scott Bond's portrait of the winner (Evelyn Herzog) and from enthusiastic 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 The Curious Collectors of Baker Street (an attractive set of Sherlockian jewelry creat- ed by Maggie Schpak), Joe Coppola (a hand-crafted wooden clock with Sher- lockian decorations), Don Hobbs (copies of Ron De Waal's first two biblio- graphies, inscribed to Dorothy Shaw), and Enrico Solito (a limited-edition plate created for the speakers at the conference arranged by Uno Studio in Holmes in Sesto Fiorentino in 2001). On Sunday about 60 locals and visiting long-weekenders gathered at Wylie's for a brunch arranged by the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes; the agenda was thoroughly French, and the first of many events that will celebrate the tenth anniversary of The Sherlock Holmes Society of France. And (for those who wish to plan ahead) the next birthday dinners will be held on Friday, Jan. 16, 2004. For those who wish to plan farther ahead, The Baker Street Irregulars are arranging a weekend in the Valley of Fear on Oct. 22-24, 2004; the event is open to all Sherlockians, but hotel and bus space is limited, and reservations are essential: only double rooms are available, and you should send a $50 (per person) deposit to Michael F. Whelan (7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278). 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 $22.50 a year ($25.00 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 . And yes, as usual, there were all sort of new books published just in time for the festivities, including a new facsimile of a manuscript ("Shoscombe Old Place"), available for purchase during the weekend and afterward, and I will have lots of reviews in the next issue of this newsletter. Jan 03 #3 Christmas crackers are a long-standing Christmas-dinner tradi- tion in Britain, and now elsewhere, including the U.S., where they come with "fortunes" that often are a series of joke, in English and in French. And Gayle Harris reports that one of the jokes in her Christ- mas cracker last month was: "Watson: Dites-moi Holmes, a quelle ecole etes- vous alle? Holmes: Elementaire, mon cher Watson, elementaire." ExxonMobil Corp. announced in December that it will end its sponsorship of "Masterpiece Theatre" at the end of 2004. Mobil (now ExxonMobil) has been the only sponsor of the series since it first aired in 1971, contributing more than $250 million to PBS programs; its recent funding of "Masterpiece Theatre" is reported to have been about $9 million a year. An ExxonMobil spokeswoman said that: "We felt that the time had come for us to consider some alternative sponsorship and outreach activities," particularly in the area of public health and the environment. PBS-TV hopes to find new spon- sors, but it's not easy to do that in the present economic climate: Mobil had already stopped funding "Mystery!", and there was no sponsor for that series' dramatization of Tony Hillerman's "Skinwalkers" in November. Al Hirschfeld died on Jan. 20. He began his artistic car- eer in 1921 as art director for Selznick Studios, creating posters for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and other films, and in 1926 began contributing sketches of Broadway plays to the N.Y. Herald Tribune. In 1928 he was commissioned by the N.Y. Times to draw Harry Lauder, and Hirschfeld's ener- getic style made him one of America's best-known artists; he received a special Tony Award in 1975, and New York City officials declared him a living landmark in 1996. His cari- catures of actors as Sherlock Holmes included Fritz Weaver, Paxton Whitehead (shown here), and Frank Langella for the N.Y. Times, and Basil Rathbone in a limited-edition print. The Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota have published their "Christmas Annual 2002", edited by John Bergquist; the con- tents include Philip G. Bergem's examination of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, with a census of known copies, Gary K. Thaden's examination of Dr. Watson's library, and much more; the 46-page pamphlet costs $6.00 (postpaid), and checks (payable to The Norwegian Explorers) should be sent to John Bergquist, 3665 Ashbury Road, Eagen, MN 55122. Edward Fox was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's New Year's honours list. He played Dr. Wat- son on television in "Dr. Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery" (1974) and Major Alistair Ross on television in "The Crucifer of Blood" (1991). The new version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" has now aired in Canada, Britain, and the United States (Canadians missed a few bits and pieces, and the "making of" featurette). Anglofile notes that Richard Roxburgh was the second choice for the role, which was offered first to Jeremy Northam, who had to decline due to prior commitments. Anglofile is a monthly newsletter offering detailed coverage of British entertainment; Box 33515, Decatur, GA 30033 ($16.00 a year). Jan 03 #4 Japanese readers have some interesting new books available, all translated by Masamichi Higurashi, who also has provided intro- ductions, afterwords, photographs, and explanatory notes. Two of the books are hard-cover editions: SHERLOCK HOLMES DAI-HYAKKA-JITEN is Jack Tracy's ENCYCLOPAEDIA SHERLOCKIANA (Tokyo: Shobo Shinsha, 2002; 476 pp., Y4,800); and SHERLOCK HOLMES: BEIKA-GAI NO SATSUJIN is MURDER IN BAKER STREET, the 2001 anthology edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower (Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 2002; 400 pp., Y1,800). And six more titles have been added to the Aoi Tori Bunko MEITANTEI HOLMES series of children's paperbacks each with one of the long stories, or four or five of the short stories, cover artwork by Kazuyo Kazumi, and illustrations by Hitoshi Waka- na and "Ki" (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2000-2002; 184-352 pp.,Y530-720). It's fascinating to see how useful 21st-century technology can be: mp3 is a compression program: the playing time on Worldtainment's mp3 CDs runs from 8:08 to 11:13 hours, and with excellent sound quality. And it's all port- able: RadioShack currently offers a "road-ready" player for CDs and mp3 CDs for $79.99 (discounted from $99.99). Or you can play them on your computer (if your computer has a CD-ROM or DVD drive, and it's difficult to purchase a computer now without a CD-ROM or DVD drive). Richard Horner died on Dec. 28. He was a Broadway theater-owner and produ- cer who won a Tony award for the revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Moon for the Misbegotten" in 1974. He was one of the producers of Paul Giovanni's play "The Crucifer of Blood" on Broadway in 1978, and one of the executive pro- ducers when the play was broadcast on television in 1991. A correction to my review of David Pirie's THE NIGHT CALLS (Dec 02 #5): the book is not based on the British television series "Murder Rooms": The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes". It's the other way round, as David has ex- plained: the books are always written first. "They are not novelizations," David notes, "if they were, I'd get someone else to do it!" And there is indeed much more in the book than in the television program (his third book about Bell and Conan Doyle is due this year). Patrick Horgan began his Sherlockian career playing Captain Gregg in the musical "Baker Street" in 1964, and went on to play Sherlock Holmes in the William Gillette play, and in "The Speckled Band" and in a television com- mercial, and to play William Gillette (in Kenneth Ludwig's play "Dramatic License"), making him one of the very few actors to have played both Sher- lock Holmes and an actor who has played Sherlock Holmes. He also has read the entire Canon for the Library of Congress recordings for the blind, and for Worldtainment, which offers all the Sherlock Holmes stories, and "The Lost World", "The Poison Belt" and "The Leather Funnel", and Horgan's own book of Sherlockian scholarship "The Detection of Sherlock Holmes" on ten CDs in mp3 format (you'll need an mp3 player or a computer with an mp3 pro- gram). Horgan has an excellent voice, and an imaginative approach to Sher- lockian scholarship (and in his book cheerfully describes the Baker Street Irregulars and its scion societies as "large groups of otherwise respect- able people"). And it's delightful to see how useful the latest technology can be: the mp3 CDs cost $9.95 each, and more information is available at ; their postal address is 1002 Quentin Road, Brooklyn, NY 11223. Jan 03 #5 "Going for a Record: LP Sparks an Odd Little Bidding War" was the headline on Tim Page's story in the Washington Post (Jan. 9) about an eBay bidding war for a recording of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin by Johanna Martzy; the three-LP set sold for $4,906. More interesting to Sherlockians, perhaps, was a statement by rare-record dealer Lawrence F. Holdridge that "the greatest rarities of all would be the two discs the celebrated tenor Jean de Reszke (1850-1925) made in 1905 for the Fonotipia company. 'Those would be quite literally priceless,' he said. 'De Reszke made the records, but he was dissatisfied with the results and ordered the masters smashed and never made another record. Some test cop- ies are supposed to have survived--but who knows?' De Reszke was perhaps the leading tenor of the late 19th century--imagine Pavarotti and Domingo rolled into one--so it is not surprising that there is a great deal of in- terest in anything he might have recorded." It was at the conclusion of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" that Holmes suggested to Watson that they go to a concert by Jean and Edouard De Reszke in "Les Huguenots". Sherlock Holmes is on the cover of the January catalog from Critics' Choice Video (Box 749, Itasca, IL 60143 (800-367-7765) . Well, actually, it's Guy Henry, who played the title role in the television series "Young Sherlock" (1982), which is now available (for the first time) on three DVDs or videocassettes for $42.96. The catalog also has the new Roxburgh/Hart "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on DVD and cassette ($16.96), and three Rathbone/Bruce films ("Dressed to Kill", The Woman in Green", and "Terror by Night") on DVD ($6.99 each). Philip Attwell has kindly provided more information on British digital ra- dio that's also available on the Internet. BBC 7 airs in Great Britain on DAB digital radio and on television channels on Freeview 78, Sky, and Digi- tal Cable, and it's available (with schedules listed) worldwide on the In- ternet . BBC 7 announced that they would air all the "Sherlock Holmes" stories, and since Dec. 17, 2002, they have been broadcasting the Merrison/Williams adaptations on weekdays. There is also a "Crime/Thriller" slot on weekdays that is now featuring sleuths such as Cadfael and Julie Enfield. And ONEWORD is broadcast in Britain on DAB digital radio and on television channels on Freeview 85 and Sky 877, and it's available (with schedules) on the Internet . Edith Meiser's "Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Bridge" (with John Stanley and Alfred Shirley, from 1947) was heard in the "Vintage Classics/Cult Comedy" slot this month. Philip also recommends as a useful site for finding upcom- ing Sherlock Holmes broadcasts on British radio and television. Len Haffenden's souvenir for this month's annual dinner of The Stormy Pet- rels of British Columbia is a 16-page pamphlet reprinting his speech about "Sherlock Holmes and Mensa" (presented to the Pacific Northwest MENSA Con- vention last October); US $8.00 postpaid. Also available are the souvenir from last year's annual dinner, "Who Was H.B.?" ($5.00); the 36-page pro- gram for the society's commemoration of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in Aug. 2001 ($8.00), and a 12-page "The Priory School Tyre Directional Guide" ($5.00). Checks payable to the Hansom Press, please and Len's address is 1026 West Keith Road, North Vancouver, BC V7P 3C6, Canada. Jan 03 #6 Walter Pond ("Brunton, the Butler, of Hurlstone") died on Jan. 11. He was an attorney, a Sherlockian scholar, and a dedicated collector; Julian Wolff once described Walter's collection of Sherlockiana as "one that cannot be surpassed in private hands," and that was true for decades: Walter owned a page from the manuscript of "The Hound of the Bas- kervilles" and complete manuscripts of "The Veiled Lodger" and "The Three Gables", a splendid copy of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, first edi- tions in dust jackets, and many other treasures. He received his Investi- ture from The Baker Street Irregulars in 1970. Jean Weidner is offering her Sherlockian and Doylean books on-line at the Advanced Book Exchange ; those who don't have access to the Web can request a copy from Jean (9421 North 50th Drive, Glendale, AZ 85302). The Silver Blaze, conceived by Thomas L. Stix, Sr., was run for the first time at Jamaica Race Course on Long Island in 1952; it was revived by The Baker Street Irregulars at historic Saratoga Race Track in upstate New York in 2000. The next running of the race at Saratoga will be on Aug. 2, and it will be a weekend event, with a brunch on Aug. 3. If you'd like to be on the mailing list, contact Lou Lewis (Box 2990, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603) ; you can expect to receive full details shortly. MC Black advises overseas visitors that the Sherlock Holmes Society of Lon- don's first-Friday-of-the-month "club nights" at the New Commonwealth Club at 18 Northumberland Avenue (between Trafalgar Square and the Embankment underground station) will be discontinued after the meeting on Feb. 7, due to declining attendance. Michael Rieders, who was one of the panelists at the workshop on "The Ad- venture of the Devil's Foot" arranged by Marina Stajic at the annual meet- ing of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists in Detroit last year (May 02 #1 and Nov 02 #4), will repeat his presentation at National Medical Serv- ices in Willow Grove (near Philadelphia) on Feb. 13 at 6:00 pm. According to Rieders, "This humorous presentation will include time for audience so- lutions and ends with my toxicological conclusions!" If you would like to attend the event, please contact Gideon Hill 19038 (215-887-8110) or e-mail . 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 810 Sherlockian societies, with names and addresses for contacts for 431 active societies, is $4.70 post- paid. A run of address labels for 354 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, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Feb 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Sorry about that: I omitted one Investiture from last month's report on the annual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars: David Greeney ("Uncle Ned"). It nicely appropriate, too, since David lives in Auckland, and so did Mary Sutherland's uncle. It was in "The Red-Headed League" that Holmes said, "'L'homme c'est rien-- l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand." The "Jan- uary Sale Catalog" from David Schulson Autographs (234 West 34th Street, New York, NY 10122 (212-629-3939 offers an autograph letter from Sand to Flaubert, signed "Your old Troubadour" and dated Feb. 28, 1870, for $1,440 (discounted from $1,850). There's also an undated letter from Conan Doyle with literary content, offered for $1,465 (discounted from $1,850); the catalog suggests that the letter refers to THE HISTORY OF SPIRITUALISM, but the reference almost certainly is to THE WAR IN SOUTH AFRICA: ITS CAUSE AND CONDUCT. Debbie Clark spotted a tribute to Conan Doyle in the current catalog from Levenger (420 South Congress Avenue, Delray Beach, FL 33445) (800-544-0880) : they offer a child's bookcase and show a photo- graph of Sir Arthur and the quote, "It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own." Others have used the quote before, and it's from THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR (1907). Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, was at the ann- ual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars, and was applauded for continuing the tradition established decades ago by Fred Dannay of ensuring that EQMM issue that coincides with the annual dinner has Sherlockian content; there were four such items in the Feb. 2003 issue (Dec 02 #2). And the Feb. 2003 issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine had Sherlockiana: a reprint of August Derleth's Solar Pons pastiche "The Adventure of the Proper Comma". Fans of John Mortimer's delightful legal eagle Horace Rumpole will welcome news of plans afoot to create The Rumpole Society of Great Britain; members are to include "devotees of John Mortimer's writings, all branches of the legal profession, and raffish free spirits who down cheap claret." Addi- tional information is available from the society (9 Alba Place, London W11 1LQ, England) . The comic-book series RUSE continues, with Simon Archard and Emma Bishop: a new story began in issue #15 (Jan. 2003; $2.95), and there's a report of a spin-off series ARCHARD'S AGENTS (also $2.95); and issue #4 in the second volume of THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN ($3.50) extends the account of the efforts of members of the League to combat against the Martians who have invaded England. Paulette Greene offers copies of two older items: Madeleine B. Stern's 1982 monograph THE GAME'S A HEAD: A PHRENOLOGICAL STUDY OF SHERLOCK HOLMES AND ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, with illustrations by Sam Greene; and Trevor H. Hall's 1986 monograph THE LAST CASE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES: IVY JOHNSON BULL OF BORLEY ($35.00 each postpaid; please pay by check or money order). Paulette's ad- dress is: 7152 Via Palomar, Boca Raton, FL 33433) . Feb 03 #2 Cynthia Harvey was at the George Eastman House (in Rochester, N.Y.) on Jan. 12 for the world-premiere screening of a new 97- minute restoration of John Barrymore's "Sherlock Holmes" (1922). A second print, with the missing original intertitles, was discovered in the Eastman vaults a few years ago, and was used to create a new and better version of the film, which was based on William Gillette's play. The December 2002 issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers interest- ing tributes to Julian Wolff by Jon Lellenberg and John Bergquist, and re- ports from and about the collections. Copies of the newsletter are avail- able from Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . Bill Mauldin died on Jan. 22. He was serving as an Army sergeant during World War II, drawing car- toons for the 45th Division News and for Stars & Stripes, when he created his war-weary characters Willie and Joe, and won his first Pulitzer Prize in 1945. He went on to a career as an editorial cartoonist, winning a second Pulitzer 1959, and he used Sherlockian themes in at least three of his editorial cartoons; this one, published on July 1, 1987, showed Ed Meese and was captioned "He's got a rear-view mirror on his magnifying glass." Further to the item (Nov 02 #3) about the museum show "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" now at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., (through May 6), Maureen Corrigan (book reviewer on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" and associate editor of MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE WRITERS) will lecture on "The Haunting of Sherlock Holmes" at 7:00 pm on Apr. 12 (emphasizing "The Hound of the Baskervilles", which she calls a "giant boggy metaphor for the human mind"). 39 South Street, Pittsfield, MA 01201 (413-443-7171) . Alexian Gregory offers "The ABC of BSI Investitures" as a Word 97 attachment (available only by e-mail); it's an alphabetical listing of all Baker Street Investitures and their years of bestowal. Tom Wheeler, who is about to publish FINDING SHERLOCK'S LONDON, a book that identifies more than 200 places in London associated with Sherlock Holmes, will guide a tour exploring Sherlock Holmes' London on May 19-27; he'll be happy to provide more information about the tour, and if your spouse isn't interested in spending all that time on Sherlock Holmes, he also has tick- ets for the Chelsea Flower Show. He's at 6875 Honey Locust Cove, Memphis, TN 38119 . "Non-Canonical Holmes" is the title of the 22nd annual Sherlock Holmes/Ar- thur Conan Doyle Symposium, in Dayton on Mar. 14-16; the speakers will fo- cus on stories, novels, plays, comic books, and television and radio shows not written by Conan Doyle. Additional information is available from Cathy Gill (4661 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223) . Feb 03 #3 The third volume in The Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Ser- ies was unveiled during the birthday festivities: G. K. CHEST- ERTON'S SHERLOCK HOLMES, edited and with an introduction by Steven Doyle, offers a facsimile of Chesterton's illustrations for a never-published edi- tion of the stories, scholarly articles on Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist and Pasquale Accardo, commentary on the artwork by Scott Bond, and reprints of four Sherlockian essays by Chesterton. It is delightful to see the illus- trations, owned and preserved by the Lilly Library at Indiana University in Bloomington, now widely available, with interesting discussion of the art- ist (and writer) and his work. $35.00 plus shipping ($8.00, or $9.50 out- side North America) from The Baker Street Irregulars, Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada . Also available is a limited-edition folio with hand-colored versions of the 19 Chesterton drawings, suitable for framing; there are 50 numbered copies of the folio, and the cost is $75.00 postpaid (see the paragraph above for the address and methods of payment). Mary Ellis died on Jan. 30, at the age of 105 (including, according to her obituary in the N.Y. Times, the three years that Hollywood publicists sub- tracted in the 1930s). She signed a four-year contract with the Metropol- itan Opera in New York at the age of 18, then acted on Broadway (starring in "Rose-Marie") and in London, and retired from the stage in 1970 but con- tinued acting on radio and television; she appeared in Granada's "Sherlock Holmes" series twice: as Lady Florence in "The Eligible Bachelor" (1993), and, in her last role, as Mary Maberly in "The Three Gables" (1994). Paul Herbert reports that Paul Giovanni's play "The Crucifer of Blood" will be performed Nov. 7-23 at the Indianapolis Civic Theatre (at 1200 West 38th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46208) (317-923-4597) . The Mystery Writers of America have announced their nominees for the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, which will presented at the MWA's banquet in New York on May 1. "The West End Horror" (dramatized by Anthony Dodge and Marcia Mil- grom Dodge from Nicholas Meyer's novel, and produced last year at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, N.Y.) was nominated for a "best play" Edgar. And a special Raven Award (for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside the realm of creative writing) will be presented to Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York. Planning for Bouchercon 2003 continues: the venue is Las Vegas, on Oct. 16- 19, with James Lee Burke, Ian Rankin, and Ruth Rendell as guests of honor; Deen Kogan heads the organizing committee (507 South Eighth Street, Phila- delphia, PA 19147 . "221B Coronation Street" was the subject line on David Hough's message to The Hounds of the Internet, quoting the Manchester Evening News (Feb. 7): The set for Granada's "Sherlock Holmes" no longer exists, but Granada has revamped the set for its long-running soap opera "Coronation Street" to in- clude a pizza parlour that has the doorway to 221B Baker Street, mock glass paneling and numbers intact. "It's a superstitious thing," Granada's pro- duction chief said, "because it's a chunk of history, the doorway to Sher- lock's lodgings, and we're hoping it might bring us luck." Feb 03 #4 GreenPrints ("The Weeder's Digest") is a interesting and light- hearted quarterly that has published four amusing pastiches by Jeff Taylor about garden detective Sherlock Jones (and his assistant Ms. Bubbles Watson: "The Carrot Caper" (summer 1997); "The Return of Sherlock Jones" (summer 1998); "A Midwinter Mystery" (winter 1998); and "The Case of the Speckled Slug" (summer 1999). Box 1355, Fairview, NC 28730 (800-569- 0602) ; $22.97 a year. Bill Hyder watched the BBC television program "Queen and Country" broadcast on PBS-TV this month, about how the relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and the British people have changed during the fifty years she has been on the throne, and reports that at the conclusion of the program the narrator described the Queen as "the one fixed point in a changing age." "Sherlock Holmes couldn't have put it better," Bill notes. Murray Shaw died on Dec. 18, 2002. He was a kitchen designer and consult- ant, and author of the textbook PROFESSIONAL KITCHEN DESIGN; in the Sher- lockian world Murray was an enthusiastic member of Moulton's Prospectors in Phoenix, and an author of pastiches for young readers, including MATCH WITS WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES, a series of eight children's books published by Car- olrhoda Books from 1990 to 1993. And two other tales (ANATOMY OF TWO MUR- DERS and SHERLOCK HOLMES FINDS THE LOST DUTCHMAN MINE) have been published in Otto Penzler's pamphlet series of pastiches and parodies. Paul Martin notes that a new bargain-books catalog from Edward R. Hamilton (Falls Village, CT 06031) offers SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED SHORT STORIES, reprinted from The Strand Magazine ($9.95 discounted from $12.95); Larry Millett's THE DISAPPEARANCE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ($15.95 discounted from $23.95); Alan Barnes' SHERLOCK HOLMES ON SCREEN ($17.95 discounted from $24.95); and June Thomson's HOLMES AND WATSON ($5.95 discounted from $24.00). Laurie Fraser Manifold's artwork has enhanced the Baskerville Bash in re- cent years, and she has created two imaginative booklets to entertain those who remember cutting out and coloring and enjoying paper dolls: MRS. MANI- FOLD'S CUT OUT & FOLD 221B FURNITURE and HOLMES & WATSON AT HOME & AFIELD: PAPER FIGURES & WARDROBE TO COLOUR & CUT cost $12.00 each postpaid, and her address is Box 387, Shenorock, NY 10587. E. W. McGinley's AN ILLUSTRATED MONOGRAPH ON THE USE OF FIREARMS IN THE AD- VENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, first published in 1995, is now available in a second (revised and expanded) edition, offering a knowledgeable exploration of the topic, concentrating on the weapons used by Holmes and Watson. The 50-page booklet costs $12.50 postpaid from Joseph Coppola, 103 Kenny Drive, Fayetteville, NY 13066. "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Sherlock Holmes" is the title of an exhibi- tion of material from Fred Kittle's collection of Doyleana at the Newberry Library in Chicago from Apr. 9 through July 12 (60 West Walton Street, Chi- cago, IL 60610) . There will be special festivi- ties on Apr. 11 (a dinner and a private showing) and Apr. 12 (a lecture by Richard Lancelyn Green); additional information is available from Donald J. Terras (2535 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60201) . Feb 03 #5 Marcello Truzzi died on Feb. 9, He was a sociologist and one of the founders of the Committee for the Scientific Investiga- tion of Claims of the Paranormal in 1976, but then resigned because he con- sidered it more propagandistic than scientific; in 1981 he founded and dir- ected the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research, and he was a skeptical friend of many self-proclaimed psychics. As an author his books included textbooks on sociology and a cookbook for witches that called for ingredi- ents such as eye of newt, an article (with Scot Morris) on "Sherlock Holmes as a Social Scientist" in Psychology Today (Dec. 1971), and a chapter about "Sherlock Holmes: Applied Social Psychologist" in THE HUMANITIES AS SOCIOL- OGY: AN INTRODUCTORY READER (1973). Rose Louise Hovick, invited by The Baker Street Irregulars to the cocktail party before their annual dinner in 1943, is the subject of an interesting article by Laura Jacobs in the March issue of Vanity Fair. There's no men- tion of the BSI, but "Taking It *All* Off" offers a fine explanation of why those at the dinner enjoyed telling family and friends that they had had a drink with Gypsy Rose Lee. Arrangements for The Silver Blaze at Saratoga Race Track have now been fi- nalized: there will be a buffet luncheon at the Rail Pavilion (with a max- imum of 60 people) on Aug. 2, and a buffet brunch and program at the Prime Hotel & Conference Center on Aug. 3, all for $100 per person. The deadline for reservations is May 1; checks (payable to The Baker Street Irregulars) should be sent to Lou Lewis, 11 Raymond Avenue #24, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603. The U.S. Postal Service has continued its "Chinese New Year" series, honoring the Year of the Ram, or the Goat or the Sheep (depending on which calendar you consult). Goats and sheep are mentioned in many stories, but both are can be found only in one ("The Hound of the Basker- villes"). Jon V. Wilmunen died on Jan. 13. He taught art in the Mountain Iron-Buhl school system in Minnesota, and in the 1960s and 1970s his amusing artwork and parodies were published by The Musgrave Ritualists Beta, The Three Stu- dents Plus, and his own society The Gamekeepers of Northern Minnesota, and in The Baker Street Journal (Sept. 1965 and Mar. 1966). Further to my mention (Jan 03 #2) of a new facsimile of a manuscript, THE ADVENTURE OF SHOSCOMBE ABBEY, now owned by the Fondation Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Lausanne, has been published by the Bibliotheque cantonale et uni- versitaire, with an introduction (in French) by Vincent Delay (president of the Societe d'etudes holmesiennes de la Suisse romande) and two essays (one in French and the other in English) by Lausanne University professor Ernest Giddey (whose CRIME ET DETECTION: ESSAI SUR LES STRUCTURES DU ROMAN POLIC- IER DE LANGUE ANGLAISE was published in 1990). Manuscripts are a splendid way to watch an author write, adding and subtracting and refining, and as with other facsimiles, Sherlockians will find some interesting changes in the story. The cost of the new facsimile is $25.00 (plus $12.00 shipping for one copy), and you can order from Laurent Dubois (atelier photo), Bib- liotheque cantonale et universitaire, Dorigny, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzer- land ; credit-card orders welcome. Feb 03 #6 Stacy Keach Sr. died on Feb. 13. He was a drama teacher and an actor, and father of the actor Stacy Keach and the actor-direc- tor James Keach. He began his career in films as a contract player at Uni- versal Pictures, where he also was dialogue director for "The Scarlet Claw" (1944). He developed, produced, and directed "Tales of the Texas Rangers" on radio and television, and appeared in hundreds of films, radio and tele- vision programs, and commercials over more than 50 years. There have been many weekends with Sherlock Holmes at the Victorian Villa Inn over the years, and now Professor Moriarty on hand to entertain visi- tors, with weekend events scheduled for Mar. 22, Apr. 26, and May 13. Ad- ditional information is available from the management (601 North Broadway, Union City, MI 49094 (800-348-3445) . Leslie Fiedler died on Jan. 29. He was a noted, and provocative, literary critic who called himself a "literary anthropologist." He was a respected teacher as well, in the United States and Europe, and he contributed an in- troduction to an edition of MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES published by Schock- en Books in 1976. The East Lynne Theater Company will present a staged reading (with live pi- ano accompaniment) of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" on Mar. 7 and 8 during a "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" in Cape May, N.J.; the company's phone number is 609-884-5898 . Peter O'Toole has decided to accept his honorary Oscar, and is expected to attend the ceremony in March. According to Anglofile, O'Toole had declined the award earlier because he was "still in the game and might win the love- ly bugger outright," but was told by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that the award was meant not as a coda to his career but rather as a tribute. O'Toole (who was Billy Wilder's first choice for the title role in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes") was the voice of Sherlock Holmes on four Australian animations of the long stories (1985), and played Conan Doyle in the film "FairyTale: A True Story" (1997). Anglofile is a monthly newsletter offering detailed coverage of British entertainment; Box 33515, Decatur, GA 30033 ($16.00 a year). Jay Hyde (proud owner of a Scottish terrier) observed the Westminster Ken- nel Club's best-of-breed competition on Feb. 10, and noted the winner: Ch Friendship Hill Dr. Watson, whose sire was Ch So What Moriarty. Details at . THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, EPISODE 6, read by Edward Hardwicke, is the latest set of audiocassette available from CSA Telltapes, and Hardwicke is excellent as always; there are two cassettes, and the stories are "The Priory School", "The Red-Headed League", and "The Blue Carbuncle" (issue by Tangled Web Audio in 1996 as SHERLOCK HOLMES: TALES OF AVARICE). CSA Tell- tapes's address is: 6a Archway Mews, 241a Putney Bridge Road, London SW15 2PE, England) ; the new set costs L9.99 post- paid, and CSA offers other sets of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Mar 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (New York: Crown Books, 2003; 464 pp., $25.95) is an examination of the planning for the World's Fair in Chi- cago in 1893, and of Herman Webster Mudgett, the serial murderer who built and ran the World's Fair Hotel in which many of his victims died. Mudgett used the alias H. H. Holmes, and at least two reviewers have suggested that Mudgett renamed himself after the famous detective. But Larson doesn't say that in the book. What he does say (on page 44) about Mudgett's arrival in Chicago is: "There in July 1886, the year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced his detective to the world, Mudgett registered his name as Holmes." The fifth volume of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY is THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, with a interesting introduction by David Stuart Davies, who discusses the perils and pitfalls of bringing a star out of retirement (Indianapolis: Gasogene Books, 2002; 150 pp., $29.95); as in previous volumes, the annotations and appendices are based upon new and old Sherlockian scholarship. The book costs $33.70 postpaid (or $35.70 outside the U.S.) from the publisher (Box 68308, Indianapolis, IN 46260). "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) has been released on DVD (by Twenti- eth Century-Fox Home Video, $19.98) with commentary by director Robert Wise and Nicholas Meyer, and a 70-minute "making of" featurette. The film is a science-fiction classic, with Michael Rennie as Klaatu and with Elmer Davis (a member of The Baker Street Irregulars as well as an early member of The Red Circle of Washington) as himself as a newscaster reporting on the alien spaceship. Reported: DURKHEIM IS DEAD! SHERLOCK HOLMES IS INTRODUCED TO SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY, by Arthur Asa Berger (AltaMira Press, 2003; 200 pp., $70.00 cloth or $19.95 paper); "in this sociology textbook/mystery novel, students can join Sherlock Holmes and Watson as they discover a new area ripe for acri- mony and intrigue: social theory." The Sherlockians in France continue to publish intriguing material, includ- ing Le Catalogue de la Franco-Midland numero 3, which offers a guided tour (written by Yves-Charles Fercoq and Wladimir V. Bogomoletz) to the Pere La- chaise cemetery, where visitors will find many graves and monuments of peo- ple mentioned in or with connections to the Canon. It's in French and Eng- lish, and nicely illustrated by Jean-Pierre Cagnat, and it's available free as an Acrobat Reader file from Thierry Saint-Joanis , or ink-on-paper for $5.00 postpaid; dollar checks payable to Elisabeth Mignon and euro checks payable to SSHF can be sent to Thierry (26 avenue de la Re- publique, 75011 Paris, France), and credit-card orders are welcome by mail or e-mail. Reported: "The Mystery of the Mummy" (The Adventure Company, $19.99); a new computer game ("with his signature pipe in hand, super-sleuth Holmes takes kids to a turn-of-the-century Victorian mansion to find a missing archeolo- gist and Egyptian mummy"). According to a review in the Washington Post on Mar. 2, the likeliest audience for the game is teenagers with time for ted- ious brain twisters ("Take copious notes and save often, and you might get the game done. But you might not care to make the effort."). Mar 03 #2 Stephen H. Tolins ("John Straker") died on Feb. 24, 2003. He served with distinction as a doctor in the U.S. Navy, retiring with the rank of Captain, and taught surgery at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at New York Medical College. Steve was a member of many Sher- lockian societies in New York and Connecticut, and his articles about Can- onical medicine appeared in The Baker Street Journal, Prescott's Press, and Canadian Holmes; he received his Investiture from The Baker Street Irregu- lars in 1991. Bits & Pieces (1 Puzzle Place B8016, Stevens Point, WI 54481 (800-884-2637) offers its mystery jigsaw puzzle "The Watson Inheritance" discounted to $6.99 (from $10.99); item 04-U0140-007. Details (and a registration form) for the twelfth annual Watsonian weekend (now a joint event with The STUD Sherlockian Society) on May 2-4, are now available from Susan Diamond and Allan Devitt (16W603 3rd Avenue, Bensen- ville, IL 60106) . The schedule includes dinner on Friday (with a performance by Sherlockian thespian Paul Singleton); brunch on Saturday, followed by an excursion to the Newberry Library to view the exhibit of Conan Doyle material from Fred Kittle's collection, and a pizza supper; and the annual running of The Silver Blaze at Hawthorne Race Track on Sunday. Karen Murdock spotted a report in This Is Local London (Feb. 19) that May- day Hospital in Croydon is renaming its wards in honor of some of the Croy- don's best-known figures. Arthur Conan Doyle will be one of the people to be honored. James G. Jewell died on Feb. 27. He was a stalwart member of The Sons of the Copper Beeches of Philadelphia, one of the editors of and contributors to their anthology MORE LEAVES FROM THE COPPER BEECHES (1976), and an ener- getic, persistent, and always genial sales committee for the society's pub- lications. Ruth Berman has reported that the most recent issue of the literary maga- zine "The North Stone Review" (2002, n. 14) includes "Ciphers", a 16-line poem by Mary d'Angelo that alludes to "The Dancing Men"; there's much more non-Sherlockian material in the magazine, which costs $14.00 (Box 14098, Minneapolis, MN 55414). Issue #53 of SHERLOCK offers its usual coverage of crime fiction (Sherlock- ian and otherwise); the contents include commentary (by Bert Coules) on the recent Roxburgh/Hart version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (with a re- port of rumors that the producers are considering a sequel that would have Holmes and Watson investigating the strange mystery of Dorian Gray, and (by Gavin Collinson) on "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes", and (by Richard Valley) on transvestism and the world of Sherlock Holmes. SHERLOCK is pub- lished bi-monthly and subscriptions cost L23.70 (U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/ $40.00 (elsewhere); their address is Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . Or you can order from their 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. Mar 03 #3 Walter Scharf died on Feb. 24. He began his musical career in Los Angeles in 1934 as an arranger for Rudy Vallee's orchestra, and then turned to com-posing and arranging film scores; he worked on more than 200 films and television programs and received ten Academy Award nomi- nations. And his film credits included some of the original music in "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939). Collectors of the Sherlock Holmes stories in various languages can add one more to the list: American Sign Language. Three videocassettes are avail- able, with "The Blue Carbuncle", "The Red-Headed League", and "The Speckled Band" signed by Gilbert Eastman (in costume as Sherlock Holmes) and Patrick Graybill (as Dr. Watson), with voice-over narration, and a short biography of Conan Doyle at the end of each cassette. $39.95 each or $107.95 for all three (plus shipping), and orders can be sent to Sign Media (4020 Blackburn Lane, Burtonsville, MD 20866) (800-475-4756) . HearthSong (Box 1050, Madison, VA 22727 (800-325- 2502) has a Sherlock- ian-themed cover on the box for a fingerprint kit in a new mail-order catalog (item 724165, $9.95); the kit includes "dusting powder, fluffy feathers for dusting, tape squares to lift prints, print identification cards, a magnifying glass, and a comprehensive 16-page instruction booklet full of interesting facts" (it's recommended for ages 8 and up. I confess that I'm not sure that foren- sic experts still use fluffy feathers. Christie's is offering the third part of Richard M. Lackritz's collection of detective fiction on Apr. 8, at 20 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020 (212-636-2010) , with some attractive moderm mat- erial and some older literature that includes Sherlockian editions, a manu- script letter from Conan Doyle to Grant Richards, and signed photographs of William Gillette and Basil Rathbone. The March issue of The Holmes & Watson Report offers a thoughtful editorial by Brad Keefauver on what is so important about 221B Baker Street, which he describes as a "container of sorts that held within its cozy confines some- thing bigger than the sum of its ingredients," and interesting suggestions by Jennie Paton on why Sherlockian films are or aren't successful; the per- iodical costs $16.00 a year (for six issues) or $22.00 outside North Ameri- ca, or $3.00 for one issue, from Brad Keefauver (4009 North Chelsea Place, Peoria, IL 61614). It was in "The Five Orange Pips" that Watson wrote that he was "deep in one of Clark Russell's fine sea-stories," and that sea-story may have been THE DEATH SHIP, which was first published in a three-volume edition in 1888 in London and which is available again, with an introduction (and an afterword about Charles Doyle) by Hugo Koch. The first edition was not illustrated, but the new edition has appropriate artwork by Charles Doyle, Gustav Dore, and F. W. Hayes, selected by Koch from other sources; 336 pp., $41.00 post- paid from George A. Vanderburgh at The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, Box 204, Shelburne, ON LN0 1S0, Canada. Mar 03 #4 Further to the report (Feb 03 #2) on Thomas B. Wheeler's FIND- ING SHERLOCK'S LONDON, you don't need to go on his tour in May in order to have a copy of the book, which has 54 pp. and lists more than 200 Sherlockian sites, by adventure and by closest underground station. It costs $15.00 postpaid ($20.00 outside the U.S.); his address is 6875 Honey Locust Cove, Memphis, TN 38119 , and credit-card orders are welcome. Martin Breese has moved (Breese Books, 10 Hanover Crescent, Brighton, East Sussex BN2 9SB, England) , and offers discounts on more than a dozen pastiches written by Val Andrews, John Hall, William Seil, and others; details on that, and on his other titles, are available by mail or at his web-site. Mary Campbell ("Brenda Tregennis") died on Mar. 17. She was a librarian at the University of Toronto, and an enthusiastic member of The Bootmakers of Toronto. Mary was their archivist for many years, and won awards for the best paper presented at a meeting in 1977 and for the best paper published in Canadian Holmes in 1983; she also was an active member of The Bootmaker Players, often performing as Mrs. Hudson, and was honored as a Master Boot- maker in 1985. Mary also was "Mrs. Merrilow" in The Adventuresses of Sher- lock Holmes, and she received her Investiture from The Baker Street Irregu- lars in 2002. The Sherlock Holmes Review sponsored five Sherlockian symposia from 1987 to 1997, and there will be a new one on Nov. 8-9 in Indianapolis, sponsored by Wessex Press/Gasogene Books. "From Gillette to Brett: Sherlock Holmes on Stage, Screen, & Radio" will feature Edward Hardwicke and Nicholas Meyer as special guests, and Susan Dahlinger, David Stuart Davies, Chris Gullo, Paul Herbert, and Gordon Kelley as speakers. You can contact Steven Doyle (540 West Sycamore Street, Zionsville, IN 46077 for informa- ation on how to register for the event. William S. Dorn's latest CD-ROM is SOME SHERLOCKIAN MORPHS, and it's an in- triguing demonstration of what can be done with computers: you can watch 20 Sherlockian graphics morph into other Sherlockian graphics, comparing vari- ous actors with other actors, or with Paget or Steele illustrations, Holmes undisguised with Holmes disguised, etc. His address is 2045 South Monroe Street, Denver, CO 80210; and the postpaid cost is $13.03 (to Colorado) or $12.95 (other U.S.) or CA$22.00 (to Canada) or $15.85 (elsewhere). There's interesting news of new DVD releases in the latest issue of Scarlet Street (#47): advertisements for "Murder by Decree" (with audio commentary by director Bob Clark and other added-value material such as DVD-ROM of the original screenplay) from Anchor Bay Entertainment; the five two-hour Gran- ada "Sherlock Holmes" programs from MPI Home Video; and some older material from Sinister Cinema: "The Sign of Four" (1932, with Arthur Wontner), "Der Hund von Baskerville" (1936, with Bruno Guttner, in German), "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1959, with Peter Cushing), and "The Hound of the Basker- villes" (1979, with Vasily Livanov, in Russian subtitled in English). The magazine costs $42.00 a year (for six issues); the address is Box 604, Glen Rock, NJ 07452 . Sinister Cinema's address Box 4369 (Dept. S), Medford, OR 97501 . Mar 03 #5 Reported: Svend Petersen's A SHERLOCK HOLMES ALMANAC, which he compiled and published 1956, now is available in a second edi- tion, revised and expanded by Carl Will William Thiel, Karen Murdock, Frank Darlington, Edwin Christenson, and George A. Vanderburgh; the 388-page book is available for $41.00 postpaid from The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box at Box 240, Shelburne, ON L0N 1S0, Canada. Norman Davis and Linda Crane report that they will be selling much of their Sherlockian collection (including "the interesting, arcane, desirable, and just plain weird") at auction on eBay in weekly off- erings beginning on Apr. 5 and continuing for many weeks; they'll include "BSI" in the title of each item, and their seller name is "bsi_and_ash". "...that one glance told him that Cleveland in Ohio possessed the men whom he was in pursuit of," we are told (in "A Study in Scarlet"). The U.S. Postal Service has honored the 200th anni- versary of Ohio's statehood. Sorry about that: the production of "The Crucifer of Blood" on Nov. 7-23 in Indianapolis (Feb 03 #3) won't be seen this year; the play actually was produced there in 1997, but the year was omitted from the flier I received last month. The new Britannia mail-order catalog has two pages of Sherlockian material, including James Sadler teapots and a mini bar set. And (due for release on Apr. 8) "Tommy & Tuppence: Partners in Crimes" on DVD; this London Weekend Television series was based on Agatha Christie's stories and starred James Warwick and Francesca Annis, and included an episode ("Finessing the King") in which Tommy and Tuppence go to a fancy-dress ball dressed as Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Sheldon Reynolds died on Jan. 25. He made his mark in television as produ- cer and writer of the syndicated series "Foreign Intrigue" (1951-1955), and directed some of the episodes as well as the 1956 feature film that starred Robert Mitchum. His next series was "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" in 1954, starring Ronald Howard and H. Marion Crawford, and his later work in- cluded the series "Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson" (1981), with Geoffrey Whitehead and Donald Pickering. The second series was made in Poland while Reynolds was married to Andrea Reynolds, and production involved a dispute with the Polish authorities that resulted in Andrea temporarily lodged in a Polish jail; Reynolds later said that his greatest mistake was getting her out. He did change his mind, allowing that his greatest mistake was intro- ducing Andrea to his friend Claus von Bulow; she abandoned Reynolds and en- ergetically claimed credit for von Bulow's acquittal in his second trial for the attempted murder of his wife Sunny. Sheldon Reynolds was inventive and optimistic, and a delightful raconteur about his many years in televis- ion and film. Reported: a sidebar in the Jan.-Feb. issue of Book magazine on "the battle of the side-kicks," ranking supporting characters such as Dr. Watson, Hawk (from the Spenser novels), and Asta (Nick and Nora's dog). Hawk won first prize, and Sherlock Holmes (husband and mentor to Mary Russell in the ser- ies of novels by Laurie R. King) came in second. Mar 03 #6 Phil Attwell notes that the film "Minority Report" (2002) now is available on DVD, with added-value special features that in- clude discussion by director Steven Spielberg, who talks about the names of the three pre-cogs who are able to "see" murders before they happen: the twins Arthur and Dashiell were named after Arthur Conan Doyle and Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha after Agatha Christie. Carolyn and Joel Senter have issued a new catalog from Classic Specialties (Box 1958, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233- 3823) with a nice assortment of Sherlockian books and other material. And now for some film news, if you're willing to count rumor and gossip as news. There is a long list of past entertainment-world announcements that might be described as huffery-puffery: we never got to see "Sherlock Holmes Meets Dracula" (1986), which was persistently reported with Tony Randall as Holmes and Sid Caesar as Dracula ("Tony Randall asked me to inform you that unfortunately, he's never heard of the project," a public-relations staffer wrote to me in 1994, "although, he thought it sounded like a great idea"). Or a 1991 "Sherlock Holmes" television series starring Stephen Fry as Sher- lock Holmes and Hugh Laurie as Dr. Watson. Or the 2001 film loosely based on "The Sign of Four" with Alan Rickman as Holmes, Gabriel Byrne as Watson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Holmes' love interest. So here's some of the more recent buzz: "221bCAUSE" is a "Sherlock Holmes thriller" about a modern-day female Sherlock Holmes, with Britney Spears in talks about playing the lead (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Love Hew- itt saw the script and declined); the [London] Sun ran an amusing photo of Britney in a deerstalker on Jan. 3, and many readers didn't notice that the paper stated it was a fake. "Baker Street Irregulars" (the story of "the kids who were the secret army of Sherlock Holmes") is to star Malcolm Mc- Dowell as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Moriarty. And "Holmes and Watson" (an action-adventure) will be set in modern-day London ("the heir to the Holmes legacy will be portrayed as a twenty-something playboy who uses his talents mainly to pick up girls--until he is unwittingly drawn back into the family detective business by a young, sexy Dr. Jane Watson"). Karen Murdock (1212 Yale Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414) offers Sherlock- ian bumper stickers (11.5" wide, with bright green background); $2.00 each, or three for $5.00. If you're outside the U.S., please send currency. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Apr 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press There's still time to reserve for this year's running of The Silver Blaze at historic Saratoga Race Track in upstate New York: the event is sponsored by The Baker Street Irregulars, and the agenda will include a buffet lunch- eon at the Rail Pavilion on Aug. 2, with honors for the winner of the race, and a buffet brunch and Sherlockian program at the Prime Hotel & Conference Center on Aug. 3, all for $100 a person. Checks for $100 (payable to The Baker Street Irregulars) should be sent to Lou Lewis at 11 Raymond Avenue #24, Poughkeepsie, NY 12603; he'll also be happy to provide information on hotel accommodations in the area. For those who missed Ian McKellen as Sherlock Holmes in the "Hot Air Ball- oon Mystery Theater" skit broadcast by NBC-TV on "Saturday Night Live" on Mar. 16, 2002, Ratana Ngin reports that there's an image at the web-site at . Robin W. Winks died on Apr. 7. He was a professor of history at Yale Uni- versity, with special interests in the environment, detective fiction, and the history of espionage. His reviews of mysteries appeared in the New Re- public, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe, and he wrote an intro- duction for a 1992 reprint of Howard Haycraft's THE ART OF MYSTERY FICTION. Winks edited THE HISTORIAN AS DETECTIVE: ESSAYS ON EVIDENCE (1969) and DE- TECTIVE FICTION: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS (1980), and he wrote MODUS OPERANDI: AN EXCURSION INTO DETECTIVE FICTION (1982) and with Maureen Corr- igan won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE WRITERS: THE LITERATURE OF CRIME, DETECTION AND ESPIONAGE (1998). He often paid tribute to Conan Doyle, and once suggested that "When all is said and done, crime fiction is about the same craft as any fiction: writ- ing well." A new catalog from McCranie's offers a wide range of pipe tobacco in tins, among them McClelland's "221-B Black Shag" and "221-B Arcadia", and Peter- son's "Sherlock Holmes". McCranie's address is 4143 Park Road, Charlotte, NC 28209) (800-523-8554) . The comic-book series FANTASTIC STORIES (Mar 02 #2), created by Don Marquez and published by Amryl continues, with the first two parts (six and seven pages) of a three-part adaptation of "When the World Screamed" (Apr. 2002 and Dec. 2002); $2.95 each in comic-book shops, or you can order from Don Marquez (1313 Young Wo Circle, Folsom, CA 95630), $3.00 each plus $3.00 shipping per order (please pay by check or via PayPal). He has a web-site at , and he will sign the cov- ers on request. Reported: THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, by Mark Haddon (New York: Doubleday, 2003; 224 pp., $22.95); according to Publishers Week- ly (Apr. 7), "Christopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red--but not yellow or brown--food and screams when he is touched.... When his neighbor's poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes (one of his favorite characters) and track down the killer." Apr 03 #2 The Practical, But Limited, Geologists will meet for drinks and dinner, honoring the world's first forensic geologist, on May 14, at 7:00 pm, at the Alta Club in Salt Lake City, during the annual meet- ing of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The Alta Club is at 100 East South Temple; our tradition is to discourage scholarly papers, slide shows, and quizzes (and our agenda consists entirely of toasts, some scholarly, but many not). We will be following in distinguished footsteps: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was entertained at the Alta Club during his visit to Salt Lake City in 1923, when he lectured at the Mormon Tabernacle. If you would like to join us for the festivities, please let me know. Ann Skene-Melvin died on Apr. 9. She was a bibliophile, and proprietor of Ann's Books and Mostly Mysteries Books, and with her husband David compiled CRIME, DETECTIVE, ESPIONAGE, MYSTERY, AND THRILLER FICTION & FILM: A COM- PREHENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICAL WRITING THROUGH 1979 (1980). She was one of the founders of The Bookmakers of Toronto, a member of the executive committees that organized the Bootmakers conferences in 1986 and 1997, and (as "Beryl Garcia") a member of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. Elizabeth Dow (ten-year-old daughter of Wanda and Jeff- ery Dow, and a member of The Pleasant Places of Florida) is a Girl Scout, and now the proud owner of a "Science Sleuth" badge (and of course it's nice indeed to see the Girl Scouts using a Sherlockian icon); the "Explore and Discover" booklet says: "Here are some questions you can ask or investigate, just like a scientist. There isn't always a 'right' or 'only' answer--that's the challenge of sleuthing." Jon Lellenberg reports that the opening of the Newberry Library exhibition in Chicago on "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Sherlock Holmes" was well-at- tended and interesting. There were about 120 people at the private dinner on Apr. 11 (the evening ended with a recording of Vincent Starrett reading his poem "221B"), and about 240 people on hand for a public lecture on Apr. 12 by Richard Lancelyn Green (the library's Saturday lectures generally at- tract fewer than 20 people). The exhibition offers an attractive display of many of the highlights from the material donated to the library by Fred Kittle, whose Doyleana covers four generations of Doyles and Conan Doyles), and will be on view until July 12; there's a well-illustrated list of what is in the exhibition at the library's web-site . And for those who might need an additional excuse to visit Chicago, Daniel Stashower will speak at the Newberry Library on May 28, on "Believers and Debunkers: Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini". Karen Murdock noted the story in the Daily Express (Apr. 19): "an old golf club register may hold the clue to one of the last Sherlock Holmes myster- ies," the report by Richard Palmer notes. Douglas Blunden, the historian of the Sheringham Golf Club in Norfolk, found the name of Mr. C. Moriarty in a visitors' book entry for 1901; Moriarty later became a full member of the club, and Conan Doyle became a member in 1903. Club officials now won- der if the two men met on holiday in Sheringham a decade earlier, when Co- nan Doyle first wrote about the evil Prof. James Moriarty. Apr 03 #3 Jeffrey Schwartz ("Henry Baker") died on Apr. 7. He was vice president for international affairs for a Wall Street broker- age, and then moved to Houston to work for a Mexican bank; while he lived in the New York area he was a stalwart member of Mrs. Hudson's Cliffdwell- ers and served as their quiz-master and (Irv Kamil has noted) designed team quizzes "of dazzling creativity." He received his Investiture from the Ba- ker Street Irregulars in 1984. Reported: MGM/UA Video will release "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970) on DVD on July 15 ($19.98), with added-value features that include theatrical trailers, deleted sequences, and "Christopher Lee: Mr. Holmes, Mr. Wilder". Admirers of "Aunt Clara" will recall that Bill Rabe reported in his "We Al- ways Mention Aunt Clara" that one of the experts consulted in his research on the post-war history of the song was Art Buchwald, who was (Bill noted) "nightclub critic" for the Paris edition of the N.Y. Herald Tribune. They had met in March 1952, when Lt. Rabe was in Paris, following in the foot- steps of Sherlock Holmes, and a report on Bill's activities was featured in Buchwald's column. Buchwald, who joined the paper in 1949, reported in his syndicated column this month: "A funny thing happened the other day. Actu- ally, it was not that funny. The International Herald Tribune in Paris can- celed my column after 53 years." The N.Y. Herald Tribune closed many years ago, but the International Herald Tribune has continued to publish, opera- ted jointly by the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post; last year the N.Y. Times, in a hostile takeover, purchased the Washington Post's interest in the International Herald Tribune, and Buchwald, whose column has been pub- lished for decades in the Washington Post (and not in the N.Y. Times), is the latest casualty of the takeover. But his fans can continue to read his column in the Washington Post and other papers that carry it. Boris Karloff was shown in a pane of ten stamps honoring "American Film Making" that was issued in February; the stamp is a photograph of Jack Pierce and an unidentified technician applying makeup to Karloff for "Frankenstein" (1931). Karloff also played Mr. Mycroft in "The Sting of Death" (which was adapted by Alvin Sapinsley from H. F. Heard's novel A TASTE FOR HONEY) on ABC-TV's "The Elgin Hour" on Feb. 22, 1955 (in an era before fans were quick to tape off-the-air, alas). David Harlan would like to reactivate The Mystik Krewe of Sherlock Holmes (the Sherlockian society in New Orleans), and would be happy to hear from any locals; his address is: 833 East Lexington Avenue, Terrytown, LA 70056 . Ted Friedman's interesting series about Sherlockian philately for Topical Times continues with his two-page article on "Vernet French Connections" in the May-June issue; he offers brief histories of the Vernet and Holmes fam- ilies, and it's illustrated with stamps showing paintings by Carle, Emile Jean Horace, and Claude Joseph Vernet. The magazine costs $5.00 postpaid (credit-card orders welcome) from the American Topical Association, Box 57, Arlington, TX 76004 . Apr 03 #4 "The actor Charles Dance wanted to perform 'Pursued by a Bear', in which Sherlock Holmes hunts a killer in an animal suit," ac- cording to Benedict Nightingale's story in the N.Y. Times (Mar. 23) about the career of playwright Peter Nichols, whose play "A Day in the Death of Joe Egg" was recently revived in New York. "Pursued by a Bear" is one of some 40 unproduced plays he has written; they are now in British Library, which bought his archive four years ago. Thanks to Greg Darak, who noted the mention of a Sherlock Holmes play. Richard Valley reports that MPI Home Video will release the 14 Basil Rath- bone/Nigel Bruce films on DVDs, beginning this fall; one film per DVD, and two DVDs per month; the Universal films will be the recently-restored ver- sions in the UCLA archives (the 20th Century-Fox films will be cleaned up but not entirely remastered), and Valley will provide the chapter stops and liner notes (and it's possible that there will be extra features included). Two enameled-metal lapel pins (Holmes read- ing Porlock's message is in six colors, and the hansom cab is in five) are offered by Al Gregory (118 South Prospect Street, Verona, NJ 07044); the pins cost $12.00 each (post- paid) or $15.00 each for orders from outside the United States (payment should be made in currency or with checks drawn on U.S. banks, please). According to The Passengers' Log (summer 2003, p. 12), the Programme Pres- ervation Society offers "The Life (in a Day) of Douglas Wilmer", a 165-min- ute interview in which he reminisces about his acting career (including his performances as Holmes and his recorded readings of the Canon) on a video- cassette. The PPS notes that Wilmer has written about the interview that "I have decided that yours is the *definitive* one and, should anyone ever ask me again I shall simply recommend it to them." Their cassettes usually are available only to members, but readers of this newsletter are welcome to order this one if they hear from you by Aug. 1 (mention the magic word "Scuttlebutt"). The cassette is in PAL/VHS format, and costs L10.00 post- paid to the U.K. (or L13.00 elsewhere); payment by sterling check or money order, please (checks payable to the PPS), and orders can be sent to Rich- ard Berry (36-B Elvendon Road, Bounds Green, London N13 4SH, England). Ad- ditional information about the PPS and its other cassettes can be found at their web-site at . James Eedle has prepared a comprehensive index for News from the Diggings, which was edited by Alan C. Olding and published by The Sherlock Holmes So- ciety of Australia from 1980 to 2002. There's a general index, an index of references to stories, and an annotated list of contents, in Word format on a 3.5" floppy disk, available for US$25.00 postpaid (US$ checks or currency welcome) from Alan (P.O. Box 13, Stirling, SA 5152, Australia. Rebecca Bohner has a bit of news from Laurie R. King about a Mary Russell novel in the works: "THE GAME as in The Great Game, as in India's Northwest frontier, as in Kim. Yes, Kim. He's 47 now (that is, in 1924), and miss- ing..." And Rebecca notes that that's Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Apr 03 #5 The 2002 issue of the Beeman's Christmas Annual, edited by Jan- et N. Bensley for The Occupants of the Empty House, is a cele- bration of the society's first 25 years and a tribute to Father Raymond L. "Vic" Holly. The Occupants have met each month since Jan. 1977, and their 300 meetings through the end of 2002 may well be a record for Sherlockian societies; the 40-page booklet costs $11.25 postpaid, and checks (payable to the society, please) should be sent to Stan Tinsley (Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999). "What might have been" department: the spring issue of Irene Adler's Post- modern Victorian Gazette (published by Carole Nelson Douglas as part of her Midnight Louie's Scratching Post-Intelligencer) reports that Carole sent a copy of GOOD NIGHT, MR. HOLMES to Jane Seymour for Christmas in 1990, hop- ing to interest the actress in playing the role. The actress called Carole to thank her, and went on to star in "Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman" on televi- sion, and Carole went on to write more novels. The URL for Carole's web- site is . Belgium issued a stamp commemorating the centenary of the death of Felicien Rops (1833-1898), who was a member of the Groupe des Vingts [XX Group], and Belgium's leading artist, when Sherlock Holmes was pursuing the Hound of the Baskervilles" (and Wat- son reported that Holmes "was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters"); the design shows part of Rops' painting "La foire aux amours". The stamp was one of a set of four in a set that honored the 200th anniversary of the Mus- eum of Fine Arts in Ghent. Dave Dobson spotted Massimo Pigliucci's "Thinking About Science" column in the May-June issue of Skeptical Inquirer" "Elementary, Dear Watson" notes that Sherlock Holmes used induction rather than deduction, and explains the difference between the two forms of reasoning. "Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra" (a 1986 two-act "Victorian musical spoof" with book by Tim Kelly and music and lyrics by Jack Sharkey) will be performed at the Drama Lab Theatre at Orange Coast Community Coll- ege on May 8-11 and 15-18. The theater is at 2701 Fairview Road, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 (714-432-5880) . Robert F. Hanson (6000 Cortaderia Street NE #3215, Albuquerque, NM 87111) offers a second printing of John Bennett Shaw's COLLECTING SHERLOCKIANA: AN ESSAY [Apr 91 #2]. The 16-page pamphlet includes a frontispiece photograph showing the Sage of Santa Fe in his library; $6.50 postpaid ($8.50 outside the United States). Roger Johnson reports that Malcolm Williamson died on Mar. 2. He was ap- pointed Master of the Queen's Music (the musical equivalent of poet laure- ate) in 1975, and he was a composer for films, including the score of "The Masks of Death" (1984). And that Lloyd Shirley died in Mar. 5. He was a leading television executive in Britain, and was executive producer of the Thames TV series "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" (1971). Apr 03 #6 Here's your chance to star in some of the Sherlock Holmes stor- ies: Customized Classics (5 Camelot Way, Markham, ON L3P 3V9, Canada) (905-201-9504) offers A STUDY IN SCARLET AND THE SIGN OF THE FOUR, THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES ($28.95 each postpaid) with customized covers and your name in the text in place of ma- jor characters. And you get a 20% discount if you mention the magic word ("Scuttlebutt"); please tell them your phone number when you order. Books by other authors also are available. The Sherlock Holmes stories (as well as Con- an Doyle's non-Sherlockian work) have been illustrated by some fine artists, including Wladyslaw Theodore Benda (1875-1948), whose mixed-media theatrical mask is owned by the National Portrait Gallery. An exhibit of "American Beauties: Drawing from the Golden Age of Illustration" at the Library of Con- gress last year included some of his strik- ing art for the covers of "Hearst's Interna- tional Magazine" (his illustrations for "The Sussex Vampire" appeared in that magazine in Jan. 1924). The March issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Coll- ections at the University of Minnesota off- ers Julie McKuras' article about the collec- tions' recently acquired print of the film "A Black Sherlock Holmes" (1918); the film was made by the Ebony Film Corp. and starred Sam Robinson (in parody Sher- lockian costume) as Knick Garter. The issue also has Michael Dirda's crit- ique of W. H. Auden's discussion of mysteries, and Sherlock Holmes, in "The Guilty Vicarage"; and Jon Lellenberg's warm tribute to John Bennett Shaw's enthusiastic collecting, in Jon's reminiscence of how two century-old paro- dies wound up in John's collection. Dick Sveum also reports that the cata- loging project funded by the Hubbs Family (and by the library and the Hench Endowment) has been completed. the newsletter is available from Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . "The future of humankind is at stake and only two men can save it. Come on a journey back to the beginning of science, the beginning of civilization, the beginning of time. Where will is all end? Be prepared to see Holmes and Watson as you've never seen them before. In daring plots, in amazing escapades, in dubious disguise. In trouble." That's the promotion for the new play "Sherlock Holmes in Trouble" (written by Mark Long and Emil Wolk) that will have its world premiere at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, July 2 through Aug. 9. St. Ann's Square, Manchester N2 7DH, England (0161-833- 9833) . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) May 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Dennis Lien reports that a fourth (and final) edition of Allen J. Hubin's massive bibliography of crime fiction is to be published at the end of this year. Al described the first edition, which appeared in 1984 and covered 1749-1975, as a list of "all mystery, detective, suspense, police and goth- ic fiction in book form published in the English language," and he's an ex- pert in the field: his had more than 26,000 books in his collection, and he founded and edited "The Armchair Detective" and won two Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America. His CRIME FICTION IV: A COMPREHENSIVE BIB- LIOGRAPHY 1749-2000 is to have about 2,700 pages in five hard-cover volumes ($400 postpaid for pre-publication orders), from George A. Vanderbugh (Box 204, Shelburne, ON L0N 1S0, Canada) , and there are plans for a CD-ROM edition from the Locus Press ; the CD-ROM with the third edition costs $49.95 (and one can assume that the new CD-ROM won't cost much more). The bibliography will list more than 109,000 titles, indexed by authors and pseudonyms, and indexes for settings, film adaptations, and much more. Dennis Rosa's 1975 play "Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of the Sign of the Four" is scheduled at the Dorset Theatre Festival from June 26 to July 12; Box 510, Dorset, VT 05251 (802-867-2223) . The television series "Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century" (1999), which was produced by DIC Entertainment and Scottish Television and broadcast in Britain in 1999 and in the United States in 2001, will now be seen in many other countries; according to the Hollywood Reporter (Apr. 29), the animat- ed series is included in deals with Nickelodeon Asia, Fox Kids Italy, and Cartoon Network Japan. The series had 26 30-minute programs and featured the voices of Jason Gray Stanford as Sherlock Holmes, and John Payne as Dr. John Watson). If you're planning a trip to England: The Sherlock Holmes Society of London is planning a cricket match against The P. G. Wodehouse Society on June 29, at the West Wycombe Cricket Club in Buckinghamshire. It's open to the pub- lic, and there's no charge for admission. Reported: MY SHERLOCK HOLMES: UNTOLD STORIES OF THE GREAT DETECTIVE, edited by Michael Kurland (New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2003; 370 pp., $24.95) -- 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. Jim Rock reports that the Bookfinder web-site that allows users to search other used-book sites has noted what the most- searched-for books in various categories were during the last half of 2002. Under "mysteries and thrillers" that top ten were WHERE THERE'S A WILL (Rex Stout), THE RUBBER BAND (Rex Stout), THE RED BOX (Rex Stout), THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN (Rex Stout), TEN LITTLE NIGGERS (Agatha Christie), THE DEEP (Peter Benchley), THE IPCRESS FILE (Len Deighton), THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES (William S. Baring-Gould), THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL (Ira Levin), and THE SILVER PIGS (Lindsey Davis). It's intriguing that THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES is on so many people's want lists 35 years after it was published. May 03 #2 Further to the report (Jul 01 #1) about the continuing battle over Liberton Bank House (where Arthur Conan Doyle once lived as a child), award-winning Edinburgh architect Richard Murphy has drawn up plans to renovate the house for use by the Dunedin School. Opponents of a proposal by McDonald's for a restaurant on the site of the oldest surviving house where Conan Doyle lived welcomed the news. Frank Darlington died on May 9. He was an energetic member of The Sound of the Baskervilles and The Stormy Petrels of British Columbia, and a genial contributor to The Hounds of the Internet, and his risque Christmas cards issued from his Scandalous Darlington Press were a delight. Thanks to his career in the U.S. Foreign Service he happily visited many of the countries mentioned in the Canon (Afghanistan, Austria, England, France, Italy, Paki- istan, and the Sudan), and his home included a library full of Sherlockian souvenirs from his travels. Further to the report (Apr 03 #3) on the MGM/UA Video release of "The Pri- vate Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970) on DVD, Dave Kehr noted (N.Y. Times, May 11) that the added features include 30 minutes cut from the theatrical release. There's plenty of Sherlockian scholarship in languages other than English: Le Registre d'Ecrou, published by Les Evades de Dartmoor, had four annual issues, and last year was succeeded by Le Carnet d'Ecrou. Information on subscriptions are available from Francois Hoff, 19 rue du Marechal Joffre, 67000 Strasbourg, France . Bill Barnes (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly, NSW 2095, Australia) notes that THE HOUNDS' COLLECTION: VOLUME 8 now is available, with 68 pages of wit, schol- arship, conjecture, pastiche, and artwork by members of The Hounds of the Internet; most of the material is new (one item was published earlier only in Japanese, and another is revised and expanded from a version published in 1997). The cost is $10.00/CA$15.00/L6.50/E9.00 postpaid by air; payment in currency or by PayPal to preferred, but checks (made out to R. W. Barnes) are acceptable. Brian W. Pugh reports that he has published a second (expanded and correct- ed) edition of his A CHRONOLOGY OF THE LIFE OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, now with more biographical references to Conan Doyle and with the dates of his works incorporated within the chronology. It's available from Brian at 20 Clare Road, Lewes, Sussex BN7 1PN, England; L16.00 postpaid to the U.K., or L19.00/E30.00/$30.00 elsewhere; sterling checks only (euros and dollars in currency, please). Further to the item (Mar 03 #4) about films available from Sinister Cinema (Box 4369, Medford, OR 97501) : they offer many more titles, including "Der Hund von Baskerville" (1936, with Bruno Guttner, in German),"The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1968, with Peter Cush- ing), and "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1979, with Vasily Livanov, in Russian subtitled in English), on DVDs ($16.95 each); and The Sign of Four" (1932, with Arthur Wontner), "Murder at the Baskervilles" (1937, with Arth- ur Wontner, aka "Silver Blaze"), and "Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Neck- lace (1962, with Christopher Lee), on cassettes ($12.95 each). May 03 #3 Fans of the recent series (with Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe and Tim Hutton as Maury Chaykin) will welcome the news that "Nero Wolfe: The Complete Season One DVD set" will be available ($59.95) on June 10 at the A&E web-site , with a poster showing Hutt- on Goodwin; or discounted ($31.89) at . The A&E web-site also offers Nero Wolfe floral ties and swirl ties. For those who came in late, many Sherlockians enjoy the speculation that Sherlock Holmes, during the Great Hiatus, rendezvoused with Irene Adler in Montenegro; after her return to New Jersey she gave birth to a child who inherited his fath- er's expertise at deduction, and his uncle's physique. Kathleen I. Morrison died on May 5. She worked for the Calgary Public Li- brary for 42 years, and she was one of Canada's first Sherlockians (and the fourth baronet of The Canadian Baskervilles, Canada's first Sherlockian so- ciety); her article on "John H. Watson, M.D." was published in the Calgary Associate Clinic's Historical Bulletin in May 1943. Charles Honce's story about her ran on the Associated Press wire on Jan. 29, 1945, by which time she had been recruited by Clif Andrew as the corresponding secretary of the Scandalous Bohemians of Akron. Vincent Starrett was another of her corres- pondents, and she was quoted by Honce saying that "it has been an intrigu- ing adventure, growing daily in color and scope." Further to the item (Mar 03 #6) about recent news from Hollywood about New Line Cinema's "Holmes and Watson" action-adventure that's set in modern-day London, Josh Spector notes in the Hollywood Reporter (May 23) that New Line also has acquired Mark DiStefano's "untitled modern Sherlock Holmes spec in a mid-six-figure deal" with Chris Bender and J. C. Spink as producer. It's described as a thriller with a historical hook, and the script centers on "a rookie New York cop who discovers that he is the descendant of the leg- endary sleuth. While Holmes' great-great-grandson does not share his last name, he does share his unique ability and quickly rises up the ranks to detective. But when his true heritage becomes tabloid fodder, a copycat criminal emerges and re-enacts many of the crimes Holmes once solved, put- ting the descendant to the test." May 29 was Bob Hope's 100th birthday, and there have been many celebrations of his long career as an entertainer, on stage and screen and radio and television, and on his many USO tours performing for our armed forces. And his massive joke file (he kept careful records) is now at the Library of Congress, where they were scanned and digitized (but un- fortunately one cannot run a word search to see if he told any jokes about Sherlock Holmes). You can, however, see a caricature of Bob "Sherlock" Hope at his official web-site at (thanks to Scott Monty for observing and reporting on this); you can click on the image and listen to him telling jokes. You can also keep an eye out for advertising for the film "My Favorite Brunette" (1947) showing him in Sherlockian costume (it's only in the ad- vertising, however, and there's no S'ian costume in the film itself). He also is reported to have performed in a skit on the "Donny and Marie Show" (1977) as Inspector Wonderful, with Jay Osmond as Doctor Datsum (alas, no one has reported having recorded this on videocassette). May 03 #4 "I grew up with Conan Doyle," said Dick Wolf, producer of the television series "Law & Order", according to David Zurawick in the Baltimore Sun (May 4). "That's what I read when I was growing up. Sherlock Holmes is still my favorite fictional character. I started with the Hardy Boys, and then moved on to Sherlock Holmes." Thanks to Jay Hyde for forwarding the article. There was Sherlockian dialogue in the episode "Prescription for Death" (1990), and the episode "Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die" (1990) had many echos from "The Illustrious Client". "Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)" opened at the Cinema Village in New York on May 23. The documentary film is about the rock band "They Might Be Gi- ants" (the two Johns are John Flansburgh and John Linnell, who founded the group that took its name from the 1970 film that starred George C. Scott as a psychotic judge who believes he's Sherlock Holmes). Father Raymond L. "Vic" Holly died on May 19. He was a charter member of The Harpooners of the Sea Unicorn, and the first person to attend a meet- ing of The Occupants of the Empty House (and in case you're wondering how he got to be the first person, he also was the only person, Michael Bragg reports: there was a huge blizzard and the meeting was postponed, and Vic, who hadn't told anyone he was coming, was the only one not told; he crawled through the blizzard and found the restaurant closed, so he got credit for attending, even though no one else did). As noted earlier (Apr 03 #5), the 2002 issue of the Beeman's Christmas Annual was a tribute to Vic; the 40- page booklet costs $11.25 postpaid; checks (payable to the society, please) should be sent to Stan Tinsley (Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999). Andy Peck has reported that the recently-restored 97-minute version of John Barrymore's silent film "Sherlock Holmes" (1922) will be screened with live musical accompaniment by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at their Walter Reade Theater on July 22 at 6:00 and 8:30 pm; the theater is located at 165 West 65th Street in New York. Tickets go on sale on July 16, and the box- office phone number is 212-496-3809 . David Otis Ives died on May 16. He was a reporter and editor, and in 1960 he went to work as assistant general manager of the WGBH Educational Foun- dation. From 1970 to 1984 he was president and chief executive officer of WGBH, and approved projects such as "Nova", "Frontline", "Masterpiece Thea- ter", and "Mystery!", which allowed viewers here to see the Granada "Sher- lock Holmes" series, and Richard Roxburgh's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (and many references to Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle in the wrap- arounds recorded in Boston by Vincent Price, Diana Rigg and Russell Baker). I would appreciate hearing from anyone who might have a current address for Douglas Walker-Macran, who some years ago wrote to me from the Chƒteau de la Bastide d'Engras in Gard; he isn't there now, and the French post office doesn't have a forwarding address for him. One of the more interesting Sherlockian-themed toys is VTech's "The Detec- tives" Search 'n Discover Book (see the next page for a reduced picture of what it looks like). It's for ages three years and up, and it costs about $10.00 at toy stores. VTech can be reached at 800-521-2010 or (in Canada) 800-267-7377 or . [May 03 #5] May 03 #6 Sherlockian allusions continue to appear in kid-vid television animations, demonstrating that producers assume that children (sometimes so young that they're not reading yet) will understand the ref- erence. And of course many of the series are also available on videocass- ettes, one of them being "Hey Arnold!: Partners" (from Nickelodeon), with five 12-minute segments; the title segment of the cassette is synopsized: "First the great composing team of Spumoni and Reynolds split up. And now maybe Arnold and Gerald, too. Are all great performing duos doomed?") and there's an appropriate mention of Holmes and Watson. Thanks to Mike Kean for forwarding the cassette. Gillette Castle in East Haddam, Conn., has opened for the season (Memorial Day through Columbus Day), fully restored after an $11-million restoration project funded by the state. A story in the Hartford Courant (May 22) re- ported that "Gillette's famous personal railroad cars, which once carried personalities such as Calvin Coolidge and Albert Einstein, are still being restored." BBC Radio 4 continues to offer Conan Doyle material to listeners in Great Britain (and sometimes on its overseas broadcasts), and the materical can isn't necessarily Sherlockian: BBC Radio 4's 30-minute series "The Darker Side of the Border" aired Martin Ross' dramatization of "The Captain of the Polestar" on Apr. 24, 2003. The border is the Scottish border, and the ac- cents are thick enough to be cut by a knife. As far as I know, this is the first time this story has been dramatized; thanks to Roger Johnson for pro- viding an off-the-air recording. Issue #54 of SHERLOCK offers its usual coverage of crime fiction (Sherlock- ian and otherwise), including the second part of Gavin Collinson's commen- tary on Billy Wilder's "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes", David Stuart Davies' discussion of "The Voice of Passion: How Arthur Conan Doyle's Pri- vate Life Influenced the Sherlock Holmes Stories", and Pat Ward's two-page report on "Sherlock Stateside" (a feature in each issue of the magazine). SHERLOCK is published every two months and a subscription costs L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . Or you can order from their American agent: Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cin- cinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) ; credit- card orders are welcome at both addresses, and back issues are available. The spring issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has ers Doug Wrigglesworth's report on the collection's acquisition (with fund- ing assistance from the Friends) of books from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's li- rary, Barbara Rusch's discussion of Cliff Goldfarb's research on the long- standing controversy about whether Conan Doyle helped marathon runner Dor- ando across the finish line at the 1908 Olympics (Conan Doyle was present for the race, but in the stands rather than on the track), and other news from the library. Copies are available from Doug Wrigglesworth (16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada) . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Jun 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press It is rare for the BBC to broadcast a repeat of an ITV television series, but the BBC has signed to repeat the first 13 programs of Granada's "Sher- lock Holmes" (with Jeremy Brett and David Burke) on BBC-2 on Saturday af- ternoons in the "Watching the Detectives" slot. According to Adam Sherwin (in The Times on May 30), a BBC spokesman said that the deal didn't signal a retreat from its obligations to provide original programming, and that "we are always looking for new acquisitions and this is a series we think will be very popular with daytime audiences." And Nadine Nohr, Granada In- ternational's managing director, said that "This series starring the late, great Jeremy Brett as Holmes is still hailed as the definitive on-screen depiction of the world's greatest fictional detective. The series contin- ues to resonate as evidenced by continued sales around the world." Patricia Guy has reported on a new society: The Assorted and Stradivarious of Verona (the first scion of The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes). They hold their meetings (in English, since the local members prefer to read the Canon in its original language), and visitors should contact Patricia Guy (Via Fama 11, 37121 Verona, Italy) . The first running of The Silver Blaze at Belmont Race Track was in 1956, as noted by Wayne B. Swift in the The Street Journal Christmas Annual for 2000 (an excellent history of the original race, and its many offspring), and the last running there was in 1995. And there's a fine article about the track (where the 135th Belmont Stakes was run on June 7) in the Washington Post's sports section on June 2. Look for John Scheinman's "In the Spring of Kings, Belmont is the Palace" in your local library, or at the paper's web-site (look for "In the Sport of Kings, Belmont Is the Palace" as a headline). Jerry Margolin offers a rare poster for sale: it's for the first Sherlock Holmes talking picture, "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" (1929), with Clive Brook as Holmes, with a hand-tinted photograph of Brook holding a magnify- ing glass and examining a gun. Jerry's asking $3,000, and you can ask him for more information: 10007 S.W. Quail Post Road, Portland, OR 97219 (503- 293-7274) . The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas has completed a two-year $14.5 million renovation, according to a story in the Daily Texas on June 2 (spotted by Ken Lanza), and the center is displaying some of "the most fam- ous elements of its collection": manuscript and signed works by George Ber- nard Shaw, Charles Dickens, Albert Einstein, and Dylan Thomas, the original "Leatherface" mask from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's golf clubs. Jim Weiss' excellent recordings for younger audiences are available on CDs as well as cassettes, and his titles include SHERLOCK HOLMES FOR CHILDREN ("The Mazarin Stone", "The Speckled Band", "The Musgrave Ritual", and "The Blue Carbuncle") and MYSTERY! MYSTERY! ("The Red-Headed League" plus tales by Poe and Chesterton); cassettes are $10.95 each, and CDs are $14.95 each, and orders can be sent to Greathall Productions, Box 813, Benicia, CA 94510 (800-477-6234) . Jun 03 #2 Reported by Roger Johnson: the sixth volume of David Timson's unabridged readings of THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (with "The Gloria Scott", "The Resident Patient", "The Noble Bachelor", and "The Final Problem"), available from Naxos AudioBooks on three CDs (L13.99) or three cassettes (L9.99); 3 Wells Place, Redhill, Surrey, RH1 1SL, England) . Naxos also offers ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE-- A LIFE, by Hesketh Pearson, read (abridged) by Tim Pigott-Smith on two CDs ($10.99) or two cassettes ($8.99). And their web-site has a link to their prices-in-dollars site for American customers. Julie McKuras spotted Sherlock Snoopy, one of 16 stickers (all of them showing Snoopy in various costumes and poses) on a sheet of "Peanuts" stickers that's marketed to stationery and toy stores by Sandylion . The company is at 400 Cochrane Drive, Markham, ON L3R 8E3, Canada (800-387-4215) or Box 1570, Buffalo, NY 14240 (same toll-free number). Their "Peanuts" series also offers "Woodstock, Charlie Brown, and the gang." Sorry about that: I suggested (May 03 #6) that BBC Radio 4 might have aired the first dramatization of "The Captain of the Polestar" (on Apr. 24). The story was dramatized for and broadcast by the CBS Radio Mystery Theater on Oct. 6, 1978. If anyone recorded this program, please let me know. Russ Mann spotted the story in The Scotsman (May 26): the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, founded in 1729 with just four beds, has closed its facility at Lauriston Place. According to Tara Womersley, "Joseph Bell, who became acting surgeon at the infirmary in 1871, quickly gained attention for his terse clinical observations, and he so inspired one of his students that he was immortalized in literature. In a letter, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle cred- ited Bell for helping him to imagine the finest creation, writing: 'It is to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes.'" The Lauriston Place infirmary opened in 1879, and of course there is an intriguing echo of the place name in the Canon. The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh continues operations at a new hos- pital at Little France. Julie McKuras notes a web-site for Sherlock's of Celebration, an appropriately-themed restaurant and memorabi- lia shop in Florida: 715 Bloom Street #130, Celebration, FL 34747. The Mystery Writer's Annual (the program for the MWA's annual Edgar Allan Poe Awards Dinner) includes an "In Memoriam" section, and this year there were three people I didn't mention in this newsletter. Henry Slesar died on Apr. 2, 2002; he wrote seven mystery novels and nearly 500 short stor- ies, and contributed to "The Alfred Hitchcock Show" and "The Edge of Night" television series (one of his stories was "The Sherlock Method" in the Feb. 1959 issue of The Gent). Alvin Sapinsley, Jr., died on June 13, 2002; he adapted H. F. Heard's "Mr. Mycroft" novel "A Taste for Honey" for televi- sion as "The Sting of Death" on the Elgin Hour series (1955), and wrote the script for the television film "Sherlock Holmes in New York" (1976). And Lloyd Biggle, Jr., died on Sept. 12, 2002; he wrote mysteries and science fiction, and novels and short stories, and two of his novels are entertain- ing Sherlockian pastiches, told by Edward P. Jones (one of the irregulars: THE QUALLSFORD INHERITANCE (1986) and THE GLENDOWER CONSPIRACY (1990). Jun 03 #3 Jerry Margolin offers a rare poster for sale: it advertises the first Sherlock Holmes talking picture, "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" (1929), with Clive Brook as Holmes, with a hand-tinted photograph of Brook holding a magnifying glass and examining a gun. Jerry is asking $3,000, and he'll be glad to supply more information: 10007 S.W. Quail Post Road, Portland, OR 97219 (503-293-7274) . Costa Rossakis spotted a colorful full-page advertisement for McClelland's pipe tobaccos in the summer 2003 issue of Pipes and Tobac- co: their Sherlock's Black Shag and Watson's Arcadia will soon be joined by a "new 221B tobacco" that may not come in the appropri- ately Canonical box shown in the advertise- ment, but they have paid close attention to "The Cardboard Box". Plan ahead: June 11-13, 2004, are the dates for the conference titled "A River Runs by It: The University of Minnesota's Elmer L. Andersen Library and Sherlock Holmes Collections, On the Banks of the Miss- issippi" sponsored by the Norwegian Explorers, The Arthur Conan Doyle Soci- ety, and The Sherlock Holmes Collections; you can contact Julie McKuras at 13512 Granada Avenue, Apple Valley, MN 55124 to enroll on their mailing list. Bill Force noted a report in the Hartford Courant (May 29) that Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" will be produced by the River Rep at the Ivoryton Play- house on July 2-19. The box office is at Box 367, Ivoryton, CT 06442 (860- 767-8348) . And, further to the item (May 03 #6) about the opening of Gillette Castle, visitors should not neglect the exhibition "Honoring William Gillette" at the East Haddam Historical Society Museum on Route 82 (Town Street) (860- 873-3944). The exhibits include a continuous running of Peter Loffredo's excellent 30-minute documentary "William Gillette: A Connecticut Yankee and the American Stage" (1986); Garrett Walters plays William Gillette, and the film features interviews that include one with Helen Hayes, who as a young woman acted with Gillette. "Jane Austin's Mr. Darcy has emerged as the most romantic figure in English literature in a poll of women readers," according to a story by Nigel Rey- nolds in the Daily Telegraph (June 4), forwarded by Ken Lanza. Orange, a mobile phone company polled 1,900 women, and the runners-up, in order, were James Bond, Superman, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, Heathcliff, Sherlock Holmes, Rhett Butler, Prince Charming, and Sharpe. Holmes also ranked 3rd their choice of a guest for an imaginary dinner party, behind Mr. Darcy and Hercule Poirot. The film "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (based on the comic-book mini-series, with story by Alan Moore) will open on July 17, with Richard Roxburgh as Mycroft 'M' Holmes, making him (I think) the second actor who has played both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes. Jun 03 #4 The American Film Institute's "AFI's 100 Years . . . 100 Heroes & Villains" aired on CBS-TV on June 3, and the winners (select- ed from 400 nominations by an unidentified jury) were Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (Gregory Peck) and Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). The list is available at , and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in "The Hound of the Baskervilles") were ranked #160. The Queen's Birthday Honours list included a knighthood for Roger Moore, who played Sherlock Holmes in the television film "Sherlock Holmes in New York" (1976). William S. Dorn offers a new (and interesting) Sherlockian item: A Sherlock Holmes bobblehead doll (7.5" high); the postpaid cost is $36.55 (to the U.S.)/$38.55 (to Canada)/ $42.55 (elsewhere). And there's a new lapel pin with art- work by Nancy Beiman, at $12.15/$13.15/$16.15). HIs ad- dress is 2045 South Monroe Street, Denver, CO 80210; and he has a web-site at . "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mys- tery" (the interactive exhibit with much Victorian flavor, and a mystery visitors can solve), was first exhibited in Eng- land in 1995 and it has been touring the United States and Canada in since then; it is now at the Science Museum of Vir- ginia in Richmond, Va., through Aug. 31 (804-864-1400) . The June 2003 issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota has John Linsenmeyer's warm trib- bute to the late Stephen Tolins, Dick Sveum's "100 Years Ago" discussion of P. G. Wodehouse, and reports from and about the collections. The newsletter is available from Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) . "Your private detective does not--or did not ten years ago when he was my colleague--want to be an erudite solver of riddles in the Sherlock Holmes manner; he wants to be a hard and shifty fellow, able to take care of him- self in any situation, able to get the best of anybody he comes in contact with, whether criminal, innocent by-stander or client." Dashiell Hammett, in his Introduction to the 1934 Modern Library edition of THE MALTESE FAL- CON, discovered recently by Bill Harker. Marcus Geisser, who works for the International Committee for the Red Cross in Thailand, reports that he has been scuba-diving at Sukorn, which is lo- cated on the west coast of Thailand, on the east side of the Andaman Sea. I'm sure there are other scuba-diving Sherlockians, and it occurs to me to wonder what their Sherlockian society might be called. Jun 03 #5 Barry Day, has written five Sherlockian pastiches, and he now has edited SHERLOCK HOLMES: IN HIS OWN WORDS AND IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO KNEW HIM (New York: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003; 224 pp., $24.95); it's an interesting literary biography, based on quotations from the Canon, with commentary by Day and illustrations from The Strand Maga- zine, and it's an excellent introduction to the Canon (and to some of its more important other characters). Day notes in his Introduction that "It surprises many people to learn that more has been written about Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in one century than about Shakespeare in four," and he offers a welcome focus on what the Canon itself tells us. Reported by Roger Johnson: SHERLOCK HOLMES UND DER FLUCH VON ADDLETON, the German edition of Mike Ashley's anthology THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF NEW SHERLOCK HOLMES ADVENTURES (1997); Bastei Lubbe, Verlagsgruppe Lubbe GmbH & Co. KG, Bergisch Gladbach, Germany (E10.00). And MYCROFT UP AGAINST IT and MYCROFT OVER THE WATER, by Sam Bonnamy, as a downloadable e-book, or ink-on-paper (e-booksonline, 28 Bryntirion Drive, Woodlands Park Prestatyn, Denbighshire LL19 9NY, England); . And some new miniature books of Canonical stories, from R. F. Flower, 5 Foxglove Close, Ringmer, East Sussex BN8 5PB, England. Roger also forecasts SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE RULE OF NINE, by Barrie Roberts, due in August from Severn House (9-15 High Street Sutton, Surrey SM1 1DF, England; L18.99). All this from Roger's ex- cellent monthly newsletter The District Messenger, which costs $15.00 (make your checks payable to Jean Upton, please) or L6.00 (checks payable to Rog- er); his address is Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DF, England . And yes, that's "rojer" with a "j". The auction at Sotheby's in London on July 10 offers a wide range of Win- ston Churchill material, including several of his cigars, some half-smoked and some smoked (an unsmoked cigar with a band reading "Especiales Sir Win- ston Churchill" is estimated at L500-600); a photograph of Harry Houdini, inscribed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1920 (L1,500-2,000); a signed pre- sentation copy of THE NEW REVELATION (L500-700), and other Sherlockiana. 34-35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA, England . I suggested (Jun 03 #3) that Richard Roxburgh was the second actor to play both Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes; the first actor was Christopher Lee, who has played Sherlock Holmes on television and Mycroft in a film (as well as Sir Henry Baskerville in another film). Ken Lanza has forwarded a story in the Sydney Morning Herald (June 14) noting that the trailer for "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" has a "booming American voice dubbed onto the lips of Australia's Richard Roxburgh," even though Sean Connery was allowed to retain his Scottish accent). "We must conclude that the producers think American audiences won't be attracted to a movie," David Dale wrote, "if it contains too many non-American renditions of the English language." Hume Cronyn died on June 15. He began his acting career on stage in Wash- ington in 1931, in the comedy "Up Pops the Devil" (he said years later that he over-rehearsed and blew his only line), and went on to a long and award- winning career on stage and screen and television. In Alfred Hitchcock's film "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943) he played an avid mystery-magazine reader, and said "That little Frenchman beats them all. You can talk all you like about Sherlock Holmes. That little Frenchman beats them all." Jun 03 #6 Karen Murdock has noted a story in the [Cardiff] Western Mail (May 16) that reported that "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" has been offered for sale for L40,000. Owner Grace Pitchford said the history of 1,000-year-old Pencelli Castle, near Brecon in Wales and built by the 11th-century knight Ralph Baskerville, in-spired the name of the novel, and that "Conan Doyle was a regular visitor to the castle during the reign of Queen Victoria." According to a story in This Is Herefordshire (May 22) the barony is being sold by the Pitchford family, who acquired the Pencelli estate in the 1930s from the trustees of Henry Barry, Lord Buckland of Bwich. The story also says that "new lords or ladies of the manors may use their style on passports, driving licences and credit cards." And you can jin the Manorian Society of Great Britain. The barony is being offered by Manorial Auctioneers (104 Kennington Road, London SE11 6RE, England) . But there's a major problem: according to information at Paul M. Remfry's web-site , Pencelli Castle "was probably built in the late eleventh century" and "The fortress was seized by the king in 1322 and probably fell into decay soon afterwards. Today the ruins of the great square keep can still be made out behind the hotel which itself dates to 1584." It is possible, of course, that Conan Doyle stayed at the nearby hotel, but one should recall that just about every old house in Britain that has been owned by someone named Baskerville has been claimed as inspiring the book, despite the fact (which was widely reported, in the Sherlockian world) that the book was inspired by a story told to Co- nan Doyle by Fletcher Robinson, and the name was taken from Fletcher Robin- son's coachman Harry Baskerville. Occasionally one finds an unusual reference to Sherlock Holmes repeated in an unusual place: Colbert I. King's op-ed column (Washington Post, June 21) was headlined "Searchin' Every Which A-Way for WMD", and in it King quoted from the Coasters' "Searchin'" (1957), which included the line, "Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade, got nothing', child, on me." You can read King's column at , and the complete lyrics to "Searchin'" at . The song also is available on various CDs, of course. Tim Kelly's dramatization of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" will be per- formed at the Pioneer Playhouse from July 15 to July 26; the theater is at 840 Stanford Road, Danville, KY 40422 (859-236-2748), and their web-site is I reported earlier (May 03 #1) on the Bookfinder web-site's list of the top ten most-searched-for books in the mystery and thrillers category. One of the books was Agatha Christie's TEN LITTLE ******* (now sold retitled AND THEN THERE WERE NONE), and at least one subscriber to the electronic mail- ing lists to which I post the text of my newsletter encountered a problem reading the newsletter, because his e-mail manager had been set to block automatically (what is now euphemistically called) the "n-word". The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, Washington, DC 20007-4830 (telephone: 202-338-1808) Jul 03 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Scott Monty has reported an exhibition titled "Thomas Gainsborough, 1727- 1788" at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, through Sept. 24, with approxi- mately 100 paintings and drawings. Gainsborough painted the splendid por- trait of Georgina, Duchess of Devonshire, that was stolen by master-crimi- nal Adam Worth, who was called by some "the Napoleon of crime" (and who may have served as an inspiration for Professor Moriarty). The Duchess is men- tioned in the Canon (see "A Case of Identity"), and one of the Ronald How- ard television shows was "The Case of the Haunted Gainsborough". More in- formation is available at . Spotted by Marina Stajic: DICTIONARY OF THEORIES, edited by Jennifer Both- amley (first published by Gale Research in 1993, and reprinted by Visible Ink Press in 2002); with an entry for "dynamics of an asteroid" (written by John Bowers), which says (in part): "initiated by C. F. Gauss (1777-1855), but reputed to have had its outstanding exposition in an elusive textbook by James Moriarty (c1840-1891)." The August issue of Realm: The Magazine of Britain's History and Country- side has Sarah Matthews' four-page article about Conan Doyle ("A Knight for Mystery"); much of the article is illustrations, and they including a full- color reproduction of a portrait of Conan Doyle painted by Henry L. Gates in 1923. $6.50 ($39.00 a year for six issues), from Box 215, Landisburg, PA 17040 (800-998-0807) . SHERLOCK has a new publisher: Mark Coleman (Atlas Publishing), who has pur- chased the magazine from Peter Harkness; David Stuart Davies will continue as editor. Issue #55 has A. L. Blake's article on "Sherlock Holmes & the Vampire Connection", Gavin Collinson's discussion of the Michael Caine/Ben Kingsley "Without a Clue", M. J. Elliott's pastiche "The Adventure of the Mocking Huntsman", and other coverage of crime fiction. SHERLOCK appears every two months, and it costs L23.70 (to the U.K.) a year (L26.00 to Eu- rope/$40.00 elsewhere); Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hamp- shire BH25 6QJ, England . Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) , is their American agent; credit-card orders welcome at both addresses. "Shanghai Knights" (in theaters earlier this year) has been released on DVD ($22.99) and videocassette ($17.99); the film stars Jim Fisher as Det. Art- ie Doyle (aka Arthur Conan Doyle), and the DVD includes out-takes and such. Spotted by Ken Lanza: a story by Neal Jones in the New Haven Register (July 7) about plans by archeologists to investigate the remains of William Gill- ette's houseboat Aunt Polly (which sank on its moorings after a fire in De- cember 1932). The Aunt Polly was a yacht, built for Gillette and launched around 1900, and he was sailing on the Connecticut River when he first saw the site where he eventually built his home (now Gillette Castle); he lived aboard the yacht during the five years it took to build the castle, and he then had the 100-foot yacht turned into a 144-foot houseboat. The wreck of the Aunt Polly was named an underwater archeological preserve by the Conn- ecticut Historical Commission in May, and a team of archeologists will de- velop a booklet about the boat and mount a plaque near the site. Jul 03 #2 Conan Doyle's THE TRAGEDY OF THE KOROSKO is a grand adventure story, set in Egypt in 1895, but it's also a surprisingly mod- ern novel, according to Tony Robinson in his interesting introduction (and the American distributor of a new edition suggests in a press release that "some of the parallels with today's events are quite startling, including the Frenchman's refusal to go along with the proposed plan of the Americans and the English"). London: Hesperus Press, 2003; 121 pp., L6.99 (distrib- uted here by Trafalgar Square Publishing, $12.00). The East Lynne Theater Company will present its third staged reading (with live piano accompaniment) of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" on Oct. 24 and 25, during a "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" in Cape May, N.J.; the com- pany's phone number is 609-884-5898 . If you've seen The Reduced Shakespeare Company's "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)", or any of its other productions, you'll need not be urged to see their new "All the Great Books (Abridged)"; it was developed at various venues last year, and debuted at the Kennedy Center in Washington on June 10, and it goes next to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and then on tour. The show is literary, irreverent, and hilarious, and of course one of the Great Books is "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (Reed Martin has the deerstalker and calabash in the photo, but Austin Tichenor has them in the current version). . Leonard Koppett died on June 22. He was a sportswriter and author, and his career spanned nearly six decades, in New York and in California, where he was editor of the [Palo Alto] Times Tribune and contributed a general-in- terest column to the paper, and in the 1990s was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. At least three of the columns discussed Sherlock Holmes, and are listed in Ron De Waal's THE UNIVERSAL SHERLOCK HOLMES; Emory Lee notes that Koppett attended (and enjoyed) at least one meeting of The Knights of the Gnomon in the late 1980s. News of John Doubleday, who sculpted statues of Sherlock Holmes in Meirin- gen and in London: Karen Murdock spotted an article in the Essex Chronicle (July 18) reporting that he has been commissioned to sculpt a 30-foot high statue Maldon's Saxon hero Bryhtnoth, who died in battle defending Maldon against the Vikings more than 1.000 ago. Doubleday, who was born in Mal- don, said, "It will be a genuine landmark and people will see it when they come in from the sea." And Don Grant, in his article on "Clubbing: In Praise of Art and Alcohol" in the Independent on Sunday (July 20), says, "I don't know whether Conan Doyle was a member of the Traveller's Club, upon which the Diogenes Club was said to have been based, but he certainly was a member of the somewhat recherche London Sketch Club, which was founded in 1898 and is still going strong today." The club's studio "had a frieze of silhouettes of all the distinguished members right up to the present day, including Conan Doyle's, and on a red velvet chaise longue in the middle of the room lounged a beau- tiful Spanish life model." Jul 03 #3 Anglofile reports that Richard E. Grant (who has played Sher- lock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, and Stapleton on television) will provide the voice of Doctor Who in a new animated adventure to be released in November on the Internet (on BBCi) to mark the 40th anniversary of "Doc- tor Who". Grant said his interpretation of the Doctor will be "sort of a 'Sherlock Holmes in Space'". The new adventure is written by Paul Cornell, who included Holmes and Watson as characters in the "Doctor Who" novel HAP- PY ENDINGS (Feb 98 #2). Anglofile is a monthly newsletter offering news of British entertainment; Box 33515, Decatur, GA 30033 ($16.00 a year). Syd Goldberg died on July 15. His enthusiasms ranged from World War I to early film stars to Sherlock Holmes, and he was an assiduous collector (he happily noted that he had more than 19,000 items. He bequeathed his coll- ection to the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Spotted by Karen Murdock: "I always watched Sherlock Holmes movies. It's fascinating to deal with people who are smart at something." William Pet- erson (Gil Grissom in "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"), quoted in a pro- file in the Glasgow Evening Times (July 1). Further to the report (Jun 03 #6) that the barony of Baskerville is being offered for sale (for L40,000) by Manorial Auctioneers: before sending them a check, you should visit the web-site of British Feudal Investments; the URL is , and you can read a long discussion ("The frauds of the Manorial Society and who runs it") of what is described as "one of the most ruthless, vindictive, arrogant, and dan- gerous of all business enterprises related to titles in the world." The Manorial Auctioneers catalog reports that the "Baskerville family are still connected to the area and in the 19th century were friends with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He stayed with the family on many occasions and it is from them that he took the name for his famous HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES. It is possible that the castle and its setting provided an inspiration for the gloomy aspect for the bleak house in the novel, which of course was set in Devon." I've corresponded with Robert Smith (managing director of Manorial Auction- eers), and asked how Sir Arthur could have been a regular visitor at a cas- tle that has been only a ruin since the 14th century; he has replied that the elderly lady who now is selling the barony title says that Conan Doyle was a regular visitor to the area, and that he "got the idea for the Bas- kerville name because a branch of Baskervilles had held the castle and bar- ony in the Middle Ages." And (later) that there is a Tudor mansion, known as Pencelli Castle, and "which dates, I understand, from the 16th century and may have foundations and other parts from an earlier period. It is not uncommon in Britain for medieval castles to be abandoned and 'modern' hous- es, of the same name, built on or near the castle site." And that "I can- not be certain, but Sir Arthur may have stayed at this house." Forecast for August: David Pirie's THE NIGHT CALLS (Dec 02 #5 and Jan. 03 #4), in an American edition from St. Martin's Minotaur ($24.95); it's the novel on which the British television series "Murder Rooms: The Dark Begin- nings of Sherlock Holmes" was based. Jul 03 #4 Further to the item (Jun 03 #5) about the auction at Sotheby's, the photograph of Harry Houdini, inscribed to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1920 (estimated at L1,500-2000) sold for L4,560 (including the 20% buyer's premium). the unsmoked cigar with a band reading "Especiales Sir Winston Churchill" (L500-600) and the signed presentation copy of THE NEW REVELATION (L500-700) went unsold. Mike Whelan ("Wiggins" of the Baker Street Irregulars) has announced that the BSI will celebrate their 70th anniversary, and Sherlock Holmes' 150th birthday, on Jan. 16 in New York. John Berendt, author of MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, and the introduction to the Modern Library's 2001 edition of THE ADVENTURES AND MEMOIRS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, will be the Dis- tinguished Speaker at the Williams Club on Jan. 15, and planning continues for the BSI's "Valley of Fear" excursion on Oct. 22-24, 2004. The fourth volume in the BSI's manuscript series will be "The Six Napoleons" (edited by Bill Hyder). Further to the item (Apr 01 #3) about the unveiling of the life-size statue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Brian Pugh reports that a 70-minute color video- cassette of the festivities, with additional footage of Windlesham and oth- er local scenes, is available (in PAL or NTSC formats) for L20.70 or $34.00 postpaid from Brian W. Pugh, 20 Clare Road, Lewes, Sussex BN7 1PN, England; please pay by sterling check (payable to The ACD Memorial Fund) or US curr- ency. "Safe. Friendly. Suspicious. Toronto" is the motto for Bouchercon 2004 in (of course) Toronto on Oct. 7-10, 2004, with Peter Robinson (Canadian guest of honor), Jeremiah Healy (American guest of honor), Lindsey Davis (British guest of honor), and Gary Warren Niebuhr (fan guest of honor); P.O. Box 7, Thornhill, ON L3T 3N1, Canada. Noted by Peter Ashman: there's a web-site for The Proceedings of the Old Bailey in London from 1674 to 1834, and the Proceed- ings from Dec. 1714 to Dec. 1759 are now on-line, for those interested in pre-Sherlockian crime. Our new "Nature of America" sheetlet depicts an autumn tundra scene in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in Alaska, and some of the animals shown on the stamps are mentioned in the Canon: ravens, squirrels, grizzly bears, caribou, and wolves. And there are swans and various lichens shown elsewhere on the sheetlet. Jul 03 #5 Judith Freeman reports that the Baskerville Bash is accepting reservations for its Sherlockian birthday celebration on Jan. 16 at the Manhattan Club in New York; you can send checks (payable to Mari- beau Briggs Shrawder) for $70.00 to P. J. Perry (346 East 87th Street #4-A, New York, NY 10238. And that the exhibition on "Chocolate" at the American Museum of Natural History in New York closes on Aug. 7 (there are tastings at 1:00 pm each weekend in the gift shop); if you need an additional excuse to visit the exhibition, chocolate (well, cocoa) is mentioned in the Canon. "The crown!" exclaimed Reginald Musgrave, when Sherlock Holmes explained that "It is nothing less than the ancient crown of the kings of England." Many Sherlockian scholars believe that it was the original Crown of St. Edward, which was worn by on- ly two kings, James I and Charles I. This is its successor, commissioned for the coronation of Charles II in 1660 and now shown on one of a set of stamps issued by Australia this year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coronation of Eliz- abeth II (thanks to Alan Olding for forwarding a copy of the stamp). According to the Australian Post Bulletin, the Crown of St. Edward is worn only once in the lifetime of each sovereign, during the coronation; at the conclusion of the coronation service at Westminster Abbey, when the monarch retires into St. Edward's Chapel and St. Edward's Edward is replaced by the