Jan 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Those attending this year's birthday festivities in New York enjoyed pleas- ant weather (unless something other than wintry cold was expected), without a sign of the predicted snow and sleet. The first event was an ASH Wednes- day supper at O'Casey's for dedicated enthusiasts, and Thursday's featured the Christopher Morley Walk led by Jim Cox, a rendezvous with other Morley enthusiasts at McSorley's for lunch, and the Baker Street Irregulars' Dis- tinguished Speaker, John Berendt, who entertained his audience at the Will- iams Club with witty and intriguing tales about and from his next book. Friday began with an informal Mrs. Hudson Breakfast at the Hotel Algonquin, and more than 140 people attended the William Gillette Luncheon at Moran's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant, where the Friends of Bogie's (Sarah Montague, Andrew Joffe, Paul Singleton, and Elyse Locurto) performed their Sherlock- ian version of "The Miracle of Birth". And that afternoon Otto Penzler's open house at the Mysterious Bookshop provided the usual opportunities to browse and buy. There were more than 170 on hand for the annual dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars at the Union League Club, where Julie Rosenblatt delivered the cocktail-party toast to the Woman: Martha McCormack, who acknowledged the toast with revelations about Irene Adler, and left to dine at the Algonquin with others who have been the Woman. The dinner agenda included the usual toasts and traditions, the Friends of Bogie's with an entertaining view of baby Sherlock and his family (with Thierry Saint-Joanis as Grandmere Vernet and John Baesch as young Mycroft), and Ray Betzner's toast to Old Irregular Edward J. Van Liere. The dinner concluded with Sherry Rose-Bond's reading of Bev Wolov's poem to "The Woman". Mike Whelan (the BSI's "Wiggins") announced the Birthday Honours: Irregular Shillings and Investitures to Gideon Hill ("Jack Prendergast"), Doug Wrigg- lesworth ("The Retired Colourman"), Michael Ross ("Von Bork"), Bernard Oud- in ("Our French Gold"), Francine Kitts ("Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope"), Nich- olas Meyer ("A Fine Morocco Case"), and Costa Rossakis ("St. Bartholomew's Hospital"); and the Two-Shilling Award (presented "for extraordinary devo- tion to the cause beyond the call of duty") to Paul Herbert. And (in the "my blushes" department) I received the Dr. John H. Watson Afghan Campaign Desk ("with grateful appreciation of the many contributions as society sec- retary, Sherlockian ambassador, and record keeper extraordinaire". Mike also reported on the creation of The Baker Street Irregulars' Archives at the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Archives will be admin- istered by The Baker Street Irregulars Trust. Additional details will be forthcoming during 2004 about how Sherlockians will be able to support this important archives with BSI archival material and cash contributions. There were more than 80 people on hand for the Baskerville Bash at the Man- hattan Club, enjoying Victorian (and Canonical) music hall. Audrey Epstein researched the music and songs, and provided the piano accompaniment, and there were performances by characters who included Kitty Winter (aka Elyse Locurto) singing "She Was Poor But She Was Honest" and Isadora Klein (aka Susan Dahlinger) singing Stephen Sondheim's "I Never Do Anything Twice". Jan 04 #2 And for those not quite ready for bed, Paul Singleton presided over a brew-hall get-together at midnight at St. Andrew's, con- veniently on 44th Street not far from the Algonquin, with about 40 people present to sample the many varieties of beer available. On Saturday morning the dealers room at the Algonquin was as usual crowded with sellers and buyers, and at 12:30 The Clients of Adrian Mulliner (devo- tees of the works of both Watson and Wodehouse) assembled for their Junior Bloodstain, which featured a reading of a Marilyn MacGregor's dramatization of Robert L. Fish's parody "The Adventure of the Odd Lotteries". The BSI's Saturday-afternoon cocktail party attracted more than 220 people to the National Arts Club, where Mary Ann Bradley introduced ladies who have been honored as the Woman over the years, and Al and Betsy Rosenblatt reported in verse on the events of the previous year and the previous even- ing. Andy Solberg and Don Pollock shared honors as the winners of the Mor- ley-Montgomery Award (attractive certificates and checks for $250 each) for the best contribution to The Baker Street Journal last year (their article, as by D. K. Andrews, M.D., on Sigmund Freud, in the autumn issue). And the Dr. John H. Watson Fund benefited from the raffle of Jean-Pierre Cagnat's original artwork showing Holmes and Watson in a Turkish bath, and from en- thusiastic bidders in the traditional auction. The Watson Fund (administered by a carefully anonymous Dr. Watson) offers financial assistance to all Sherlockians (membership in the BSI is not re- quired) who might otherwise not be able to participate in the birthday fes- tivities. The generous donors to this year's auction included Jean Upton (original artwork for a Sherlockian advertisement in Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine), Dorothy Stix (an animation cel from "Snooper and Blab- ber" that shows Snooper in silhouette in Sherlockian costume), Mel Ruiz (a hand-painting cigar-store sculpture of Sherlock Holmes), and Ken Lanza (a handsome reproduction of one of Jean-Baptiste Greuze's paintings of a young woman). On Sunday about 45 locals and visiting long-weekenders gathered at the Bak- er Street Restaurant for a brunch arranged by the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes. And now for next year: for those who wish to plan ahead, the next birthday dinners will be held on Friday, Jan. 7, 2005. If you've been con- sidering participating in the BSI weekend in the Valley of Fear on Oct. 22- 24, 2004, there's no room at the inn (or perhaps in the mine), but there is a waiting list. I've not reported on everything, I hasten to add; if you want more details than I've provided here, there will be much more in The Baker Street Jour- nal, which is published quarterly and costs $24.95 a year ($27.50 outside the U.S.), and checks (credit-card payments accepted from foreign subscrib- ers) should be sent to the BSJ (Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331); there's a web- site at . There's much of interest at the web-site, including an opportunity to read some of the papers that have won a Morley-Montgomery Award for their authors, and to order copies of the BSI's manuscript series (including this year's THE NAPOLEON BUST BUSINESS AGAIN), some volumes in the BSI's archival-history series, and some of the BSJ's Christmas Annuals. Jan 04 #3 New York is not the only place where Sherlock Holmes' birthday is celebrated: The Sherlock Holmes Society of London held its annual dinner on Jan. 10 at the House of Commons, where Simon Brett was the featured guest (speaking on the importance of Conan Doyle and Holmes to all subsequent writers of detective stories), Pam Bruxner was made an honorary member of the Society, and Richard Lancelyn Green received the first Tony Howlett Award (a maquette of John Doubleday's London statue of Holmes, do- nated by Tony's widow Freda). Japanese publishers continue to offer a wide variety of Sherlockiana: MUR- DER, MY DEAR WATSON (edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Daniel Stashower) has been translated into Japanese by Masamichi Higurashi Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 2003; 400 pp., Y1,800); and he also has translated six stories (Devi/Bruc/RedC/Lady/Dyin/Veil) and written an introduction and ex- planatory notes for a new volume in the MEITANTEI HOLMES children's paper- back series illustrated by Hitoshi Wakana and "Ki" (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2003; 294 pp., Y670). There's also DETECTIVE CONAN: THE PHANTOM OF BAKER STREET in two volumes (Tokyo: Shogakukan, 2002; 208 pp., Y781 each; they're graph- ic-novel adaptations of a film based on the manga comic-book series created by Gosho Aoyama. And GOLGO 13, by Takao Saito (Tokyo: Leed Sha, 2004; 256 pp., Y524) in his series about Duke Togo, a Japanese comics hero who is one of the best snipers in the world; in this volume he is involved in a dis- pute between members of the Baker Street Irregulars over the manuscript of "The Speckled Band". Sara Berger reports that Michael Breuer has built a fine HO-scale model of the SBB/Brunigbahn station in Meiringen, and you can see two views of the model at . HO-scale, for those who have never lived in the world of model railroads, is 1:87 (about seven feet to the inch). Jack French reports that there's a section on "Jane Sherlock of Meet Miss Sherlock" in his new PRIVATE EYELASHES: RADIO'S LADY DETECTIVES, due from BearManor Media in February. "Meet Miss Sherlock" was a 30-minute series about private detective Jane Sherlock that was broadcast by CBS in 1946 and 1947. $18.95 (plus shipping) from BearManor Media, Box 750, Boalsburg, PA 16827 Joan Aiken died on Jan. 4. She wrote more than 100 books over her 50-year career, telling grand tales of mystery and adventure for adults and chil- dren, and won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America for her novel NIGHT FALL (1970); in 1999 she was made a member of the Order of the Brit- ish Empire for her contributions to children's literature. And she wrote the article on Arthur Conan Doyle for Richard Cavendish's MAN, MYTH & MAG- IC: AN ILLUSTRATION ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SUPERNATURAL (1970). The December issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers news from the collections, Julie McKuras' "100 Years Ago" tribute to cartoonist John McCutcheon, and John Bergquist's "50 Years Ago" discussion of A. Car- son ("Deak") Simpson. The newsletter is available from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . Jan 04 #4 1,001 MORE FACTS SOMEBODY SCREWED UP, by Deane Jordan (Atlanta: Longstreet Press, 1997; 138 pp., $7.95), is still in print; it has corrections of three Sherlockian "facts" (one of them is "Dr. Watson, pal of Sherlock Holmes, was not shot in the leg. He was shot in the shoul- der, according to 'A Study in Scarlet'. Later Doyle wrote that Watson was shot in the leg, perhaps because it is an easier affliction to depict."). Colonel Sebastian Moran's Secret Gun Club's annual Mongoose Hunt will take place at the Forest Preserve in Wilmette, Ill, at approximately 9:15 am on Sunday, Feb. 29; no firearms are needed, and there will be a breakfast at 10:30 am at Hackney's Restaurant in Glenview, Ill. The Gun Club meets ev- ery four years, on Leap Day, and Don Izban has offered to lead his infamous walking tour of Graceland Cemetery after the breakfast. Reservations are required, and more information is available from Elliott Black (2511 Wind- sor Lane, Northbrook, IL 60062) Don Pollock has discovered a new source of Sherlockian miniature books: Lee Ann Borgia has created 1/12-scale editions of 14 Canonical stories, and you can them at (go to member-name leeann1948). Her ad- dress is Box 1057, Pennington, NJ 08534 , and she'll be happy to send you a flier in return for a #10 SASE; the stories cost from $10.00 to $25.00, plus shipping. The Christopher Morley Knothole Association's newsletter The Knothole notes two losses in the world of Morley's family and enthusiasts. Blythe Morley Brennan died in mid-2002; she was the daughter of Christopher Morley, and the author (as "Stanley Hopkins, Jr.") of two Morleyan mystery novels, MUR- DER BY INCHES (1943) THE PARCHMENT KEY (1944). And Helen McK. Oakley died in Jan. 2003; she was one of the founding members of the association, and one of its early presidents, and her biography THREE HOURS FOR LUNCH: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHRISTOPHER MORLEY (1976) has a chapter about The Baker Street Irregulars and many other mentions of Sherlock Holmes. The Associa- tion keeps Morley's memory alive on Long Island and elsewhere; membership costs $20.00 a year, and its address is c/o The Bryant Library, Paper Mill Road, Roslyn, NY 11576. The East Lynne Theater Company will present a staged reading (with live pi- ano accompaniment) of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" on Mar. 5 and 6, during a "Sherlock Holmes Weekend" in Cape May, N.J.; the box-office phone number is 609-884-5898 . "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (based on the comic-book mini-ser- ies, with story by Alan Moore) was in theaters last year, with Richard Rox- burgh as M (and there's a Canonical connection), and now it's available on DVD from Twentieth Century-Fox Home Video ($27.98) with extras that include 12 scenes that weren't used in the film. Dinsdale Landen died on Dec. 29. His first appearance as an actor was at school, as the rear end of a pantomime horse, and he went on to a long car- eer on stage, screen, radio, and television. He was Dr. Watson (with Rob- ert Powell as Holmes) in "A Study in Scarlet" on BBC Radio 4 in 1974, and Sherlock Holmes (with John Moffatt as Watson) in Charles Marowitz's "Sher- lock's Last Case" on the BBC World Service in 1987. Jan 04 #5 Further to the item (Dec 03 #1) about the GAME game at Laurie R. King's web-site , the first content has ended; the prizes were signed copies of the first edition and the audio re- cording, and the winners will be announced in February. And there will be a drawing in March (save your sales receipts for THE GAME), with different interesting prizes. "The landscape is a genuine Corot," Thaddeus Sholto said (in "The Sign of the Four"), "and though a connoisseur might perhaps throw a doubt upon that Salvator Rosa, there cannot be the least question about the Bouguereau. I am partial to the modern French school." The Sterling & Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. recently acquired a set of Old Master drawings, including an attractive sheet of studies by Rosa, which will be on display through Feb. 16. The Clark Institute also has two Corots ("The Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome" and "Washerwomen in a Willow Grove") and two Bouguereaus ("Nymphs and Satyrs" and "Seated Nude"), so you have a chance to see all three artists in one museum. Phil Attwell reports that the Queen's New Year's honours list included an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for comed- ian and writer Roy Hudd, who starred as Sherlock Holmes in "The Newly Dis- covered Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" (a six-episode series) on BBC Radio 2 in 1999. Further to the item (May 02 #3) about the publishing firm John Murray hav- ing been sold to Hodder Headline, the current John Murray (there has always been a John Murray running the firm) has offered the Murray archives to the National Library of Scotland at a discount: L33.2 million (about L10 mill- ion less than the archives' assessed value). The archives contain letters and manuscripts from authors that include Lord Byron, Jane Austen, Charles Darwin, David Hume, John Betjeman, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Thanks to Gary Thaden for spotting the story in The Scotsman (Dec. 29). THE ORIENTAL CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Ted Riccardi, published last year at $24.95 (Sep 03 #3), is discounted to $16.95 in the latest catalog from Edward R. Hamilton (Falls Village, CT 06031). And he has a web-site at ; a search for "sherlock" in the title turned up 23 hits. And, speaking of Anna May Wong (Dec 03 #2) there's a new biography by Gra- ham Russell Gao Hodges: ANNA MAY WONG: FROM LAUNDRYMAN'S DAUGHTER TO HOLLY- WOOD LEGEND (New York: Palgrave, 2004; 284 pp., $27.95); with two pages of discussion of the film "A Study in Scarlet" (1933). Carolyn See wrote an interesting (and amusing) review of the book for the Washington Post (Jan. 2); the review should still be available at . Phil Attwell has reported that BBC 7 Digital Radio aired "Sherlock Holmes with Carlton Hobbs" (a series of ten programs dramatized by Michael Hard- wick) in January. The series will repeat in April with new one-minute in- troductions recorded by Nicholas Utechin, who will do the same for a second series later this year. The electronically-enabled can listen to BBC 7 on the Internet, and you can find more information about this from the BBC at . Jan 04 #6 GRAVES GATE, by Dennis Burges (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2003; 419 pp., $25.00), is set in 1922, when Conan Doyle hires an Am- erican journalist to investigate a case that turns into a suspenseful tale of supernatural possession. "Quick, Watson...!" is the interim sales-list from Carolyn and Joel Senter, and it offers a nice variety of news, books, jewelry, audio, mugs, and oth- er Sherlockiana. Classic Specialties is at Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219 (887-233-3823) . "Villains in the Canon" is the title of the 23nd annual Sherlock Holmes/Ar- thur Conan Doyle Symposium, in Dayton on Mar. 14-16; there will be presen- tations, vendors, a quiz, and a reader's theater event. Additional infor- mation is available from Cathy Gill (4661 Hamilton Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45223) . Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has continued its long tradition of honor- ing Sherlock Holmes' birthday: the February issue has a new parody by Arth- ur Porges ("Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot"), Jon L. Breen's Sher- lockian book reviews, and a tribute by editor Janet Hutchings. Communication (the newsletter of The Pleasant Places of Florida) continues to offer amusing and timely news; the year-end issue offered some interest- ing recommendations for "eleventh hour shopping" such as "Asteroids by the Dozen" (large or small, spinning clockwise or counterclockwise: the perfect gift for your physics or mathematics professor). $12.00 a year ($13.00 ov- erseas) for membership, including a subscription, from Carl Heifetz, 1220 Winding Willow Drive, New Port Richey, FL 34655; if you want just the one issue, that's $2.00 postpaid. There's a new society (with a new pin): Scott Monty is Head- Light of The Beacon Society ("supporting educational experien- ces that introduce young people to the Canon and recognizing exemplary efforts that do so"); they held their annual meeting during the birthday festivities, and the pin is offered in re- turn for a contribution of $10.00, which you can send to Scott (1836 Columbia Road, Boston, MA 02127) . THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA, by Daniel Gracely (Pitman: Grandma's Attic Press, 2001; 117 pp., $13.95); another pastiche "from the lost cases of Sherlock Holmes," notable for some Paget illustrations photo-shopped to match scenes in the story. MURDER AT THE CHESSBOARD, edited by P. T. Houdunitz, published by Sterling in 2001, has been reprinted by Barnes & Noble ($8.95); it's an anthology of 43 "whodunit puzzlers" that includes ten Sherlockian puzzles by Tom Bulli- more that appeared in his books in the 1990s. GOOD FOR THE CAUSE: SHERLOCKIANS IN THE NEWSPAPERS, by Karen Murdock, is an interesting review of often erroneous newspaper and magazine articles about Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockian societies; the 20-page pamphlet (Occasional Paper Number 4 from The Bootmakers of Toronto) is available from the author (1212 Yale Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414) for US $7.00 postpaid. Jan 04 #7 The comic-book series RUSE ended its run with issue #26 (Jan. 2004; $2.95), and there was a Sherlockian cover on issue #25 (Dec. 2003). And there's a second issue of ARCHARD'S AGENTS (Nov. 2003). According to the series publisher (CrossGen), RUSE is "Victorian mystery with a fantastic edge"; see their web-site at . One of the more interesting souvenirs published for the birthday festivi- ties was the "Christmas Annual 2003" edited by John Bergquist for the Nor- wegian Explorers of Minnesota; the contents include Andrew Malec's article about the Frederic Dorr Steele illustrations for the Limited Editions Club edition of the Canon, and the story is a fascinating one: some of the art- work was recycled from non-Sherlockian stories (now identified), and that's only part of the intriguing history of Steele's work. A few copies of the 62-page pamphlet are available from John Bergquist, 3665 Ashbury Road, Eag- an, MN 55122; $10.00 postpaid (checks payable to the society, please). Another of the interesting souvenirs distributed during the birthday week- end was the first issue of Canonier's Household Number for Christmas, pub- lished by The Dark Lantern League; the 32-page collection of articles writ- ten by Horace Harker, Violet Hunter, Mrs. Hudson, and others, is available (free) from Brad Keefauver (4009 North Chelsea Place, Peoria, IL 61614). The winter issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has another installment in its continuing series of reports on other libraries' special collections: Elizabeth Chenault's discussion of the University of North Carolina's holding, which include two collections of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockiana, and the Barzun-Taylor Mystery-Detective Collection. Plus the usual news from and about the Conan Doyle collection in Toronto. Cop- ies are available from Doug Wrigglesworth (16 Sunset Street, Holland Land- ing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada) . Bob Keeshan died on Jan. 23. He began his on-screen television career as Clarabell the Clown on the "Howdy Doody Show" and went on to star as Cap- tain Kangaroo on the long-running children's series that began in 1955 and continued for decades on CBS-TV. There was a report in 1980 that "Captain Kangaroo" frequently had skits involved a sleuth named Sherlock House and his cohort Dr. Whatsup; are there any recordings of the skits out there? And a few commercials: a 16-page list of the Investitured Irregulars, the Two-Shilling Awards, the Women, and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes costs $1.25 postpaid. An 81-page list of 826 Sherlockian societies, with names and addresses for contacts for 439 active societies, is $4.70 post- paid. A run of address labels for 359 individual contacts (recommended to avoid duplicate mailings to those who are contacts for more than one soci- ety) costs $10.55 postpaid (checks payable to Peter E. Blau, please). The list of irregulars and others also is available from me by e-mail (no charge), and both lists are available at Willis G. Frick's "Sherlocktron" home page at . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Feb 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The fourth volume in The Baker Street Irregulars Manuscript Series is "THE NAPOLEON BUST BUSINESS AGAIN", edited and with an introduction by William Hyder, offering a facsimile and transcript of the manuscript of "The Adven- ture of the Six Napoleons", and discussion of the manuscript, some of the dramatizations of the story, Conan Doyle's investment in a machine designed to create multiple copies of sculptures, the Borgias and black pearls, Vic- torian journalism, Italians in Victorian London, all by knowledgeable Sher- lockian scholars. The cost is $35.00 plus shipping ($8.00 or $9.50 outside North America) from The Baker Street Irregulars, Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada . "'The Strength and Activity of Youth': The Junior Sherlockian Movement" is the title of The Baker Street Journal's 2003 Christmas Annual, and it off- ers a delightful review of what the junior Sherlockians were up to and into in the 1960s and 1970s. It's edited by Steve Clarkson, who has assembled a fine roster of now-somewhat-older Sherlockians who have contributed remini- scences (and some ancient photographs) from their early days. $11.00 post- paid to the United States (by check) or $12.00 elsewhere (by check or cred- it card); and you can also order from the BSJ web-site (see above). Reported: SHERLOCK HOLMES: SOME UNPUBLISHED CASES, by Robert A. Kisch (from the Institution of Diagnostic Engineers, 7 Wier Road, Kibworth, Leicester LE8 0LQ, England) ; L9.99 plus shipping. "Was Sherlock Holmes a diagnostic engineer?" their web-site asks. The sixth volume of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY is THE SIGN OF FOUR, with a delightful introduction by Bernard Davies, who offers an essay that is both personal and scholarly (Indianapolis: Gasogene Books, 2004; 121 pp., $19.95); as in previous volumes, the annotations and appendices are based on Sherlockian scholarship both old and new. The book costs $22.70 postpaid (or $25.70 outside the U.S.) from the publisher (Box 68308, Indianapolis, IN 46260). "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" (the interactive exhibit with much Victorian flavor, and a mystery that visitors can solve) is now at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque, through May 9 (505-841-2800) . Peter B. Spivak died on Dec. 8. He served as first chairman and first com- missioner of the U.S. Football League and was an owner of 1983 USFL champi- ion Michigan Panthers, and he was elected twice to the Third Judicial Cir- cuit Court of Michigan, and he was an active and enthusiastic member of The Amateur Mendicants of Detroit. Chris Redmond (523 Westfield Drive, Waterloo, ON N2T 2E1, Canada) has off- ered copies of his "Sherlock Holmes Reference Card" (1982); it's a conven- ient bookmark-size list of the stories, Christ's four-letter abbreviations, the first publication dates, and the page numbers in THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES. Also "The Mysterious Affair at Great Orme Street" (1988); it's an entertaining essay examining the affair of Mr. Fairdale Hobbs. Send Chris $1.00 in currency and let him know (either or both) what you need. Feb 04 #2 THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN, VOL. II (Wildstorm/Amer- ica's Best Comics, $24.95) is a collection of the six issues of the comic-book mini-series, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. There's no appearance by "M" (nor anything else Sherlockian), but plenty of Victorian atmosphere and Martian aliens and literary allusions. Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (Mar 03 #1) is one of five books nominated for an Edgar for Best Fact Crime. The winners will be announced at the Mystery Writers of America annual dinner in New York on Apr. 29. Issue #58 of SHERLOCK has its usual coverage of crime fiction (Sherlockian and otherwise), including Alan Perry's comparison of Harry Potter and Sher- lock Holmes ("Harry Potter: Wizard Detective") and the second part of Rob- ert Sanderson's commentary on Sherlockian fantasy ("Planetary, My Dear Wat- son"). SHERLOCK is published bimonthly, and subscriptions cost L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . And you can order from the magazine's American agent: Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) ; credit-card orders are welcome at both addresses, and back issues are available. SHERLOCK also has a full page advertisement from Martin Breese, offering to sell Breese Books to potential Sherlockian publishers. Additional informa- tion is available from Martin (10 Hanover Crescent, Brighton, East Sussex BN2 9SB, England) . MADAME BOVARY, C'EST MOI, by Andre Bernard (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003; 128 pp., $19.95), discusses "the great characters in literature and where they came from," and (of course) Sherlock Holmes is included. Christopher and Barbara Roden have added three new titles to list of Sher- lockiana published by their Calabash Press (Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada) . The oldest, and perhaps most unusual, item is THE QUESTIONABLE PARENTAGE OF BASIL GRANT, by R. Bostoun Cromer, originally published in The Monthly Review (July 1905) and now re- printed as a 27-page pamphlet with an introduction by Jack Adrian. It's a wide-ranging literary parody, written by D. K. Broster and M. Croom Brown and published under a pseudonym, and Andrew Lang, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rob- ert Louis Stevenson, and G. K. Chesterton are only a few of the authors who works are parodied. CA$10.00/US$7.50/L5.00 plus postage. Barbara Roden's 'I AM INCLINED TO THINK...': MUSINGS ON SHERLOCK HOLMES AND ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE is a collection of essays published from 1988 to 2001 in S'ian and D'ean periodicals, on topics that range from Saucy Jack to Oliver Onions to "The Captain of the Pole-Star". CA$13.00/US$10.00/L7.50. And VIOLETS & VITRIOL: ESSAYS ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES AND CONAN DOYLE, edited by Susan Dahlinger, is an imaginative tribute to the role of women in the Sherlockian world, from 1903, when an editor of The Bookman first used the word "Sherlockian" (describing a lady who had written a letter commenting on Carolyn Wells) to current scholarship. All the authors are women, from many nations and continents; some of the articles are reprints, but most of them are new, and all are interesting. CA$30.00/US$23.00/L15.00. Feb 04 #3 Mollie Hardwick died on Dec. 13. She joined the BBC as a radio announcer in 1940 and in 1946 moved to their drama department, where she met and married Michael Hardwick. Mollie wrote mysteries, novel- izations of television classics such as "Upstairs, Downstairs", THE WORLD OF UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, and Sherlockian poems; and with her husband wrote a 30-minute radio program ("The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes") about Sir Ar- thur Conan Doyle for the BBC in 1963 and dramatized some of the Peter Cush- ing "Sherlock Holmes" shows broadcast by BBC-1 in 1968. Undershaw, the home that Conan Doyle built in Hindhead in Surrey, is now a hotel and restaurant, and the Independent's restaurant critic Richard John- son has reported (Feb. 7) on a recent visit: the food was enjoyable and in- expensive (about L30 for two without drinks) and the atmosphere pleasant, although there's little left in the house from Sir Arthur's times. The Ob- server's restaurant critic Jay Raynor reviewed the restaurant earlier (Jan. 25) and recommended it, describing the house as a "huge lump of Victorian Gothic." Johnson called it an "Arts and Crafts house, built of red brick and tile." One wonders about Victorian Gothics enjoying Arts and Crafts. The U.S. Postal Service has continued its "Chinese New Year" series, honoring the Year of the Monkey, and the Canon has many mentions of monkeys; one of them is "It was the monkey, not the Professor, whom Roy attacked, just as it was the monkey who teased Roy." ("The Adven- ture of the Creeping Man"). Further to the report (Mar 03 #6) on plans for a film starring Malcolm Mc- Dowell as Holmes and Christopher Lee as Moriarty, the planners are still at work planning: Randall Stock spotted an interview in the Toronto Star (Jan. 30) with McDowell, who was in Toronto for its international film festival. "I'm supposed to be doing Sherlock Holmes to his Moriarty. But he can't do it now, because of this 'Star Wars' thing he's doing." McDowell then imi- tated Lee's formal British accent: "I kahnt do it now, we'll have to do it next year. When will you be free? We want you to do it." The Modern Library has published THE LOST WORLD (2003, 227 pp., $8.95) with an introduction by Michael Crichton and notes by Julia Houston. It's taken almost ten years since Crichton's own THE LOST WORLD was published, for him to comment at length on Conan Doyle's book, and the commentary is insight- ful and interesting. "Conan Doyle did something far more influential than invent a character," Crichton suggests, "he invented a particular kind of fantasy story, and demonstrated a successful way to tell it." Cator Court, one of the many candidates as the inspiration of the original of Baskerville Hall, is for sale. Russ Mann spotted a notice in the [Ply- mouth] Western Morning News (Feb. 14), describing the house as having three reception rooms, a conservatory, a study, four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a two-bedroom cottage wing, mature gardens, landscaped grounds, two paddocks, and stabling, on 12 acres; the agents are quoting a "guide price in the re- gion of L1.2 million. Cator Court is located in Widecombe, in Dartmoor Na- tional Park, and it was Bernard Davies who identifies it as a Baskerville Hall contender in "Radical Rethinks on Hound and Horse" (the guidebook for the Sherlock Holmes Society of London's expedition to Dartmoor in 2002). Feb 04 #4 "Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini: A Spirited Friendship" is the title of Daniel Stashower's talk at the Library of Congress in Washington on Mar. 17 at 12:10 pm in the Madison Building (room LMG-45 on the ground floor); the talk will be presented by the Library of Congress' Professional Association's "What If... Science Fiction & Fantasy Forum" and copies of Dan's TELLER OF TALES and THE FLOATING LADY MURDER will be avail- able for purchase. And of course he will be happy to sign his books. "Sherlock and Shaw: The Adventure of the Missing Vampire Diaries" is a new play by Audrey Hampton, scheduled at the Gorilla Theatre in Tampa, Mar. 4- 21. According to a story in Playbill , spotted by Pat Ward, the play is set in London in the 1880s, and producer William Terriss has been murdered outside the stage door of the Lyceum Theatre [that really happened]. "The blood has been drained out of him. . . . Henry Irving's business partner, Bram Stoker, had given Terriss a copy of his manuscript 'Vampire Diaries', and now the papers have disappeared. . . . George Ber- nard Shaw hires master sleuth Sherlock Holmes to track down the sanguinary killer." The theater is at 4419 North Hubert Avenue, Tampa, FL 33614 (813- 879-2914) . Arnie Matanky died on Jan. 5. He began his career in journalism in 1947 at the Chicago Sun, and in 1956 founded the Near North News, which he edited and published for more than 40 years. He was an enthusiastic member of the Sherlockian world in Chicago, and a philatelist who delighted in his coll- ection of stamps showing people and places mentioned in the Canon, and of course made sure his newspaper reported often on Sherlock Holmes and Sher- lockians. Pat Ward spotted a report by Peter Filichia at on Feb. 16 that offers some nice background information on the musical "Baker Street" (1965), and an explanation of why there is no CD of the original- cast album: Decca Broadway, which now owns the MGM catalog, can't find the original contracts, and company lawyers are worried about being sued. Welcome news for Jeremy Brett fans: Warner Home Video has issued a two-DVD set of "My Fair Lady" ($26.00) with a new high-definition transfer from the 1994 restoration; the added-value material includes the documentary "More Loverly Than Ever: The Making of 'My Fair Lady'" narrated by Brett, and the recently discovered test sequences of Audrey Hepburn singing "Wouldn't It Be Loverly" and "Show Me" (Marnie Nixon dubbed Hepburn's songs in the final version of the film). Alas, there was no similar discovery of tests with Brett doing his own singing (it was in the documentary that Brett first ad- mitted that he was dubbed by Bill Shirley). Reported: RAFFLES: THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN, by E. W. Hornung, with an intro- duction by Richard Lancelyn Green (London: Penguin Classics, 2003, 240 pp., L7.99); Richard's introduction includes discussion of the stories literary context, and the relationship between Raffles and Holmes. Bjarne Nielsen's Sherlock Holmes Museet Antikvariatet is open again, at a new address (Egebjergvej 206, 4500 Nykoebing Sj., Denmark), and he has sent a new catalog of Sherlockian books (his last, since he has decided to move his business to his web-site) . Feb 04 #5 "Thank you for the card about THE EYE OF OSIRIS. I don't want any book I can't put on my bookshelves that is not equal in ap- pearance to the COMPLETE SHERLOCK HOLMES you sent." From a letter from the writer (and collector) Raymond Chandler to a bookdealer in 1949, advertised ten years ago by Kenneth W. Rendell for $3,500. The winter 2004 issue of the Tonga Times offers a rare one-on-one interview with Tonga, news from the world of miniatures, and a colorful photograph of Nancy Garces' model of the reconstruction of the sitting-room at the Chƒt- eau de Lucens in Switzerland. Membership in the society includes the news- letter, and the cost is $10.50 a year (or $11.50 to Canada or $13.50 else- where) from Trish and Jay Pearlman (1656 East 19th Street #2-E, Brooklyn, NY 11229) . Paul Robeson has been honored on the new stamp in the U.S. Pos- tal Service's "Black Heritage" series, and yes, there's a Sher- lockian connection for Paul Robeson, reported by Jim Vogelsang: in the British film "The Big Fella" (1937), Robeson (as Joe) is asked by the police to help find a missing boy, and when he ex- plains this to a friend, his companion replies, "Mr. Joe blink- in' Sherlock, head of the lost kid department." One of the more interesting things that Sherlockian societies do is engage in a bit of propaganda, and a fine way to explain to people how much fun is to be found in the sometimes strange world of Sherlock Holmes and Sherlockians is to present programs at local libraries; members of Watson's Tin Box will do that on Mar. 25 (from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm) in the Miller Branch Library in Ellicott City, Md. (charac- ters from the Canon will appear to share some experiences with and opinions about Sherlock Holmes). The library's telephone number is 410-313-1950 (in case you need directions). Sherlock Holmes appears in "Humpty Dumpty: Did He Fall? Or Was He Pushed?" in Victor G. Ambrus' DRACULA'S BEDTIME STORYBOOK (Oxford University Press, 1982), one of two books collected as DRACULA'S OMNIBUS (1983); Ambrus has written and illustrated his own version of the saga, with great humor and delightfully grotesque artwork. "Concerning the Spiritual in Photography" is an exhibit at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University through Mar. 14, displaying contempor- ary art and historical spirit photographs and ephemera from the Harry Ran- som Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas (Austin), includ- ing photographs of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini and the Boston med- ium Mina (Margery) Crandon). Thanks to Randall Stock for spotting a report on the exhibit; the Center is located at 832 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston (617-875-0600) . Gideon Hill has noted the web-site promotion for the 2004 edition of Whita- ker's Almanack : "Published annually in Brit- ain since 1868, Whitaker's Alamanck is the ultimate single-volume reference source. Such is its reputation that a copy of the 1878 edition was includ- ed in the time capsule beneath Cleopatra's Needle, and Sherlock Holmes used it when decipering a code in *The Valley of Fear*." Feb 04 #6 Harry Bartell died on Feb. 26. He acted on stage, screen, rad- io, and television (he worked on 185 radio series and 77 tele- vision series), and he was the genial announcer for "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) in the 1945-46 sea- son. He also provided interesting commentary for the audiocassette series produced by Ken Greenwald and distributed by Simon and Schuster from 1988 to 1994, and he wrote a delightful series of columns for an old-time radio web-site ; click on "On Auditions" to read his story about how he auditioned for the Sherlock Holmes series. Beaten's Christmas Annual has been published for 21 years by The Sound of the Baskervilles (the Sherlockian society in Seattle), and the latest issue includes warm tributes to long-time member Frank Darlington, and other mat- erial by the society's members. The 45-page booklet is available from Dav- id Haugen, 3606 Harborcrest Court NW, Gig Harbor, WA 98332; $5.00 postpaid ($6.00 outside the United States). The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes began publishing a newsletter in 1975, and it quickly involved into the journal The Serpentine Muse, which contin- ues to offer news about the ASH as toasts and presentations at the dinners, and papers submitted to the Muse. And now Susan Z. Diamond and Marilynne McKay have edited an anthology, SERPENTINE MUSE-INGS (Indianapolis: Gaso- gene Books, 2004; 163 pp., $19.95), that offers a fine and nicely decorated look at what the ASH (and their friends) have been up to. It's available from the publisher (Box 68303, Indianapolis, IN 46268); $23.70 postpaid (to the U.S.), $25.70 (elsewhere). If you want to know more about the Adven- turesses, their web-site is at . Maurice F. Neville's collection will be sold at auction at Sotheby's in New York in two parts, on Apr. 13 and Nov. 16. And it's a fine collection in- deed (Neville is a book dealer as well as a collector): the highlights in- clude the first 40 pages (in two exercise books) of the manuscript of "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" (the last two pages, in a third exercise book, are owned by another collector); and the original artwork for Sidney Paget's illustration of Holmes and Moriarty grappling at the Reichenbach. The manuscript is estimated at $150,000-200,000 and the artwork at $50,000- 75,000 (the two Sherlockian items will be in the second sale on Nov. 16). The catalog's not yet up at the web-site, but other items include a nine- page letter from Charles Dickens to Washington Irving, and Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA inscribed to Spencer Tracy. Sotheby's is at 1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 . Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel THE AMAZING ADVEN- TURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY (Apr 01 #3), was ten years old when he wrote, try- ing for Conan Doyle's style, a story about Sherlock Holmes meeting Captain Nemo. And now he has written an intriguing mystery story ("The Final Solu- tion"), set on the Sussex Downs and in London in the summer of 1944, that features an aged beekeeper detective; it was published in The Paris Review (summer 2003), and it will be included in his TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINA- TION, forthcoming from Fourth Estate. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Mar 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Russ Mann spotted the story in Newsday (Mar. 6), about a foolish gunman who attempted to rob a man who was visiting his mother in the East Village; the intended victim was a federal agent who works for the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and who pulled out his wallet with one hand and his weapon with the other hand. The robber, critically hurt but expected to survive, has three prior convictions and served time for each one; he was paroled in Oc- tober after serving six and a half years for weapons possession. When he began serving his most recent sentence he told prison authorities his name was Sherlock Holmes. The Parallel Case of St. Louis will hold its second "Holmes Under the Arch" symposium on May 20-22, 2005; their first symposium took place in 1999, and it was quite successful. Their mailing list is maintained by Barbara Ros- coe (7101 Mardel, St. Louis, MO 63109) . Tom Dunn is the editor and publisher of The Pipe Smoker's Ephemeris, an ir- regular quarterly published for The Universal Coterie of Pipe Smokers, and of course the Coterie has many Sherlockian members. The latest issue (win- ter-spring 2004) includes a report on Dunhill's decision to resume produc- tion (in 2003) of their oversized "magnum" briers for the first time since 1939. Dunhill's press release noted that one of the earliest examples of such an oversized pipe is a shell-finish classically-shaped bent billiard that was fitted with a sterling silver band engraved for a 1921 presenta- tion to H. A. Saintsbury, celebrating his 1,200th performance as Sherlock Holmes. The pipe was eventually owned by Stanley MacKenzie, and was in his collection when it was sold at auction in 1995. The current issue of the Ephemeris is the 40th, with 116 pages; Tom's address is 2037 120th Street, College Point, NY 11356. "The Cottingley Fairies Dupe Sir Arthur Conan Doyle" is the cover blurb on the May issue of British Heritage, promoting Bruce Heydt's article "The Ad- venture of the Cottingley Fairies". $5.99; 741 Miller Drive SE #D-2, Lees- burg, VA 20175 . THE PARTIAL ART OF DETECTION, edited by Balaji Narasimhan (Tokyo: Shoso-in Press, 2003; 32 pp., $8.00), offers 235 quotes from the Canon, identified by story and indexed for subjects from "alternative" to "wrong"; the author is a journalist in India and an active Sherlockian, and this is his interim attempt at creating Sherlock Holmes' THE WHOLE ART OF DETECTION. Available from Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (887-233-3823) . It was Steve Clarkson who first reported (in The Passengers' Log, published by The Sydney Passengers) in 1998 on Sherlock Homes, a then-new residential development in southeastern Carroll County, Maryland. The development now is called Sherlock Holmes Estates, and the residents live in rather expens- ive (upper six figures) houses on Conan Doyle Road, Elementary Drive, Wat- son Court, Hudson Drive, Sherlock Holmes Street, Baskerville Drive, Mycroft Street, and Silver Blaze Drive. The development is in Sykesville, and you can find the streets easily using . There's also a Sher- lock Homes Estates in West London . Mar 04 #2 The Red Circle of Washington keeps a careful watch for politic- ians who are familiar with the Master Detective's abilities. A story in The Hill (Feb. 11), reports that Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), a former prosecutor whose resume includes both the Warren Commission and the Water-gate investigation, has his own ideas about who sent ricin to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-Tenn.) office last week and who mailed an- thrax-laced letters to then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks. "I think it was the same guy," he said. "I see him as a potential serial offender. Now he's going after Frist, so there's a pattern." But after floating his theory, Specter seemed to make light of his own gumshoe abilities. "They put Sherlock and me on the case, we'll solve it in a matter of ten days," he said. "Manga" are the graphic novels that have been popular in Japan for many years, and they're now becoming popular here in English transla- tions. Ratana Ngin has noted THE KINDAICHI CASE FILES: THE MUMMY'S CURSE, with story by Yozaburo Kanari and art by Fumiya Sato (Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP, 2003; 252 pp., $9.99); the Sherlockian frontispiece is unrelated to the story, but a good example of the manga style. The publisher's web-site offers a good look at manga series. Further to the report (Sep 03 #8) on MCLEVY: THE EDINBURGH DETECTIVE (2001) and MCLEVY RE- TURNS: FURTHER DISCLOSURES OF THE EDINBURGH DETECTIVE (2002), there's a companion volume: THE MCGOVAN CASEBOOK: EXPERIENCES OF A DETEC- TIVE IN VICTORIAN EDINBURGH, by James McGovan [a pseudonym used by William Crawford Honey- man] (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 2003; 198 pp., L9.99); the McGovan memoirs, published from 1878 to 1884 to great acclaim, may well have been read by Conan Doyle during his years as a student in Edinburgh. Paul Winfield died on Mar. 7. He launched his acting career as a contract player at Columbia Pictures in 1966, and went on to award-winning roles on stage and in films and television, and was nominated for an Oscar for his work in "Sounder" (1972). He participated in a reading of "Sherlock Holmes and the Hands of Othello" (1987) in Los Angeles in 1999, and according to playwright Alex Simmons, Winfield "did a sterling and dignified performance as the ghost of Ira Aldridge (a real-life 'Negro tragedian' actor from the 1880s)." Fans of Michael Kurland's Moriarty pastiche THE GREAT GAME (2001) who have been waiting impatiently for the sequel THE EMPRESS OF INDIA, Michael re- ports that it "is being finished even now," and that his second anthology SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HIDDEN YEARS is scheduled late this year from St. Mar- tin's Press, with stories by Dick Lupoff, Bill Pronzini, Peter Beagle, and others. He has a web-site at . Mar 04 #3 Jim Hillestad runs The Toy Soldier (1343 Paradise Falls, Cres- co, PA 19326 ; it's both a shop and a museum, and he has many dioramas and other displays (and of course Holmes and Watson are on display, and for sale). His newest diorama is "The Ad- venture of Repulse Bay" (60" x 30") featuring a 50" battleship "Britannia" docked in Hong Kong Harbor; "On board are Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, who have come to foil the opium dealings of Professor Moriarty--you can see him lurking in the shadows of the crowded streets." And crowded they are: there are more than 200 figures (including Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty). Mike Berdan has reported on his visit to Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Conn.: the park is devoted to displays of dinosaur footprints (no one has found anything other than footprints in the Connecticut Valley), and one of the signs states: "There is no branch of detective science so important and so neglected as the art of tracing footsteps." The quote is attributed to A. Conan Doyle 1891/Study in Scarlet. DISNEY ANIMATION: THE ILLUSION OF LIFE, by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston (New York: Abbeville Press, 1981), is a fascinating book (written by two of Disney's original "nine old men"); it's a coffee-table volume with 575 pag- es and 489 full-color plates, and although it was published too early for a discussion of "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986), it does offer some infor- mation for fans of Basil Rathbone: when "The Jungle Book" was being devel- oped, they decided that Shere Khan should be an aristocratic, regal monarch "reminiscent of Basil Rathbone." But when the time came to record a voice, "we felt that the intellectual refinement in a voice like Rathbone's would no longer be quite right," and "found the perfect combination of traits in the voice of George Sanders." Prescott's Press, published by The Three Garridebs, offers a nice mixture of scholarship and whimsy, including Warren Randall's amusing lyrics for "The Irregular March of Michael Whelan's Band" (to be sung to the tune of "MacNamara's Band"). Subscriptions cost $14.00 for four issues ($16.00 to Canada, $18.00 elsewhere), from Warren (15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauket, NY 11720. Martin Booth died on Feb. 12. He was a poet and a teacher, and then a suc- cessful novelist, and a publisher and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Lit- erature. His biography THE DOCTOR, THE DETECTIVE, AND ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE was published in Britain in 1997 and in the United States in 2000, and was well received. Further to the report on Hodder Headline's acquisition of John Murray (May 02 #3), when John Murray (the seventh of that name to head the firm) said that its archives (which include quills used by Dickens and locks of hair of Byron's lovers) would be preserved, the National Library of Scotland an- nounced on Mar. 2 that it will acquire the archives for just over L33 mill- ion, considerably less than the assessed value of L45 million; the Murray family will create a charitable trust that will use the proceeds from the sale to preserve, explore, and expand the collection, and is pleased that it "is going home" (the first John Murray was born in Edinburgh). Murray's archives include its correspondence with its authors, one of which was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Mar 04 #4 More politics: Laura Kuhn has reported the remarks by Rep. Phil Gringrey (R-Ga.) on Mar. 9 about a joint resolution that would express the sense of Congress that Kids Love a Mystery [a program sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America] "promotes literacy and should be encour- aged." Gingrey said: "Whether it is Sherlock Holmes or Dick Tracy or Harry Potter or my childhood favorite, the Hardy Boys mysteries, our support for reading and writing mystery books is a worthy cause." I don't necessarily report on the most important news first, and for those who have been reading impatiently in search of information about the upcom- ing auction of Conan Doyle material at Christie's salesroom in King Street, London, on May 19, here's the story: there was a flurry of publicity in the media starting on Mar. 14, when the Sunday Times broke the news that Conan Doyle archival material that had been owned by Adrian, and then by his wid- dow Anna, and by Anna's heirs, is being sent to auction by her heirs. Much (and perhaps all) of the material is described briefly by John Dickson Carr in the "Biographical Archives" section at the end of his biography of Conan Doyle, but the auction will not have all of the material described by Carr. The archival material in the auction is interesting indeed: the name plate that he set up outside his medical practice in Southsea in 1882 (estimate L10,000-15,000); three Southsea notebooks that include his sketch for "A Study in Scarlet" (estimate L100,000-150,000); a Norwood notebook in which he wrote "Killed Holmes" (estimate L20,000-30,000); research notes and dia- ries; correspondence with notables such as Oscar Wilde, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, W. G. Grace, and P. G. Wodehouse; the gold medal he had struck for his wife shortly before his death, engraved "To the best of nur- ses" (estimate L800-1000); and much more. Christie's estimates the total value of the material at L2 million. Christie's web-site at has some information (and will have more soon, and eventually a display of the catalog); to find the press release about the auction, click on "About Christie's" and "Press Center" and search for press releases for May 2004 and click on "Read" at 19 May. The material will be on view at Christie's salesroom at Rockefeller Center in New York from Mar. 30 to Apr. 1, and at King Street in London from May 14 on until the auction on May 19 (and there will be an evening of readings on "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--The Man Revealed" on May 18). Sorry about the short notice about the viewing in New York; I posted a message about this to The Hounds of the Internet earlier this month, and I hope that the news spread quickly and widely. The text of the two stories in the Sunday Times is available at the Sher- lock Holmes Society of London's web-site at : Click on "News Archive" and then "Conan Doyle's secret plan for troops in armour". Reported: THE NIGHT ORCHID: CONAN DOYLE IN TOULOUSE, by Jean-Claude Dunyach Encino: Black Coat Press, 2004; 280 pp., $20.95); a collection of stories, translated from the French. In the title story "Arthur Conan Doyle takes Professor Challenger to the south of France, where he encounters the famous Professor Picard, Irene Adler, and an ancient horror." The publisher's ad- dress is Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416 . Mar 04 #5 David Stuart Davies reports that his new novel THE VEILED DE- TECTIVE will be published by Robert Hale in London on Apr. 29 (240 pp., L18.99); the dust-jacket blurb says that the book "takes a fresh, exciting and controversial look at the relationship between the great de- tective Sherlock Holmes, his friend and chronicler, Doctor John H. Watson, and Professor Moriarty." The book can be pre-ordered at Amazon, and it's also offered (L17.99) at the SHERLOCK web-site . Bouchercon 2004 ("Murder Among the Maples") will be held in Toronto on Oct. 7-10, organized by Al Navis . Bouchercon 2005 will take place in Chicago on Sept. 1-4, organized by Deen Kogan and Sonya Rice . And Bouchercon 2006 ("A Prairie Plot") will be held in Madison on Sept. 28-Oct. 1, organized by Al Abramson and Mary Helen Becker . You can listen to two versions of Mark Haddon's novel THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME: the American version, read by Jeff Woodman, was issued by Recorded Books on CDs ($24.99) and audiocassettes ($19.99); and British version, read by Ben Tibber, was issued by Random House Audio- books on CDs (L16.99) and audiocassettes (L12.99). William S. Dorn's COOKING FOR SHERLOCK HOLMES AND DR. WATSON: BRITISH RECI- PES FOR TWO PERSONS is sufficiently up-to-date to have nutritional values for each of the 60 recipes, many of them (including ships biscuits, toad in the hole, and Sussex fritters) not found in more traditional cookbooks; it is spiral-bound to open flat, with coated pages to allow spills to be wiped off easily, and the postpaid cost is $23.80 (to the U.S.)/$24.35 (Canada)/ $24.40 (elsewhere). Bill's address is 2045 South Monroe Street, Denver, CO 80210 . The Practical, But Limited, Geologists will meet for drinks and dinner, in honor of the world's first forensic geologist, at 7:00 pm on Apr. 21, at La Calle Doce Ristaurante in Dallas during the annual meeting of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Our tradition discourages scholarly papers, slide shows, and quizzes (our agenda consists entirely of toasts, some scholarly, but many not). The restaurant is at 415 West 12th Street, and locals and visitors are welcome. Catching up with news from last year: Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of the long-running PBS-TV series "Masterpiece Theatre" and "Mystery!", is an honorary OBE [Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire]; the award was presented to her by the British ambassador in Washington on Dec. 10. The OBE is awarded to people who have made an important contribu- tion to British interests, and people who are not British citizens receive honorary OBEs; Eaton was honored for "her services to Anglo-American film and television." EARTH COLORS, by Sarah Andrews (New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2004; 304 pp., $23.95), is the latest title in her continuing series about forensic geologist Em Hansen; Sarah travels for book events that include a dinner on Apr. 22 in Mount Joy, Pa., at Bube's Brewery (which is in a limestone cave 44 feet underground). Details on this and other events, and on her books, and on Sarah, are available at her web-site . Mar 04 #6 For those who like captivating opening sentences in books, here is a fine example: "It was a dramatic setting for a human sac- rifice, give my murderer credit." And it's not until you're well into the book that you discover just how Mary Russell has become a candidate for hu- man sacrifice. In Laurie R. King's THE GAME (New York: Bantam Books, 2004; 368 pp., $23.95), she tells a story that's set in 1924, when Mycroft Holmes has sent Mary and her husband to India in search of Kimball O'Hara, better- known to the world as Kim. "He's real, then? Kipling's boy?" Mary asked. "As real as I am," said Sherlock Holmes. The novel is an excellent contin- uation of the Mary Russell series, written with style and humor, and inter- esting characters and plenty of adventure. Further to the report (Nov 02 #2) on a film based on Allan Knee's play "The Man Who Was Peter Pan" (about how J. M. Barrie was inspired to write "Peter Pan"), "J. M. Barrie's Neverland" film is scheduled for release by Miramax on Oct. 22, starring Johnny Depp as Barrie, Ian Hart as Conan Doyle, Dustin Hoffman as Charles Frohman (who also produced William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes"), Julie Christie, and Kate Winslett. Ian Hart was Watson in Rich- ard Roxburgh's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (2002); Hart isn't the first actor to play both Watson and Conan Doyle, but the list is quite short. Mycroft's League is planning "A Practical Symposium on Sherlock Holmes and the U.S. Constitution, with Observations on the Segregation of Her Majesty, the Queen" in Philadelphia on May 8. The "investigation into the Constitu- tion, Sherlock Holmes, and the Anglo-American Union" will feature a morning session at the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall, lunch, a chance to tour Independence Hall, the Library Bell Pavilion, and the Betsy Ross House, and a guided tour of Christopher Morley's Colonial Philadelphia led by Frank Ferry. The deadline for reservations is Apr. 30, and more in- formation is available from Gideon D. Hill . Chris Redmond spotted the story in the Toronto Star (Mar. 23) about politi- cians and cormorants (alas, there's no mention of a lighthouse): the prov- ince of Ontario is under fire for its plan to authorize shooting of almost 7,000 double-breasted cormorants in Presqu'ile Provincial Park. According to Thomas Walkom's column, the birds' alleged crime is that they often kill the trees in which they nest, but their real crime is that they've made en- emies in the lucrative sport fishing industry. It has been some months since Stephen Rullman posted to the Hounds of the Internet about the custom-built carriages available from the Justin Carri- age Works (7615 South M-66, Nashville, MI 49073) ; they off- er hansoms ($6,870), broughams ($14,500), wagonettes, surreys, buckboards, and other appropriate vehicles (seatbelts optional, at additional cost). I've reported from time to time (most recently May 00 #2) on Skeletons in the Closet (their profits help support the Los Angeles County Coroner's De- partment's Youthful Drunk Driver Visitation Program), and (of course) they now have a web-site at where you can find Sher- lock Mugs (displaying a skeleton in Sherlockian costume) and other inter- esting merchandise. Their postal address is 1104 North Mission Road, Los Angeles, CA 90033); thanks to Gayle Harris for the tip. Mar 04 #7 "Cops are hunting a conman who dresses like Sherlock Holmes and pretends to be a policemen," according to Mike Sullivan in the [London] Sun (Mar. 23). The article, noted by Phil Attwell, reports that a man wearing a deerstalker and pretending to be buying a fleet of cars for an operation involving Scotland Yard and MI5, stole a L20,000 Toyota from a showroom in Coulsdon, Surrey. A salesman accompanied him on a test run to the Croydon police station, where the man tricked the salesman into getting out to fetch one of the man's "colleagues", and then sped off. Richard Lancelyn Green ("The Three Gables") died on Mar. 27. He was both a Doylean and a Sherlockian, am enthusiastic bibliographer and collector, an energetic editor and writer, and an excellent speaker. A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF A. CONAN DOYLE (1983), written with John Michael Gibson, was and is an in- valuable resource for collectors and scholars, and their careful research resulted in Conan Doyle's UNCOLLECTED STORIES (1982) and ESSAYS ON PHOTO- GRAPHY (1982), and his LETTERS TO THE PRESS (1986), making available mater- ial that had never been reprinted and in some cases had not been known to have been written by Conan Doyle. For Sherlockians, he edited an anthology of pastiches, THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1985); a selection from mail sent to Holmes at 221B Baker Street, LETTERS TO SHERLOCK HOLMES (1985); an anthology of early reviews, letters, and articles, THE SHERLOCK HOLMES LETTERS (1986); and an anthology of associated Conan Doyle writings, THE UNCOLLECTED SHERLOCK HOLMES (1993). He also wrote articles and intro- ductions and commentary for Sherlockian societies, and spoke to delighted audiences at Sherlockian symposiums, and he served as chairman of The Sher- lock Holmes Society of London from 1996 to 1999. As a collector he was in- formed and relentless in pursuit of unique material; anyone who was able to visit his home in London to see his treasures was fortunate indeed. He re- ceived his Investiture from The Baker Street Irregulars in 1985. Jerry Margolin has reported a television commercial for Fisher-Price's new "Learn Through Music" set (product 89452, ages 18 months and up, $34.99); one of the four cartridges is "Elmo's ABC Scavenger Hunt" with Elmo shown in Sherlockian costume. Their web-site is . Siegler & Co.'s Sovietski Collection catalog (3473 Kurtz Street, San Diego, CA 92110) (800-442-0002) offers a deerstalker (#151699, $65.00), a magnifying glass and stand (#151631, $79.95), and "classic de- tective bookends" (#151630, $39.95), as well as Bobby helmets, nightsticks, and whistles. "Indeed, British weather is more temperate than that of the northeastern United States. There one finds really frigid winters, with annual ghostly blizzards killing scores of people and occasioning total stoppage of activ- ity for days at a time; and really torrid wet summers, when everyone who can afford it either flees abroad or moves to the seashore. Fall brings hurricanes; spring, floods. The weather of Boston, New York, and Washing- ton is so bad that if the United States had been colonized from west to east instead of the reverse, the northeastern United States today would be populated as sparsely as North Dakota. The main cities would be somewhere else, and the northeastern area would be planted out in soybeans." Thanks to Karen Murdock, who spotted the passage in Paul Fussell's ABROAD: BRITISH LITERARY TRAVELING BETWEEN THE WARS (1980). Mar 04 #8 Admirers of the film "The Quiet Man" (1952), and there are many who are fans of the only Irish western, may be learning for the first time (as I just have) that one of the actors in "The Quiet Man" also has played Sherlock Holmes. It's not John Wayne, nor Barry Fitzgerald, nor Victor McLaglen. And it's not Maureen O'Hara. Credit Dean Clark for his article on early Sherlock Holmes films in the March issue of The Dispatch (published by the Afghanistan Perceivers of Oklahoma) and his reminder of the supporting character Dan Tobin (the old man with a grand white beard) and the actor who played him: Francis Ford, who played Sherlock Holmes in "A Study in Scarlet" (1914). "Jailhouse Rock Concert for Dartmoor Prisoners" was the headline on a story in the Daily Telegraph (Mar. 22), kindly forwarded by John Baesch. Claudia Stuart, the first woman governor of Dartmoor prison, will allow 26-year-old folk-rock musician Seth Lakeman to launch his new album "Kitty Jay" with a live concert for about 100 of the 600 inmates in the prison chapel on May 5. Lakeman, who lives in Yelverton, only five miles from the prison, said that the songs he wrote for the album "are inspired by the mysterious and haunting background of Dartmoor and deal with all kinds of extremes of hu- human behaviour and emotion. I am sure these are things that prisoners in- side Dartmoor can identify with." Dartmoor Prison has housed some of Brit- ain's most notorious convicts, and was condemned two years ago by the Chief Inspector of Prison as "the prison that time forgot" before Stuart was ap- pointed as to reform the prison. She is seeking more contact with the out- side world for the prisoners, and approved the concert (music fans may re- call the similar concert by Johnny Cash at San Quentin). I Scream Records will release the album (L11.99); it's available at , where you can also hear samples of some of the tracks. And Lakeman's web- site is at . Craig Wichman's Quicksilver Radio Theater has recorded "The Speckled Band" (broadcast by WBAI-FM on Oct. 31, 1999) and "The Blue Carbuncle" (Dec. 28, 2003), and they have two live events coming up: the first is "Fibber McGee Meets Sherlock Holmes" for the Episcopal Actor's Guild in New York on May 20; this will feature recreations of a "Fibber McGee and Molly" episode and a "Sherlock Holmes" episode ("The Hindu in the Wicker Basket") with assist- ance from Bill Nadel; the Guild is at 1 East 29th Street in New York (212- 685-2927). The second event will be a performance of one of Edith Meiser's classic "Sherlock Holmes" scripts at the Friends of Old Time Radio Conven- tion in Newark, N.J., on Oct. 21-24 . Audiobuch (Lambertusstrasse 5, 79104 Freiburg, Germany) offers Quicksilver's "The Speckled Band" on a CD (E14.90), and this winter will issue a CD with "The Blue Carbuncle" and "The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes". They also offer tales read in German by Hubertus Gertz- en: "Der Hund von Baskerville" on 3 CDs (E24.90), "Der Katechismus der Fam- ilie Musgrave" and "Der blaue Karfunkel" on single CDs (E14.90 each), and "Sherlock-Holmes-Geschichten" ("Der Mann mit der Narbe" and "Der blaue Kar- funkel") on 2 cassettes (E19.90). You can hear samples of most of the re- cordings at the web-site. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Apr 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Further to the report (Mar 04 #4) on the auction and viewing of Conan Doyle material at Christie's sales-room in New York: it was delightful to be able to see some (but not all) of the things that will be at auction in London on May 19. There were three cases of Conan Doyle material in the gallery at Christie's in New York (their London staff was still at work cataloguing the material, Christie's representative explained, and the requirement for export licenses for everything that left London prevented them from bring- ing more material). What we got to see included: Richard Doyle's portrait of his young nephew Arthur; the manuscript of Conan Doyle's first short story, written when he was six and proudly preserved by his mother; two handwritten issues of his schooldays "Feldkirchian Gazette"; log-books of his voyages on the Hope and Mayumba; his pencil portrait of Professor Challenger; his manuscript notes for "The White Company" and "Sir Nigel"; letters from Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, and H. G. Wells; and a Christmas card from William Gillette inscribed from Sherlock Holmes. The material, once owned by Adrian Conan Doyle, and then by his widow Anna, has been sent to auction by her heirs Richard Doyle, Catherine Doyle, and Charles Foley. And it's grand to think that so much that's so interesting will soon be in public or private collections, and available to those who wish to enjoy learning more about Sir Arthur. By way of example, his log- book from the S.S. Hope is wonderful, with daily comments on life on board and on the ice, and his sketches of the ship and the crew and their activi- ties. He seems to have spent a lot of time falling into the ocean, what with the difficulty of moving about on ice floes, and on one day he happily recorded that he hadn't fallen in. There's also considerable humor in what he wrote (as there was in later years in his professional writing): in one report on a storm at sea he wrote (and I paraphrase) about the violent wind and seas, and straining masts and yards and shrouds, and one of the crew almost being swept overboard, and one tremendous wave carrying off a crate from the deck . . . and then he noted, "But seriously . . ." If you want to see material before the sale, there will be another viewing at Christie's in London (8 King Street, St. James's); the catalog ($30.00/ L20.00) can be ordered from Christie's in New York (800-395-6300) or London (20-7389-2820), and the catalog descriptions of the lots should be avail- able at their web-site . There were other nice things on display in Christie's gallery in New York, including "Important English Drama including Shakespeare from the Estate of Mary, Vicountess of Eccles" scheduled for auction on Apr. 14. One item in her collection was a copy of the third quarto edition of "Hamlet" published in 1661 and described as the "earliest obtainable copy of 'Hamlet' remain- ing in private hands" and estimated at $1.5 million to $2 million; the Fol- ger Shakespeare Library in Washington did not bid on the book, because the Folger already has three copies of the third quarto. If you're interested in the book, it's still available: bidding did not reach the reserve. Apr 04 #2 And there is more auction news: the manuscript of "The Sussex Vampire" will be offered at auction at Christie's in New York on June 9. Noted as "unrecorded" in my census of Canonical manuscripts, it is described by Christie's as purchased from a New York antiquarian dealer by a New York collector, and given it to the lady who has sent it to auc- tion. According to the catalog, there are 24 leaves are on two different paper stocks: 11 sheets of printed ship's stationery (the versos headed "On board S.S.....") and 13 sheets of good-quality lined paper; there are scat- tered corrections and revisions (among them some 160 crossed-out words de- scribing Holmes and Watson's first meeting with the Ferguson family). The manuscript, bound for the author in white buckram boards is signed and tit- led on the front cover, and the estimate is $150,000-200,000. The ship's stationery also is printed with the house flag of the White Star Line, and It seems likely that Conan Doyle began the story on the S.S. Adriatic, in which he returned to England in August 1923 after his "second American ad- venture" (the story was published in January 1924). Sherlock G. Holmes died on Mar. 24. He thought his name was Gordon Holmes until he was 17 years old and needed a copy of his birth certificate in or- der to play baseball with the American Legion his name, and discovered that his parents had named him Sherlock Gordon Holmes (they hadn't told him be- cause they didn't want him to be teased). And he never regretted his name, and thoroughly enjoyed using it during his long career as an investigator for the Washington state auditor's office. "Hello Kitty" is quite popular with youngsters in Japan (and elsewhere), and she was available last year (and no longer) in Sherlockian costume on a tag that comes with KitKat chocolate, Naomi Tanaka reports from Osaka. Ac- cording to the label, the tag could be attached to your cell phone. Many years ago (Jul 91 #1) the Daily Mail reported that there were plans for a Sherlock Holmes series starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, but it was merely a rumor. Now there's a new report in the Daily Mirror (Mar. 30) that Fry and Laurie are to reunite as Holmes and Watson in a new ITV television film that will air next year; the story quoted ITV1's drama chief Nick Elliott as saying that "Stephen is ab- solutely passionate about Sherlock Holmes, and Hugh will make a superb Wat- son." The BBC picked up the story, noting that "ITV has yet to confirm the project." So here are the facts (just the facts, ma'am). from London-based Company Pictures (you might have seen their "Anna Karenina" on PBS-TV, and their "Nicholas Nickleby on Bravo): they are developing a pilot script for a possible series for ITV1, starring Fry and Laurie, possibly to shoot this fall, but: "at this stage we have no further information on the project." It's out-of-print, but available in used-book shops and at web-sites such as : THE CASE BOOK OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, a 72-page book published by the Quality Paperback Book Club in 1994. There's an in- troduction and a discussion of Conan Doyle and his works (both anonymous), and reprints of Sherlockian essays by G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, and A. E. Murch, and eight illustrations. Gale Research seems to have put the book together, without credit to an editor, and it's nicely done. Apr 04 #3 Another interesting opening for a story: "I swallowed my fairy when I was twelve years old. It was an accident." That's from Jean-Claude Dunyach's "Watch Me While I Sleep", one of thirteen stories in THE NIGHT ORCHID: CONAN DOYLE IN TOULOUSE (Encino: Black Coat Press, 2004; 279 pp. $20.95). Dunyach's genre is science fiction and fantasy, and the Doylean story in the collection is the title story, set in 1890, when Conan Doyle and Challenger travel to France to help solve a murder mystery; Dun- yach does an excellent job of capturing Challenger as he would have been in his younger days. The publisher's address is: Box 17270, Encino, CA 91416 . Scott Monty spotted Molly Melloan's illustration in the Wall Street Journal (Apr. 13), accompanying George Melloan's opin- ion piece on "We Already Know Why al Qaeda Succeeded". Registration is now open for the third meeting of The Sher- lock Holmes and All That Jazz Society, to be held this year in Davenport, Iowa, on July 22-25. Davenport is the birth- place of Dixieland great Bix Beiderbecke, and the meeting co- incides with Davenport's Bix Beiderbecke Jazz Festival. More details are available from Donald B. Izban, 1012 Rene Court, Park Ridge, IL 60068. Peter Wood has noted a travel piece from the Apr. 8 issue of the Vancouver Georgia Straight with the headline "KGB Relics Recall the Days of Baltic Spooks" in which Peter Neville-Had- ley reported from Estonia that "In Tallinn, those employed to detect and discourage dissidents had their headquarters at an appropriate address: Pagari (Baker) Street. The Soviet Sherlocks' building sits at the junction with a road that is lined with magnificent medieval structures in creams and ochres, its grey dolomite and terra cotta facade comparatively drab and ready to be overlooked like some rain-coated spy on a street-corner stakeout." Peter Ustinov died on Mar. 28. He was an actor, playwright, novelist, film director, and newspaper columnist, and his acting career spanned six dec- ades; he won Oscars as supporting actor in "Spartacus" (1960) and "Topkapi" (1964). He also participated in the BBC Home Service's centenary "Tribute to Sherlock Holmes" broadcast in 1954, reminiscing as Professor Willi Not- enschlager, Holmes' old violin teacher. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a "Astronomy Picture of the Day" at its web-site, and Scott Monty notes that on Apr. 4 the picture shows "The Lost World of Lake Vida" (a lake hidden beneath 19 meters of ice and gravel in Antarctica). "In a modern version of Sir Arth- ur Conan Doyle's classic book," NASA-funded scientists plan to drill into the lake and remove a sample of water for analysis. Lake Vida, buried un- der the ice for more than 2,500 years, is liquid only because of its high salt content, and it may contain microbes. If living organisms are found in Lake Vida, they may indicate that life might still exist under similar frozen ice-sheets on Mars or moons of Jupiter. A photo of a robot meteoro- logical station above ice-sealed Lake Vida can be seen at NASA's web-site at . Apr 04 #4 Alistair Cooke died on Mar. 30. He went to work for the BBC in 1934, and in 1946 started his "Letter from America", which was broadcast to more than 50 countries, with 2869 programs, the last one air- ing in February. He wrote a Sherlockian parody "The Case of the November Sun-Tan" and hosted the television series "Omnibus" on ABC-TV (they aired "The Fine Art of Murder" in 1956, with Dennis Hoey as Conan Doyle), and in 1971 he became the first (and only, for 22 years) host of "Masterpiece The- atre". In 1994 Jeremy Brett told Nicholas Utechin: "Alistair Cooke said to me about two years ago, 'The three most memorable men of the twentieth cen- tury so far are Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Sherlock Holmes.'" The World Wide Web offers a spectacular variety of sources for information: the N.Y. Times provides index access to its archives (you just click on "archive" at the top of the first screen), and you can search the 1851-1995 or the 1996-present archives. The archive for 1851-1995 dis- plays 1,208 citations for "William Gillette" and 2,663 citations for "Conan Doyle" and 5,723 citations for "Sherlock Holmes". Of course you don't get free access to the complete articles, but you can take a list of citations to a library that has the N.Y. Times on microfilm and read without charge. Thanks to Gayle Harris for tip on these archives. The U.S. Postal Service has honored Henry Mancini, who called himself simply a composer; he won four Oscars and twenty Grammies, and his albums sold more than 30 mill- ion copies. His Sherlockian films were "The Great Mouse Detective" (1986) and "Without a Clue" (1988), and (not quite Sherlockian) "The Molly Maguires" (1970). The latest news about Charles Dickens has no connection with Conan Doyle (although Sir Arthur did once converse with Dickens, during a seance), but Andrew Blau noted a report by Alex Beam in the Boston Globe (Apr. 6) that Stanford University has been mailing facsimile editions of Dickens' novels in weekly serial form so that readers can experience the books as Dickens' readers did in the 19th century. The chapters are printed on cheap news- print, with the original illustrations. This year's book is "A Tales of Two Cities" and the mailings are sent free to some 5,000 households as part of a community outreach program now in its second year. You can read more about this imaginative project at . Further to the report (Nov 03 #4) about the continuing battle over Liberton Bank House (where Arthur Conan Doyle once lived as a child), a story in the Edinburgh Evening News (Mar. 25), at hand from Jay Hyde, reports that the house will be restored and used as a permanent home for the Dunedin Special School, according to a development proposal that will be submitted to the local council. Ken Lanza has reported the story in the Guardian (Apr. 16): "The rich Scots brogue of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle recounting how he came to create Sherlock Holmes is one of thousands of sound recordings from the British Library to be made available online to universities and further education colleges in a L1 million programme." And the Guardian's web-site has a link to a 1:56 recording of Conan Doyle with grand fidelity. Go to and search for "Conan Doyle" and scroll down to the story. Apr 04 #5 Abbey National, long resident in Baker Street, and with a long history of providing a secretary to answer mail sent to Sher- lock Holmes at 221b, has closed its headquarters there, and no longer ans- wers Sherlock Holmes' mail. Bill Barnes reports that his nephew wrote to Sherlock Holmes at 221b, and received a form-letter reply from Grace Riley, director of The Sherlock Holmes Museum, enclosing one of the leather book- marks stamped with Abbey's name that Abbey used to send with their replies to Sherlock Holmes' mail. The letter is quite similar to those sent from Abbey National, explaining that Mr. Holmes receives too many letters to re- ply personally, and that he has retired to a bee-farm in the English coun- tryside, and with a final paragraph noting that his old rooms are now open to the public as The Sherlock Holmes Museum. Reported: a trade paperback edition of MY SHERLOCK HOLMES: UNTOLD STORIES OF THE GREAT DETECTIVE, edited by Michael Kurland (New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2004; 370 pp., $14.95); it's an anthology of pastiches, written to Kurland's rule: while Holmes must appear, the viewpoint character is not Watson, but some other figure from the Canon (May 03 #1). The March issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers an inter- esting review by Julie McKuras of the books presented to those who attended the 1944 "Trilogy Dinner" (there are multiple copies in the collections, of course) and Dick Sveum's "100 Years Ago" tribute to Andrew Lang, plus other news from and about the collections. And the spring issue of the semi-ann- ual newsletter published by The Friends of the Library uses an appropriate quote from Christopher Morley' friend Don Marquis to introduce a report on "An Evening of Ribald Literature" with Garrison Keillor, and has stories by Tim Johnson on the arrival of "Detective Linus" at the Special Collections (Aug 03 #3) and on Tim's series of "Compleat Scholar" continuing-education classes on the four Sherlock Holmes stories. You can request copies from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, 222 21st Avenue South, Un- iversity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . SHERLOCK has been redesigned but continues to offer excellent coverage of crime fiction (Sherlockian and otherwise); issue #59 features David Stuart Davies' discussion of "Mrs. Hudson of the Movies", June Thomson's new pas- tiche "The Case of the Conk-Singleton Forgery", and Gavin Collinson's re- view of "Infinite Villainy" (Holmes' adversaries in the films). SHERLOCK is published bimonthly, and subscriptions cost L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Box 100, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 8HD, England . Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincin- nati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) is their American agent; credit-card orders are welcomed at both addresses, and back issues are available. Robin Hunter died on Mar. 8. The son of actor Ian Hunter (who was Dr. Wat- son with Arthur Wontner in "The Sign of Four" in 1932), he spent his child- hood in Hollywood, where he made the set of "Tarzan" films a favorite play- ground. He moved to London as a versatile juvenile, and at the age of 23 was the youngest chairman ever at the Players' Theatre, where he excelled in their pantomimes. He went on to a career on stage and screen and tele- vision, and played Major Sholto in Granada's "The Sign of the Four" (1987). Apr 04 #6 "Sky's the Limit for Sculpture" is the headline on P. J. Lass- ek's front-page story in the Tulsa World (Mar. 9), kindly for- warded by Dean Clark. Tulsa plans to create an Oklahoma Centennial Botan- ical Garden at a wooded area about seven miles northwest of downtown Tulsa at a site that includes Holmes Peak, described as being the highest point in Tulsa, Osage, Creek, Washington, and Pawnee counties. There also is a plan to use the site for a 176-foot bronze sculpture of a Native American that is to be the largest free-standing bronze monument in the world (the Statue of Library is 152 feet high). Shan Gray, the artist who is design- ing the statue, announced this month that he has chosen Holmes Peak as the site; the $26-million statue will be funded privately, and Tulsa is being asked only to provide the site and infrastructure. The statue won't put Holmes Peak on the map, of course: Dick Warner, head sherpa of The Holmes Peak Preservation Society, won government approval for that some years ago, and Holmes Peak still is the only geographical feature on Earth named in honor of Sherlock Holmes. Dick will of course revise his "Guide Book and Instructions for the Ascent of Holmes Peak" in time for the formal dedication of the statue in 2007, when Oklahoma celebrates its cen- tennial. It's not new, but completists may want to look for THE HOUND OF THE BASKER- VILLES (New York: Alladin Classics/Simon & Schuster, 2000; 246 pp., $3.99); with a six-page foreword by Bruce Brooks and a four-page reading guide. MPI Home Entertainent has released remastered DVDs ($19.98 each) with Basil Rathbone's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939); the DVDs also have production notes and commentary by Rich- and Valley, and "The Hound of the Baskervilles" has additional commentary by David Stuart Davies. Norman M. Davis ("The Grosvenor Square Furniture Van") died on Apr. 7. He was a free-lance writer and a stalwart member of Sherlockian societies in Washington and Chicago. His first S'ian paper appeared in The Baker Street Journal in 1969, and he received in Investiture from The Baker Street Ir- regulars in 1972. In Washington he happily impersonated Dr. Watson in the productions of The Red Circle Players, and he was proud to share with Wat- son what Holmes once described as a "pawky vein of humor." Norm delighted in puns and word-play, shown to great advantage in A PAWKY QUIZ (1983) and AMUSING HOLMES! (1992), and his presentations to bewildered and bemused so- ciety meetings were spectacular. Elizabeth Peters' mystery novels about Amelia Peabody Emerson often include allusions to the Sherlock Holmes stories, and fans of the series will wel- come AMELIA PEABODY'S EGYPT: A COMPENDIUM, which she has edited with Kris- ten Whitbread (New York: William Morrow, 2003; 334 pp., $29.95). The book has a chapter on "The Best of Wonder: An Authoritative Analysis of Victor- ian Popular Fiction" in which Barbara Michaels includes references to the Canon. Note: Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels are both Barbara Mertz, and you can find all three of them at . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) May 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press "The Devonshire Inheritance: Five Centuries of Collecting at Chatsworth" is an exhibition (through June 20) at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, Design, and Culture (18 West 86th Street in New York) (212-501-3000), according to a report by Sue Vizoskie in the April issue of the Foolscap Document (the newsletter of The Three Garridebs). There are more than 200 works of art from the family's private collection in the ex- hibition, including Joshua Reynolds' portrait of Georgiana, 5th Duchess of Devonshire; a different portrait, by Thomas Gainsborough, showing the Geor- giana in the fashionable hat mentioned by Watson (in "A Case of Identity") was stolen by Adam Worth (sometimes called "the Napoleon of crime"). The Chatsworth web-site display the Gainsborough portrait; look for a link to "Devonshire Collection" (the web-site mentions Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Professor Moriarty). William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" will be performed at the Barnstormers Theatre, July 6-10. The theater's address is Box 434, Tamworth, NY 03886 (603-323-8500) . The Historical Journal, published by the Cambridge University Press and de- voted to coverage of "all aspects of British, European, and world history since the fifteenth century," has in its Sept. 2003 issue Michael Saler's 24-page article "'Clap If You Believe in Sherlock Holmes': Mass Culture and the Re-Enchantment of Modernity, c. 1890-c. 1940". Saler has interesting things to say about the two types of Holmes believers: the "naive believer" (who genuinely believed that Holmes and Watson were real) and the "ironic believer" (who pretended that Holmes was real, "but for whom this pretence was so earnest that the uninitiated might not recognize it as pretence"). The distinction seems to be as real today as it was then. Reported by Roger Johnson: Christopher Downes died on Nov. 21. He was the dresser (the trusted personal assistant) for some of Britain's greatest ac- tors, and it was on his life that the film "The Dresser" (1983) was based; according to the obituary by Derek Grainger in The Independent, Robert Ste- phens insisted on Downes' services in "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (1970), and Billy Wilder was so impressed by Downes' stylishness and verve that he wrote him into the script as a Victorian policeman. Victor Langley also died in November; he played the Prince of Wales in "Murder by Decree" (1978). And Max Harris died on Mar. 13; he was a jazz pianist, and wrote theme music for radio and television programs, including the Douglas Wilmer "Sherlock Holmes" television series (1965). All that from Roger's excellent monthly newsletter The District Messenger, which costs $15.00 a year (checks payable to Jean Upton, please) or L6.00 (checks payable to Roger Johnson); their address is Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DF, England. And you can receive his newsletter free by e-mail [yes, that's "rojer" with a "j"]. The comic-book series RUSE (with Simon Archard and Emma Bishop) has ended its run, but Crossgen continues to published occasional issues of ARCHARD'S AGENT; the latest issue (Apr 04) is not Sherlockian, but nicely Victorian. See for information on all their series. May 04 #2 "In the Privacy of Their Own Holmes: An Exhibition of Private Press and Limited Edition Sherlockiana" was arranged by Derham Groves for the Baillieu Library at the University of Melbourne from Apr. 5 to May 28, and there was an interesting assortment of Sherlockiana on view. Derham also edited and published IN THE PRIVACY OF THEIR OWN HOLMES to co- incide with the exhibition; the 46-page booklet offers nicely-illustrated essays by Peter E. Blau, Vincent Brosnan, Derham Groves, David G. Harris, Michael Jorgensen, Robert C. Littlewood, Jerry Margolin, and C. Paul Martin about private presses and other matters. It's available from Derham Groves (485 Albert Street, Brunswick West, Vic. 3055, Australia); US $30.00 post- paid hard-bound or $15.00 for the paperback. One of the many strengths of Leslie S. Klinger's SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY is the broad scope of his research; one of the problems that result from this is the fact that many of the articles he cites have appeared in society newsletters and other publications that can be difficult if not im- possible to find. The Occupants of the Empty House have offered a solution to the problem: THE OCCUPANTS WITHIN THE SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE LIBRARY, with an interesting introduction by Bill Cochran, reprints 24 articles that were cited in the first six volumes of the reference library; the 70-page booklet is available ($23.95 postpaid) from Stan Tinsley (Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999). RUSS-L (the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes elec- tronic mailing list for fans of Laurie R. King's novels) has a second edition of their T-shirt (the first version was produced in 1999), and now spa- ghetti tanks, sweatshirts, camisoles, mouse-pads, and tote bags, available from CafePress.com, 1515 Aurora Drive, San Leandro, CA 94577 (877-809-1659) . The web-site offers a link to the mailing list (click on the blue logo). MS. HOLMES OF BAKER STREET, by C. Alan Bradley and William A. S. Sarjeant, has been reprinted (Edmon- ton: University of Alberta Press, 2004; 288 pp., $34.95), with a new intro- duction by Barbara Roden. When their book was first published 15 years ago (Dec 89 #6), the authors' careful and well-written examination of evidence that Holmes was female, twice pregnant, and possibly once a mother, was met with outrage from critics who apparently had never heard John Bennett Shaw explain that the one thing Sherlockians should be serious about is not tak- ing themselves seriously. There has been some discussion on the RUSS-L electronic mailing list (for fans of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell series) of Sherlock Holmes' age dur- ing the decades in which the series is set. Michele Canterbury reported to the list about her grandfather, who lived to be 93 years old. "He was very fit and healthy for a man who, to the best of my knowledge, was an alcohol- ic until the day he died (homemade moonshine, no less), smoked, and chewed tobacco. He did have a massive coronary at the age of 82 (while having sex with his wife); he buried two wives, and one week before he died he walked five miles from his home to the porch of a lady to propose marriage. She told him to go to hell, and he walked home, took to his bed, and died." May 04 #3 Bert Coules' 45-minute series "The Further Adventures of Sher- lock Holmes" (with Clive Merrison as Holmes and Andrew Sachs as Watson) resumed on BBC Radio 4 on May 18, with "The Abergavenny Murder" as the first of five new weekly programs. The BBC kindly makes its broadcasts available on the Internet at (just click on "radio" and on "radio 4" and on "listen again"). Four of the five shows will be issued on June 7 as a four-CD set (L15.99) and a two-audiocassette set (L10.99); you can order on-line at . Four of the five programs from the first series (2002) also are available as a two-audiocassette set (L10.99). The series is nicely done, with interesting stories imaginatively told. Thanks to Jerry Margolin for the report on the reality series "The Restau- rant" (broadcast by NBC-TV on Mondays). In episode 203 (May 10) Mama sur- prises Rocco with a video of his graduation from the Culinary Institute of America eighteen years ago, and the next day Rocco visits the CIA to speak at their commencement and to see his old mentor Fritz Sonnenschmidt (it was Fritz who did so much work to make the CIA's grand gourmet Sherlockian din- ners so delicious). You can see a photograph of Rocco and Fritz at the NBC web-site , and while the episode certainly will repeat on NBC-TV, it will also air on Bravo cable on June 23. Kenneth Ludwig's play "Postmortem" (which premiered as "Dramatic Licence" in New Hampshire in 1983, with Patrick Horgan as William Gillette) is being performed at the Chattanooga Theatre Centre through June 6. It's a murder mystery set in Gillette's home in Connecticut, with Gillette trying to do the detecting. The box-office address is 4 River Street, Chattanooga, TN 37045 . It's not quite the same as engaging a special, as Moriarty did (in "The Fi- nal Problem"), but you can still charter "private varnish" (the name still used for private railway cars). Scott Monty spotted an interesting article ("Ride Like a Railroad Baron") in Business Week (May 10), and the experi- ence sounds grand indeed; the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners has a web-site , and publishes a Private Car Charter Guide ($7.50 postpaid). AAPRCO is at 630-B Constitution Avenue NE, Wash- ington, DC 20002. Oh yes: prices to charter a car start at around $3,000 a day and can easily top $5,000 or $6,000. Laurie R. King's THE GAME, her latest novel starring Mary Russell and Sher- lock Holmes (Mar 04 #6), is available from Recorded Books, read unabridged by Jenny Sterlin, on 8 audiocassettes ($34.99 purchase or $18.50 rental) or 12 CDs ($39.95/$18.50); 270 Skipjack Road, Prince Frederick, MD 20678 (800- 636-1304) . Reported: MURDER ON THE LEVIATHAN, by Boris Akunin (New York: Random House, 2004; 240 pp., $21.95); Erast Fandorin, a young Russian detective/diplomat, travels to India in 1878 on the maiden voyage of the Leviathan, and there are murders to solve (Dennis Drabelle reviewed the book in the May 16 issue of the Washington Post and noted echoes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in "the detective's ability to fill in a character's background by noticing what is lost on less keen-eyed observers"). And: a trade-paperback edition of Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (Apr 03 #1) (New York: Vintage Books, 2004; 240 pp., $12.00). May 04 #4 There were many Sherlockians and Doyleans who happily took ad- vantage of the opportunity to inspect the Conan Doyle material that was on view at Christie's sales-rooms in London before the auction on May 19, and there were plenty of active bidders. The catalog is spectacu- lar, and recommended to anyone who wants to learn more about Sir Arthur's life and work; $30.00/L20.00 from Christie's in New York (800-395-6300) or London (20-7389-2820), and at their web-site . Bert Coules has reported that the auction featured "a couple of hundred or so people, a rank of TV cameras, a bank of Christie's staff earnestly chat- tering into telephones, a plasma screen which displayed the lots (on occa- sion at the correct time, and various passersby who wandered in to look at (and discuss, sometimes rather loudly the entirely unrelated paintings on the walls of the auction room." The sale realized $1,678,821 (or L948,545) including the buyer's premium; this was somewhat less than half of Christie's estimate for the sale, and 31 lots (out of 135) went unsold because bids was less than the reserves. The more interesting unsold material included Conan Doyle's log-books from his voyages aboard the "Hope" and the "Mayumba", his archive on the Edalji case, his letters to his sister Lottie. The highest price paid for a lot was $247,180/L139,650 for the Southsea notebooks (with the first notes for "A Study in Scarlet"). And some material went for much more than Christie had estimated: Conan Doyle's drawings and paintings, estimated at L1,000- 1,500, brought L7,170 (a sure sign that two bidders really wanted the lot). And there have been some reports on who bought what: Cliff Goldfarb has an- nounced that the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Public Libra- ry was successful in acquiring a lot titled "Canada and the Empire" (quite appropriate for the Toronto collection). The [Edinburgh] Scotsman reported that the Glasgow City Council bought the archive on the Oscar Slater case (the Mitchell Library already has the records of the Glasgow police enquir- ies into the case). The British Library purchased ten lots, including two issues of the handwritten magazine Conan Doyle produced while at school at Feldkirch in Austria, the manuscript of his first (and unpublished) novel ("The Narrative of John Smith"), letters to his mother and his brother Inn- es, and other family papers. The auction attracted considerable interest from the press, both before and after the sale, and there were last-minute complaints that the British gov- ernment had not acted to preserve the archive for the nation. There also was a report that there was "parliamentary agitation over the possible fate of the archive." The agitation consisted of two "Early Day Motions" filed by MP Alex Salmond (SNP) [Scottish Nationalist Party] on May 14 and 18 pro- testing the auction (the House of Commons web-site at notes that early day motions are not generally expected to be debated); and a question posed by MP Pete Wishart (SNP) on May 18 to the Speaker of the House, asking whether he had been approached by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media, and Sport about her coming to the House to make a statement about the auction. The Speaker responded: "There are certain things that hon. Members can do to raise these matters, but I have no powers to raise them. It is up to the hon. Gentleman to approach the Department and Minis- ters with his deep concern." And that was that. May 04 #5 The British Library has announced that it "plans in the coming weeks to mount an exhibition to display the Conan Doyle manu- scripts," and that it is "seeking to secure other items that went unsold at auction." The Library also is "keen to explore with other public collec- tions the possibility of raising funds to establish a digital archive" that would reunite as much of the original archives as possible. The British Library also now has received material bequeathed to it by Dame Jean Conan Doyle, including the manuscripts of "The Retired Colourman" and "The Stark Munro Letters". More auction news: Christie's sale of fine printed books and manuscripts at their South Kensington sales room in London on June 8 will include a series of letters and postcards to General Enesy from Sir Arthur, Lady Doyle, and their daughter Mary, 1926-1929; in one letter, discussing a proposed Spiri- tualist tour to Vienna and Budapest, Sir Arthur notes: "The idea of mixing up a religious subject with Sherlock Holmes or other stories is altogether wrong. Spiritualism is far too solemn and too important." Tony Randall died on May 17. He began his acting career on radio in New York in 1940 and made his stage debut in 1941, and moved to television in 1952, and to films in 1955, and was most famous as Felix Unger in the television series "The Odd Couple" from 1970 to 1975. In 1986 it was report- ed that he had been signed as Holmes in "Sherlock Holmes Meets Dracula" (playing opposite Sid Caesar as Count Dracula); rumors persisted, but in 1994 his publicist wrote: "Tony Randall asked me to in- form you that unfortunately, he's never heard of the project you wrote of. Although, he thought it sounded like a great idea." But he did appear as Holmes in advertisements for Smirnoff vodka (1959) and the International Paper Co. (1979); here he is in the 1979 advertisement. It's always nice to see Conan Doyle's books back in print: there is a new edition of THE REFUGEES: A TALE OF TWO CONTINENTS (Neerlandia: Inheritance Publications, 2004; 369 pp., CA$17.95/US$14.90). It's part of the publish- er's Huguenot Inheritance Series, which is thoroughly appropriate: the book tells the story of the Huguenots who escaped from France after the revoca- tion of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and settled in the New World. The pub- lisher's address is: Box 154, Neerlandia, AB T0G 1R0, Canada (780-674-3949) Jonathan Talbot's striking etching of "Silver Blaze" was commissioned as a souvenir of the 25th running of "The Silver Blaze" (you can see it on page 56 of the March 1977 issue of The Baker Street Journal); his artistic style has changed since then, and he'll be one of the artists included in an ex- hibition titled "The Imaginary Voyage" at the Poughkeepsie Art Museum Gall- eries (214 Main Street) (845-454-0522) , May 22 to July 4. Talbot will be at the museum for a panel discussion on June 23, and you can see his "Large Planetary Patrin" at their web-site. May 04 #6 PBS Home Video (1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314 (800- 645-4727) offers "The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes" on VHS and DVD ($19.98); it's likely the one-hour documentary first broadcast in 1986 (although the new release is listed at 120 minutes). And "Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle" on VHS and DVD ($19.98); it's a new title for the first "Murder Rooms" mini-series (2000) that starred Ian Richardson as Bell and Robin Laing as Conan Doyle. And various collections, on VHS and DVD, of the Universal films starring Basil Rathbone, and the Granada television series starring Jeremy Brett. Al Gregory notes the March-April issue of Saudi Aramco World, with a cover story by Peter Harrigan on Bedouin trackers. "There is a classic Holmesian tale," he wrote "about the Bedouin who, after four days on the trail of a camel-mounted fugitive, came upon a settlement where his quarry had taken refuge. He demanded, 'Bring out the man with the eye ailment who rode in one night ago on a white camel with no tail that's also blind in one eye.' The tracker had taken in clues: the position of the camel's droppings rela- tive to its rear footprints, the evidence of lopsided grazing on shrubs, and a tell-tale finger-smear on a campfire stone near which the pursued ri- der had applied the juice of a desert plant use to treat the eyes." You can read the full story on-line at . "Meitantei Conan" [Detective Conan] was first a Japanese manga comic-book series created by Gosho Aoyama, and then it was developed into a long-run- ning animated television series, and then animated films; Shinichi Kudo is a 17-year-old master detective who is turned by villains into a child, and assumes the name Conan Edogawa and pursues evil-doers. The 30-minute ser- ies began running (in English, as "Case Closed") on the Cartoon network's "adult swim" late-night schedule on May 24, and airs Mondays through Thurs- days at 12:30 am. You can read all about it (and see graphics and such) at two web-sites, at and ; the series is not directly Sherlockian, but you should expect echoes and allusions. Reported: Brian Freemantle's THE HOLMES INHERITANCE (Sutton: Severn House, 2004; 346 pp., L18.99); "Sebastian Holmes, estranged son of the great de- tective, sails to America on the Lusitania to investigate rumors of busi- ness magnates plotting secret weapons deals with the Germans just before WWI." It's not known whether Arthur Conan Doyle and Major-General Robert Baden- Powell actually met, in South Africa or elsewhere, but Baden-Powell is men- tioned in Conan Doyle's history of THE GREAT BOER WAR, and Conan Doyle is mentioned in Baden-Powell's SCOUTING FOR BOYS. Baden-Powell suggested that Scouts read the Sherlock Holmes stories to learn observation and deduction, in what Christopher Hitchens has called (in the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly) "one of the very few books of the twentieth century that actually led to the formation of a worldwide movement." SCOUTING FOR BOYS: THE ORIG- INAL 1908 EDITION, by Robert Baden-Powell (London: Oxford University Press, 2004; 448 pp., $26.00), has been reprinted for the first time in the Oxford World's Classics series. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Jun 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Further to the report about Baden-Powell (May 04 #6), there is more to the story, as noted by Jon Lellenberg: Dame Jean Conan Doyle, in her foreword to Jon's THE QUEST FOR SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1987), wrote that her father "... had an open mind, admitting past misjudgements, such as telling the then Sir Robert Baden-Powell that his new Scout movement would prove too idealistic to last. He remembered this when he took me, age seven, to join the village Brownie pack ..." In 1980 young Harry Hallesy, as an English Literature project, wrote to ac- tors, authors, and politicians, asking them, "what are your all-time favor- ite books?" The responses were sold at auction in February in Shropshire, and the lot included a letter from former prime minister Harold Wilson, who listed Howard Springer's FAME IS THE SPUR, Dorothy L. Sayer's THE NINE TAI- LORS, and Arthur Conan Doyle's THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (according to an article in the Bristol Western Daily Press). Paranormal researcher James Ellis has spent six decades documenting spirit- ualist Leslie Flint, who used an "independent direct voice" made of ecto- plasm that would form in the air while Flint sat silently, recently donated thousands of hours of audiotape of Flint to the University of Manitoba, ac- cording to a story in the Winnipeg Sun (May 20); distinguished figures from the past who spoke to Flint included Archimedes, Rudolph Valentino, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Staff at the T. G. Hamilton Collection of the paranor- mal will spend several months indexing and transferring the audiotapes to electronic format. "Novelist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used to correct his Sherlock Holmes proofs while sitting in the cafe," according to a review (May 29) of the InterCon- tinental Le Grand Hotel Paris at The Telegraph's web-site. The hotel was built in 1862 and recently reopened after an 18-month restoration, and it has a web-site , but the web-site has no historical information on distinguished guests. Watson's Tin Box (one of the more active Sherlockian societies in Maryland) have collected some of their scholarship in Irene's Cabinet, and a few cop- ies of the 50-page pamphlet are available ($10.00 postpaid) from Beth Aust- in (9455 Chadburn Place, Gaithersburg, MD 20886); the contents range from Steve Clarkson's "Interview with Sir Eustace Brackenstall" to Mike Berdan's "A Three-Continent Problem", and it's all nicely done. Reported: RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES I [EMPT/NORW/SIXN/3STU], read by David Timson (Naxos Audiobooks, 2004) on three CDs (L13.99) or three audiocass- ettes (L9.99); Naxos also offers Timson's recordings of A STUDY IN SCARLET, THE SIGN OF FOUR, and THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES I-VI. Naxos is at 3 Wells Place, Redhill, Surrey RH1 3DR, England . Further to the report (May 04 #2) about merchandise with the RUSS-L emblem, there's a lot more available for Sherlockians: silhouettes and artwork by Paget, Elcock, and Wiles, on everything from clothing to tote bags to lunch boxes to clocks; the CafePress.com address is 1515 Aurora Drive, San Lean- dro, CA 94577 (877-809-1659) . Jun 04 #2 Erik Larson's THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY (Mar 03 #1) won the Edgar awarded by the Mystery Writers of America for best fact crime, at their annual dinner in New York on Apr. 29; the book is Sherlock- ian only for Larson's description of the arrival in Chicago of Herman Web- ster Mudgett (the serial murderer who is the book's titular devil): "There in July 1886, the year Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced his detective to the world, Mudgett registered his name as Holmes." A "Happy 200th Birthday!" to Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin, who was born on July 1, 1804 (the portrait is from the July issue of Smithsonian magazine), and who used the pen-name George Sand. "'L'homme c'est rien--l'oeuvre c'est tout,' as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand," Sherlock Holmes said (in "The Red-Headed League"). Casting trivia: name some actors who have played both Sher- lock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade. The spring issue of The Serpentine Muse offers news from, about, and by The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, including a splendid article by forensic toxicologist Marina Stajic on "The Aerodynamics of a Reindeer" (and if you want to know why reindeer are of special interest to the Adventuresses, and how forensic toxicology is involved, you need only subscribe to the Muse). It's published quarterly and costs $10.00 a year (checks payable to the Ad- venturesses, please) from Evelyn A. Herzog (360 West 21st Street #5-A, New York, NY 10011). An actor who has played both Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade is Rog- er Llewellyn, who is touring as Holmes in David Stuart Davies' play "Sher- lock Holmes - The Last Act"; he was Lestrade on stage in "Sherlock Holmes: The Musical" (1988). There's at least one more. Judith Flanders' INSIDE THE VICTORIAN HOME: A PORTRAIT OF DOMESTIC LIFE IN VICTORIAN ENGLAND (New York: Norton, 2004; 499 pp., $34.95) was reviewed by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post (May 2) as "a useful corrective to over-romanticizing." He noted that "her attention is focused on city life, London in particular; what she shows us is a world in which dirt, vermin, and disease were nearly inescapable, and in which the labor of maintaining even the best-managed households was endless, exhausting, and often danger- ous," and it is obvious that the book will be of interest to those who wish to see what life below-stairs in Sherlock Holmes' world was like. If you want to explore the subject a bit farther, Benjamin Schwarz, in his review of INSIDE THE VICTORIAN HOME in The Atlantic Monthly (June) recommends oth- er books, including PUBLIC LIVES, by Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004; 304 pp., $45.00), for a different view of how life was lived in those times. Bill Barnes (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly, NSW 2095, Australia) notes that THE HOUNDS' COLLECTION: VOLUME 9 now is available, with 62 pages of humor, pas- tiche, scholarship, conjecture, and artwork by members of The Hounds of the Internet. $12.00/CA$16.00/L6.50/E10.00/AU$12.00 postpaid by air; payment in currency or by PayPal to preferred, but checks (made out to R. W. Barnes) are acceptable. Jun 04 #3 According to a review of Metro 3D's Xbox computer game DINOSAUR HUNTING: "The characters each have their own look and feel, but don't appear to have much of a backstory. The one exception is Arthur Con- an Doyle. Yes, the author of the Sherlock Holmes series and THE LOST WORLD is, for some reason, in the game as a hunter. Uh, okay, cool. The primary character, Malone, also gets an assist from his dog, Algo, who finds clues and also runs around dinosaurs that are absolutely spazzing out." The re- view by Hilary Goldstein at on June 2; the game was released by Microsoft in Japan last year, and Metro 3D took over publishing duties for the U.S. when Microsoft decided not to release the game, which retails for $39.99 here. "The West End Horror" (dramatized by Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge from Nicholas Meyer's novel) has been scheduled at the Asolo Theatre Festi- val from Nov. 26 to Mar. 3 ("Holmes & Watson meet Gilbert & Sullivan, Shaw, Wilde, and more," according to an announcement). 5555 North Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34243 (800-361-8388) "Not since the days of Sherlock Holmes has there appeared a collection of detective stories as clever, exciting, and continually gripping as TRENT INTERVENES; not since the Baker Street master has there been a detective as ingenious as Trent. No human encyclopaedia, but a sensible man who is not above relying on the help of those who know more than he in certain special fields, Trent is here in a collection of twelve fast-paced mysteries that are likely to put him in a place second only to that of Conan Doyle's great character." That's the enthusiastic promotion found on a wrap-around strip of paper on top of the dust jacket of the first American edition (1938) of E. C. Bentley's book. Another actor who has played both Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade is Simon Callow, who was Holmes in BBC Radio 4's "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" (1993) and BBC Radio 5's series "The Unopened Casebook of Sherlock Holmes" (1993); he was Lestrade on TNT cable television in "The Crucifer of Blood" (1991). Anna Lee died on May 14, one week (according to TV Guide) before she was to receive a special Daytime Emmy for Lifetime Achievement; she played matri- arch Lila Quartermaine on "General Hospital" on ABC-TV from 1978 to 2003. She began her acting career on stage in England, and appeared in her first film in 1932, and in her first American film in 1940; she received an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1982. TV Guide's tribute to her (June 6) said she was the god-daughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but in fact she wasn't: Barbara Roisman Cooper (who has been working with Anna Lee on her autobiography BEFORE THE COLOURS FADE) reported four years ago that while her father was a very good friend of Sir Arthur, she wasn't his god-daughter. Further to the report (May 04 #3) on BBC radio broadcasts being available on the Internet at , BBC Radio 7 is airing "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (with Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson) five days a week (click on "radio" and on "radio 7" and on "listen again"); the previous seven days' broadcast always are available. Thanks to Phil Attwell for his monitoring of the BBC's radio schedule. Jun 04 #4 Ronald W. Reagan died on June 5. He wrote to O. Dallas Baillio (director of the public library in Mobile, Ala.) in 1977, de- scribing his debt to public libraries and the books he read as a young boy in Dixon, Ill.: "Then came the Zane Grey phase, Horatio Alger and Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, Mark Twain with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn." There was much more to his reading in those days, and you can read the en- tire letter in the Feb. 1981 issue of American Libraries. And there's more to the story: on Dec. 4, 1992, the Reagans dined at The Sherlock Holmes in Northumberland Street, and were greeted by Holmes and Watson (costumed ac- tors Stewart Quentin Holmes and John Barrett-Watson); you can read a story about that in the Sherlock Holmes Gazette (spring 1993). Malice Domestic XVII will convene on Apr. 29-May 1, 2005, at the Sheraton National Hotel in Arlington, Va., with Joan Hess as Guest of Honor, Ellis Peters as Ghost of Honor, Carole Nelson Douglas as Toastmaster, and a Life- time Achievement Award for H. R. F. Keating; you can register with Malice Domestic at Box 31137, Bethesda, MD 20824 . Michael P. Hodel co-authored ENTER THE LION: A POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF MYCROFT HOLMES (1978) and was an active Sherlockian in Los Angeles; he also was en- thusiastic about radio, and science fiction, and it's nice that we can lis- ten to "Mike Hodel's Hour 25 (Science Fiction Radio for Southern California since 1972)" on the Internet . Mike was one of four people who started "Hour 25" in 1973, and when he died in 1986, Harlan Ell- ison took over as host and the show was renamed to honor Mike. The series continued with various hosts until 2000 which it switched to the Internet, and it's still going strong. The index of people interviewed makes it easy to pick and choose, and you might look for (and listen to) Poul Anderson, Laurie R. King, and Charles Edward Pogue, all of whom have something to say about Sherlock Holmes. The next issue of SHERLOCK (edited by David Stuart Davies) won some excell- ent publicity in the Daily Telegraph in Richard Savill's article "The Dubi- ous Pedigree of the Baskerville Hound" (June 1) about an article by thrill- er writer Phil Rickman in SHERLOCK that Conan Doyle was inspired by tales of Herefordshire's Black Vaughan of Kington, and his ghostly Hergest hound; medieval Baskervilles had a castle at Eardisley, near Kington. It remains to be seen whether Kington will supplant Dartmoor as a destination for fu- ture Sherlockian tourists. SHERLOCK is published bimonthly, and the cost of a subscription is L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 (continent)/$40.00 (else- where); Atlas Publishing Ltd., Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hants. BH24 6QJ, England . And Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) is their American agent; credit-card orders are welcomed at both addresses and back issues are available. Of course there are other candidates. Last year "the title of baron of the castle which is said to have inspired the name of the Sherlock Holmes novel THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES" was offered for sale (Jun 03 #6). That was Pencelli Castle, near Brecon in Wales, built by 11th-century knight Ralph Baskerville; the owner noted that "Conan Doyle was a regular visitor to the castle during the reign of Queen Victoria." Oh well: "Here a Baskerville, there a Baskerville, everywhere . . .'" Jun 04 #5 Eric H. Silk ("The Blue Carbuncle") died on June 8. He was one of the founders of The Bootmakers of Toronto, and drafted the society's constitution (which Cliff Goldfarb quite correctly describes as a document that easily matches The Baker Street Irregulars' Constitution and Buy-Laws); Eric also was Commissioner of the Ontario Police for many years, and he owned the only known piece of Sherlockian pornography (a copy of the 1971 paperback THE SEXUAL ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES) smuggled across an international border by a special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investiga- tion. He received his Investiture from the BSI in 1977. Randall Stock has a valuable web-site called "The Best of Sherlock Holmes" at , where you will find much more information about material in the sale of Conan Doyle material in May, the sale of "The Sussex Vampire" this month, Conan Doyle manuscripts (Sher- lockian and non-Sherlockian), copies of Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, and much more. The summer issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has another installment in its continuing series of reports on other libraries' special collections: Rebecca Cape's discussion of the Lilly Library at In- diana University, which has a fine collection of Sherlockiana. Plus Chris- topher Roden's warm tribute to the late Richard Lancelyn Green, and the us- ual news from and about the Conan Doyle collection in Toronto. Copies are available from Doug Wrigglesworth, at 16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada . I neglected to report earlier that Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine's editor Janet Hutchings has continued EQMM's pleasant tradition of celebrating the birthday festivities: the Feb. 2004 issue offered a parody by Arthur Porges ("Stately Homes and the Impossible Shot") and Jon L. Breen's "The Jury Box" (with reviews of Sherlockian pastiches), plus an editorial "Happy Birthday" to Holmes. Sonia Fetherston reports that Lord Addison Travel is advertising a guided tour ("Masters of Mystery: On the Trail of the Great Detectives") in Eng- land, Nov. 11-20, devoted to Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Morse, and (of course) Sherlock Holmes; the company is at Box 307, Peter- borough, NH 03458 (800-326-1070) . John McGowan spotted at BBC News story (June 11) about plans by the British Library to put more than a million pages from 19th-century British newspap- ers on-line, providing a data base that will be valuable to Sherlockian and Doylean researchers. The L2 million project will cover a century of images and text from papers no longer protected by copyright and a searchable web- site "is expected to be ready in 18 months' time." Julia Stevenson reports that the Jeremy Brett Memorial Group is planning to petition the Lambeth City Council to establish memorial garden in his honor on Clapham Common; Brett lived in Clapham for many years and 2005 will mark the 10th anniversary of his death. There's more information at a web-site at , and you can sign an on-line petition at . Jun 04 #6 Jean Upton reports that she has written an introduction for a centenary reprint of THE GOLLIWOGG'S CIRCUS (1903), written by Bertha Upton and illustrated by Jean's grandfather's cousin Florence K. Up- ton, who created the Golliwoggs in 1895 (Jean also reports that she discov- ered that Florence was a friend of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, by way of their shared interest in spiritualism, and Dame Jean Conan Doyle recalled having some of the Golliwogg books when she was a child. The reprint is sold by Carlton Ware (Francis Joseph, 5 Southbrook Mews, London, SE12 8LG, England ; L25.00 plus shipping. You can visit Gillette Castle on the web, as well as in Hadlyme, Conn.; the URL is . Click on the "virtual photo tour" and you'll find lots of nice photographs, one of which shows Tyke and Teddie Niver as Mr. and Mrs. Gillette. Bill Barnes reports that The Sydney Passengers plan to celebrate their 20th over the weekend of June 11-13, 2005, and will be honored if visitors from abroad can attend the festivities (tentatively titled "An Excellent Voyage: Twenty Years on the Hotspur"). Additional details are available from Bill (19 Malvern Avenue, Manly NSW 2095, Australia) . Ken Lanza spotted an on-line review at of Sonic Youth's new CD "Sonic Nurse" (released by Geffen Records this month at $13.98); one of the tracks is "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" (according to the review it "uncovers the screaming waves of distortion and amplifier ab- use of the band's glory years, though it settles on a mild-mannered sonic freakout appropriate for the band's mature position in the modern-rock pan- theon.") Of course the band has a web-site, where you can hear a sample of the track . Revolver USA has scheduled a double- LP album to be released on June 28 ($13.00); 2745 16th Street, San Francis- co, CA 94103 . It's not at all clear from the lyrics (available unofficially at a fan web- site) that their Arthur Doyle is our Arthur Conan Doyle. The song was ori- ginally written and performed with the title ("Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream"); interviewed by the New Zealand Herald (June 20), Sonic Youth's guitarist Lee Ranaldo explained that "We had to change the name of the track for the album, we've changed Mariah Carey to Kim Gordon for legal reasons. The song came about at the time when Mariah was being dropped by her record company, Virgin, after they'd spent $80 million to sign her to the label. It's a comment on her as a pop star, but also it has a lot to do with that situation where a label signs an artist that sells 15 million copies of an album, then if the next record only sells five million copies they think the artist is a failure all of a sudden and they give them the boot. It's so ridiculous the way the labels think about this medium that is supposed to be art. It's just so crassly commercial and commodified." The "Ron De Waal Collection of Sherlock Holmes" is being offered for sale for $80,000 from Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore (254 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101 ; according to Tony Weller, there are about 10,000 individual items, and more than 50 cartons of correspond- ence and other files, and a four-page flier with an overall description of the collection is available on request from the bookstore. Jun 04 #7 Further to the report (Apr 04 #2) on the rumor that ITV-1 will broadcast a Sherlock Holmes film starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, BBC-1 will air its own Sherlock Holmes film, starring Rupert Ever- ett and Ian Hart, in its Christmas schedule. The BBC-1 film will be pro- duced by Tiger Aspect from an original story by Allan Cubitt (who wrote the script for the company's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on BBC-1 in 2002); according to the BBC's press release, Cubitt's story "reunites an estranged Holmes and his friend Doctor John Watson in a desperate bid to solve a case which threatens to overwhelm the privilege and tranquility of Edwardian ar- istocratic society," and filming will begin in London in August. The ITV-1 film, with no title yet announced, is to air some time in 2005. "A River Runs By It: Holmes and Doyle in Minnesota" (the conference spons- ored by The Norwegian Explorers and the Arthur Conan Doyle Society in Minn- eapolis on June 11-13) was great fun, with presentations and performances and vending and dining and drinking, and about 125 locals and visitors en- joying the festivities. Georgina Doyle (widow of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's nephew Brigadier John Doyle) was on hand for her first time in the United States to help launch her book OUT OF THE SHADOWS, which tells the story of Conan Doyle's first wife and their children, and there were other new books available (many of which I hope to review as I find time to read them); and there were guided tours of the Sherlock Holmes Collections in the Universi- ty's underground cavern (and an interesting exhibit in the Library); and I won't go into additional detail except to suggest that you should consider attending the next conference in Minneapolis, in 2007. One of the nicer new books unveiled at the conference was THE HORROR OF THE HEIGHTS: A FACSIMILE OF THE AUTHOR'S HOLOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT WITH COMMENTARY; the manuscript is one of the treasures in the Special Collections, and the book offers a facsimile of the manuscript and an annotated transcription of the science-fiction story first published in 1913, with the original color and black-and-white illustrations, and commentary by John Bergquist, Mich- ael Dirda, Philip Bergem, Thomas R. Tietze, and Julie McKuras. The book is available from the Calabash Press (Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada) ; US$45.00/CA$58.00/L27.50 plus postage. The June issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers news from the collections, Julie McKuras' "100 Years Ago" discussion of Bradshaw's, Ray Betzner's "50 Years Ago" tribute to Edward J. Van Liere, and an explan- ation of how Linus came to grace the foyer of the library. The newsletter is available from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . JABBERLAND: A WHIFFLE THROUGH THE TULGEY WOOD OF "JABBERWOCKY" IMITATIONS, by Hilda Bohen, edited by Dayna McCausland, was published in 2002 for the Lewis Carroll Society of Canada, offering more than 200 parodies, pastich- es, burlesques, and imitations of the famous poem that have appeared since 1872. And two of them are Sherlockian, one composed by Ruth Berman and Ron Whyte (1957), and the other by Steve Tolins (1992). The book is available from Dayna McCausland (208 Main Street #321, Erin, ON N0B 1T0, Canada) for $20.00 postpaid (or $22.00 outside North America); Canadian or U.S. dollar checks welcome. Jun 04 #8 The manuscript of "The Sussex Vampire" at auction at Christie's in New York on June 9 (Apr 04 #2) sold for $399,500 (including the buyer's premium), setting a new record for a Sherlockian short story. The record for a Holmes story at auction is $519,500 (for "The Sign of the Four" in 1996); the previous record for a short story was $244,500 (set by "Charles Augustus Milverton", accompanied by Frederic Dorr Steele's origin- al artwork for his portrait of Milverton, in 1999). The American Cinematheque has scheduled a "Sherlock Holmes on Film" series at the Egyptian Theatre (6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood) on July 2- 4, featuring ten films starring Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Nicol Will- iamson, Christopher Plummer, and Robert Stephens . Philip Locke died on Apr. 19. He began his acting career in minor roles on stage at the Royal Court in London in the 1950s, and played major parts at the National Theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and went on to act in films and on television. And he was a splendid Moriarty in the RSC revival of William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" in London, Washington, and New York in 1974 and 1975. It was nice indeed that while he was performing at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Washington Star-News commissioned him to review John Gardner's THE RETURN OF MORIARTY; Locke, writing as Mor- iarty, predicted that Gardner's "fable will do well." Laurie R. King's THE GAME, her latest novel starring Mary Russell and Sher- lock Holmes (Mar 04 #6), has a British edition from Alison & Busby L18.99). The Baker Street Irregulars' weekend expedition to the Valley of Fear (Oct. 22-24) has been fully booked, but additional accommodations have been found and space is again available. There will be distinguished speakers, guided tours with expert guides, entertainment, meals, and an expedition handbook, all for $135 (per person); accommodations cost $250 (per person) for a two- night stay. The festivities are open to all, and you can contact Mary Ann Bradley (7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278) (317-293-2212). The UCLA Film and Television Archive's "12th Festival of Film Preservation" (July 22-Aug. 21 in Los Angeles) will feature two of Basil Rathbone's films on Aug. 6: "The Mark of Zorro" (1940) and "Sherlock Holmes in Washington" (1943); their web-site's as . Forecast: June Thomson's THE SECRET NOTEBOOKS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, from All- ison & Busby in June (L18.99/$25.95); more new pastiches from the unrecord- ed cases. One of the features of the "Footprints of the Hound" conference in Toronto in Oct. 2001 was an excellent performance of Bill Nadel's one-hour adapta- tion of Edith Meiser's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" radio script (origi- nally broadcast by NBC in six 30-minute episodes in 1941); a 65-minute CD is now available from the Friends of the ACD Collection, 15 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Canada for CA$20.00/ US $15.00/L8.00 plus shipping (credit-card orders welcome). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Jul 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The famous (perhaps infamous) "tent joke" still turns up, sometimes in odd places, the most recent odd place being the Ramada Hotel in Belfast, where the Democratic Unionist Party held its annual conference. DUP deputy lead- er Peter Robinson told the joke (citing "The Hound of the Baskervilles") in his address to the conference on May 8; you can read his speech on-line at the DUP web-site . I've published the joke once (Dec 01 #6), from the Reader's Digest (Nov. 1998), and once is enough. Karen Murdock spotted a report about the speech in the Irish Times (May 10). Will Thomas explains that his new mystery novel SOME DANGER INVOLVED (New York: Simon and Schuster/Touchstone, 2004; 304 pp., $22.95) is more an hom- age than a pastiche, with a lead character based on Holmes' rival in "The Retired Colourman" (Cyrus Barker and his apprentice Thomas Llewelyn inves- tigate a murder in Victorian London). Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has published four of Will's Sherlockian poems. Department of Canonical allusions: "If we can establish the facts about the two cigarette-cases, the secret drawer, the telephone conversation and the stolen letter, we're right. Good Lord, that sounds like a list of titles from the old Sherlock Holmes stories. I think part of the charm of those excellent tales lies in Watson's casual but enthralling references to cases we never hear of again." Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, in Ngaio Marsh's DEATH IN A WHITE TIE (1938). Manly Wade Wellman wrote a Sherlockian pastiche in 1941 and contributed to The Baker Street Journal from 1946 to 1953 (becoming a member of The Baker Street Irregulars in 1951), and (with his son Wade Wellman) wrote a series of science fiction stories that were collected as SHERLOCK HOLMES'S WAR OF THE WORLDS (1975). He was a fine writer in other fields (he died in 1986), and there's an excellent web-site maintained by Daniel Ross that's devoted to Wellman's life and work. Further to the item on Sonic Youth's song "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" (Jun 04 #6), the line in the last verse is: "Like Arthur Doyle they can't fake you." And responses to a query to a bulletin board at the group's web-site suggest that the reference is to free-jazz saxophonist Ar- thur Doyle, who was born in Birmingham, Ala., in 1944 and who performs in a style he calls "free jazz soul." As noted earlier (Jun 04 #4), the new issue of SHERLOCK (#60) offers Phil Rickman's article about the Welsh inspiration for "The Hound of the Basker- villes", Peter Lovesey's new (non-Sherlockian) story about Sergeant Cribb. amd David Stuart Davies' report on his visit to the BBC during recording of Bert Coules' new "Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes". SHERLOCK is pub- lished bimonthly, and subscriptions cost L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 conti- nent)/$40.00 (elsewhere); Atlas Publishing Ltd., Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hants. BH24 6QJ, England . And Classic Specialties is the American agent (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) ; credit-card orders are welcomed at both addresses and back issues are available. Jul 04 #2 Maurice Leblanc's ARSENE LUPIN VS. SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE HOLLOW NEEDLE has been published in a new translation by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier (Encino: Black Coat Press, 2004; 261 pp., $20.95), and the book also has Leblanc's short story "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late", an interesting introduction by Kim Newman (author of ANNO DRACULA), and a new pastiche by the Lofficiers about the final encounter between the Gentleman Burglar and the Great Detective. It's nice to see Leblanc's work in print, and there's more to come from the Lofficiers. The publisher has a web-site at , with a link to an interesting French Wold New- town Universe, which expands (in English) on the Wold Newton Universe that Philip Jose Farmer created in the 1970s (and of course it includes Sherlock Holmes); there's also an intriguing (and illustrated) bibliography of Sher- lockian pastiches in French, in books and comics, and on the radio. Philip Jose Farmer also wrote a biography of Tarzan, and (of course) there is a web-site devoted to Edgar Rice Burroughs , where the archives include Stu Shiffman's "Adventure of the Martian Hegira: Fragments from the Barsoomian Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes" in issue 215 of their weekly on-line fanzine. SHERLOCK HOLMES IN BABYLON AND OTHER TALES OF MATHEMATI- CAL HISTORY, edited by Marlow Anderson, et al. (Washing- ton: Mathematical Association of America, 2004; 400 pp., $49.95), has imaginative Sherlockian cover art, but only the artwork and title are Sherlockian. The original ar- ticle appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly (May 1980) and was written by R. Creighton Buck, who started with an explanation: "Let me begin by clarifying the ti- tle 'Sherlock Holmes in Babylon.' Lest some members of the Baker Street Irregulars be misled, my topic is the archaeology of mathematics." And that was (and is) the only mention of Sherlock Holmes in the article and book. Maria Sharapova, the 17-year-old winner of the tennis singles championship at Wimbledon this month, "enjoys reading books in the Sherlock Holmes and Pippi Longstocking series," according to an item noted by Takeshi Shimizu. For completists (or those who haven't yet read the books): Nicholas Meyer's three Sherlockian pastiches have been issued by W. W. Norton in a uniform set of trade paperbacks: THE SEVEN-PER-CENT SOLUTION ($13.00), THE WEST END HORROR ($10.95), and THE CANARY TRAINER ($10.95). Gerald R. Clark died on July 11; he was a former Pinkerton agent and secur- ity guard, and he was the founder, in 1971, of The Mycroft Holmes Society of Syracuse. Joseph A. Kestner, a professor of English at the University of Tulsa, has explored the Canon is SHERLOCK'S MEN: MASCULINITY, CONAN DOYLE, AND CULTURE HISTORY (Jul 98 #1), and in THE EDWARDIAN DETECTIVE, 1901-1915 (Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing, 1999; 416 pp., $89.95) he offers a reminder that many of the Sherlock Holmes stories were written in an Edwardian (rather than a Victorian age), and discusses the cultural aspects of Edwardian attitudes in the works of Conan Doyle and many of his contemporary mystery writers. Jul 04 #3 John Baesch notes that the new mail-order catalog from Antique Hardware & Home (19 Buckingham Plantation Drive, Bluffton, SC 29910 (800-422-9982) offers solid mahogany repli- cas of British telephone booths (in mahogany finish or painted the familiar red) for $899. "It's elementary, Watson!" they exclaim, suggesting you'll be the talk of the town with one of their booths in your game room, office, or restaurant. If you want an authentic cast-iron phone booth, the cost is $7,500. Plus shipping (they weigh about 1,500 pounds). Francine Kitts reports (and recommends) a new Sherlock Holmes Leather Pa- perweight in a catalog from Acorn (5389 East Provident Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45246 (888-870-8047) ; it's 4.25x3.5 in. and weighs one pound, and carries Sherlock Holmes' observation that "The little things are infinitely the most important." It's easy enough to assume that everyone who uses e-mail has discovered one or more aspects of the downside of e-mail, and has become aware of the need for firewalls and filters and such; some Internet Service Providers install filters to block potentially dangerous incoming e-mail, screening messages for indications that the message might be malicious. Recently I sent some- one a message that contained the phrase "at home" and the word "spam", and the recipient's ISP blocked the message, and explained why. Congratulations to forensic toxicologist Marina Stajic (whose Investiture in The Baker Street Irregulars is "Curare"), on her appointment by Governor George E. Pataki to the N.Y. State Com- mission on Forensic Science; the commission sets accreditation criteria for all the public forensic laboratories in the state. The photograph shows Marina and the governor at the BSI's ann- ual dinner in 1999. Thierry Saint-Joanis, as Mycroft's Brother Editions, published Jean-Pierre Cagnat's fine IT IS ALWAYS A JOY...TO ME TO MEET AN AMERICAN, A BRITON, A JAPANESE, A CANADIAN, A SWISS... (Feb 01 #1) (still available at E36.00), he also offers Richard L. Boyer's LE RAT GEANT DE SUMATRA (a translation of Boyer's 1976 pastiche) (E18.00), and Bernard Oudin's new SHERLOCK HOLMES ET LA SUFFRAGETTE AMOUREUSE (a collection of seven pastiches) (E18.00). Ship- ping costs are extra, and more information is available at his web-site at ; his postal address is 2 impasse de la Serre - Saint-Julien, 63320 Montaigut-le-Blanc, France. Ken Lanza has reported that "Hands of a Murder" (1990) was released on DVD by Wellspring Media on July 20 ($24.98); the film starred Edward Woodward (Holmes), John Hillerman (Watson), and Anthony Andrews (Moriarty), and the script was written by Charles Edward Pogue. The Sherlock Holmes Society of London is planning to make another pilgrim- age to Switzerland in June 2005, in costume and in character, with a "very exciting and varied programme (interspersed with a number of serious crimes as well as some startling surprises)." More information is available from Judi Ellis (13 Crofton Avenue, Orpington, Kent BR6 8DU, England) and at the society's web-site . Jul 04 #4 There's yet another edition of THE SIGN OF FOUR (Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2001; 167 pp., $7.95), with scattered annota- tions in the text and a striking cover photograph showing "Some members of Hodson's Horse Brigade, a mixed troop of Indian and British soldiers, 1857" (Hodson's Horse was raised at Delhi in 1857 during the Sepoy rebellion, and fought at Lucknow, both cities being mentioned in the story); it is obvious from the photograph the Hodson's men were not to be trifled with. Some interesting Conan Doyle material was auctioned at Sotheby's in London on July 8. There were three lots with manuscript material sent to travel writer Douglas Sladen, two related to Conan Doyle's visit to Egypt in 1895- 1896 (one of them a letter in which he mentions finding his "little holmes stories" translated into Arabic for use by the Egyptian police) and a third with an eight-page lecture in which he discusses his early career and lit- erary influences, and explains why he stopped writing the Sherlock Holmes stories. It is easy to see how important Sherlockian content can be in valuing Conan Doyle's letters: the first (non-Sherlockian) lot (four pages) was estimated at L1,000-1,500 and brought L1,320 (including the buyer's premium), and the second Egyptian lot (three pages), estimated at L800-1,200, brought L2,160. The third lot (the lecture), estimated at L5,000-7,000, sold for L16,800. And there was a miscellaneous lot that included a pen-and- ink caricature by James Frank Sullivan (1853-1936) showing Sherlock Holmes with a dressing gown and an extremely large pipe; if anyone can identify when and where the caricature was published, please let me know. The estimate on the lot was L900-1,200, and it did not sell. Jo Soares' pastiche O XANGO DE BAKER STREET was published in Portuguese in Brazil in 1995 (Feb 96 #4), and in other languages, including (eventually) English in 1997 as A SAM- BA FOR SHERLOCK (Dec 97 #4). The story brings Holmes and Watson to Rio de Janeiro to investigate the disappearance of a valuable Stradivarius during Sarah Bernhardt's first visit to the city; the book's a thriller and a parody, and its humor is broad, often vulgar, and sometimes quite dark. A film based on the book was released in Brazil and Portugal in 2001, played briefly at a film festival in New York in 2002, and at long last it's available on DVD (NTSC, region 4 only), in Portuguese, with English sub-titles, from Diabol- ik: Demented Discs from the World Over (Box 8913, Collingswood, NJ 08108) for $24.99 plus shipping; thanks to Don Pollock for identifying a reliable source for the DVD. Region 4 is South America, and region 4 DVDs won't run on standard U.S. (region 1) DVD players. But: re- gion 4 DVDs play easily on most (if not all) computer DVD drives. Production on a new Canadian version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" be- gan on July 4, with Anthony D. P. Mann as Holmes and Bill Morrow as Watson. The film is scheduled for release later this year on VHS and DVD, and there is a web-site with more information, and a photograph of the company at work in Kingston City Hall (substituting for the parlor at Baskerville Hall). Jul 04 #5 The BBC has released five of its 1960s television programs with Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock on three DVDs, with "The Hound of the Baskervilles", "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", and "The Sign of Four" and "The Blue Carbuncle" (L9.99 each); there's also a boxed set (L24.99). The DVDs are made for region 2 (Europe and Japan), but you ought to be able to play them on any computer DVD drive. The BBC has a web-site at . Scott Monty reports that The Bull-Terrier Club will visit Newport, R.I., on Sept. 4 to watch an international polo match (USA vs. England) and to toast all the polo players mentioned in the Canon; tailgating begins at 3:00, and the match at 5:00 . You can call Scott (617- 464-4153) for more information. Scott also notes that the Meridian Hotel in Boston is now part of the Lang- ham chain . The King of Bohemia was one of three people named in the Canon who stayed at the Langham in London. The Postal Service has honored R. Buckminster Fuller as "an inventor, architect, engineer, designer, geometrician, car- tographer, and philosopher," with a portrait by Boris Artzy- basheff (first published on the cover of the Jan. 10, 1964, issue of Time magazine) that has Fuller's head in the patt- ern of a geodesic dome (perhaps the best known of his many inventions). Bucky Fuller was a protege and good friend of Christopher Morley in the 1930s, and a member of the Three Hours for Lunch Club, the Grillparzer Sittenpolitzeiverein, and The Baker Street Irregulars. Jennie Paton has reported that "The Name of the Rose" (1986) was released on DVD by Warner Home Video on July 6 ($19.98); the film starred Sean Conn- ery (William of Baskerville) and Christian Slater (Adso of Melk), and the disk has added commentary, a making-of featurette, and other features. There's a new addition to the list of languages into which Sherlock Holmes stories have been translated: 'O CUNTO D' 'O CHIRCHIO RUSSO' is a transla- tion into Neapolitan of "The Adventure of the Red Circle" (the Camorra were and still are based in Naples) by Roberto d'Ajello. Uno Studio in Holmes has published the story in a 93-page book that also contains "L'Avventura del Cerchio Rosso" (an Italian translation by Gianluca Salvatori) and the text in the original English. Copies can be ordered from Dott. Gabriele Mazzoni, C.P. 672, I-50053 Empoli (FI), Italy; $18.00 postpaid (in curren- cy, please), or via PayPal to Gianluca . A few years ago HarperCollins issued three sets of stories read by Christo- pher Lee: THE ADVENTURE OF THE SUSSEX VAMPIRE AND OTHER STORIES [SUSS/SHOS/ ILLU/VEIL] on two cassettes (L10.99), THE ADVENTURE OF THE LION'S MANE AND OTHER STORIES [LION/3GAR/THOR/RETI] on two cassettes (L10.99), and THE CASE BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES [BLAN/CREE/MAZA/3GAB] on two cassettes (L10.99) and two CDs (L12.99); Phil Attwell reports that the sets are now discounted at L5.99 (cassettes) and L6.49 (CDs) at . Christopher Lee has an excellent reading voice, and has been a fine Holmes on film and television (as well as playing Sir Henry Baskerville and Mycroft Holmes). Jul 04 #6 Further to the mention of Philip Locke's review (as Moriarty, when he was playing Moriarty) of John Gardner's THE RETURN OF MORIARTY (Jun 04 #8), Lenny Picker had heard from Gardner that "plans are well advanced for doing the third Moriarty," and that he should be start- ing the book toward the end of next year. Roger Johnson offers an addition to the list of actors who have played both Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade (Jun 04 #2): Donald Gee was Sherlock Holmes in Conan Doyle's "The Speckled Band" at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1977, and Lestrade (with Clive Merrison as Holmes) in broadcasts in the BBC Radio 4 series from 1990 to 1993. "Chinese Cartoonist Sues Nike" was the headline on a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on July 16. Cartoonist Zhu Zhiqiang (known as Xiaoxiao on the Internet) has filed a lawsuit against Nike de- manding 2 million yuan ($240,000) and a public ap- ology for copying his "Little Match Man" artwork in their worldwide "Creativity in Sports" television advertising campaign. According to China Daily, Nike's lawyer Zhang Zaiping told the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court that Zhu's artwork is not protected by copy- right because it lacks originality; "From murals and stone paintings in an- cient times to Sherlock Holmes stories, the logo has been used repeatedly," Zhang explained. See above for a sample of Zhu's "Little Match Man". NO ORDINARY TERROR, by J. Brooks Van Dyke (Dallas: Durban House, 2004; 314 pp., $15.95); Richard and Emma Watson, twin children of Dr. John H. Watson (she's also a doctor, in practice with her father) investigate an Edwardian espionage mystery set before World War I. Mycroft is involved, and so is a second-generation Inspector Gordon Lestrade. The author has a web-site at . Stephen Clarkson's FIRST MAGAZINE APPEARANCES OF THE SHERLOCK HOLMES STOR- IES offers his research into the priority of the British and American maga- zines that published the Canonical tales; the 24-page pamphlet is available from Steve (91 Haven Lane, Berkeley Springs, WV 25411); $5.00 postpaid. Abbey National has agreed to be taken over by Spain's largest bank, Banco Santander Central Hispanico, in a deal estimated at L8.5 billion. The new offer is less than half of the L18 billion offered by Lloyds TSB in 2001, in an attempted takeover that was blocked by the British government as an- ticompetitive. There have been press reports that other banks, including Citigroup and Lloyds, TSB may now enter the bidding. Abbey National closed its headquarters in Baker Street some months ago; letters sent to Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street now are being answered by the Sherlock Holmes Museum (Apr 04 #5). Thanks to John Baesch and Bob Katz for noting the lat- est news about Abbey. News from Britain: a new dramatization (by Clive Francis) of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" will be directed by Richard Baron at the Nottingham Play- house from Sept. 4 to Sept. 25, and at the Salisbury Playhouse from Sept. 30 to Oct. 23. According to the Nottingham Playhouse web-site, there will be "four actors each taking on the pivotal roles of Holmes and Watson." Jul 04 #7 Georgina Doyle's OUT OF THE SHADOWS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE'S FIRST FAMILY is an excellent and invaluable addi- tion to the biographies of Conan Doyle. Georgina is the widow of Brigadier John Doyle, son of Conan Doyle's brother Innes, and her father and Georgina were close friends of Conan Doyle's daughter Mary. Other biographers have paid far more attention to Conan Doyle's second wife and family than to his first, but Georgina, using her husband's diaries, correspondence, and fami- ly photographs, offers an intriguing view of Conan Doyle's life and career, and the complicated, and sometimes antagonistic, interactions between Lady Doyle and her step-children, and then between Mary and Denis, Adrian, and Jean. There's also new and interesting information about the Doyle, Foley, and Hawkins families, and helpful family trees for all the family branches. The book is available from the Calabash Press (Box 1360, Ashcroft, BC V0K 1A0, Canada) ; US$42.00/CA$55.00/L25.00 (cloth) plus postage, or US$25.00/CA$35.00/L15.00 (paper) plus postage. THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2003 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003; 328 pp., $27.50 cloth, $13.00 paper), edited by Michael Connelly and Otto Penz- ler, contains 20 fine stories, including Daniel Stashower's "The Adventure of the Agitated Actress" (reprinted from MURDER, MY DEAR WATSON: NEW TALES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES). The world celebrated the centenary of "Bloomsday" on June 16, and the Irish post office issued two stamps honoring James Joyce and ULYSSES (one of them with a striking portrait photograph taken by Constantine Curran in 1904). Hugh Kenner and William D. Jenkins have reported on the many allusions to the Sherlock Holmes stor- ies in Joyce's works, and the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY notes one of them (from ULYSSES): "He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and Sherlock-holmesing him up." The May issue of The Holmes & Watson Report offers editor Brad Keefauver's thoughts about how one might read the Canon if one knew it would be for the last time, and David F. Morrill's review of "The Loss of a Personal Friend" (1987), which may be a record-holder: a film that's been seen by the fewest Sherlockians. $16.00 a year (for six issues) or $22.00 outside North Amer- ica, or $3.00 for one issue, from Brad Keefauver (4009 North Chelsea Place, Peoria, IL 61614). Plan ahead: Ken Ludwig's play "Postmortem" (a murder mystery set at William home in Connecticut, with Gillette doing the detecting) is scheduled at the Curtain Call Theatre (210 Old Loudon Road, Latham, NY 12110) (518-877-7529) in 2005, from Mar. 4 to Apr. 9; thanks to Ken Lanza for the news. Ted Friedman spotted Jeremy Brett in "Macbeth" (one of a nine-play series produced in the 1980s and available on DVD). Brett played Macbeth, with Piper Laurie as Lady Macbeth and Simon MacCorkindale as Macduff; "Macbeth" (1981) was released on DVD by Image Entertainment (Ted found it in his lo- cal library, but it's available for sale at web-sites). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Aug 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press There are many Sherlockians who remember the excitement during the Christ- mas season of 1967, when William S. Baring-Gould's THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES appeared in the book stores, and I'm sure there will be similar at- tention paid to Leslie S. Klinger's THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES this coming Christmas season. W. W. Norton was sufficiently impressed by Les' continuing work on his SHERLOCK HOLMES REFERENCE SERIES to commission a new version intended for the general public, and the new version is impressive indeed, offering the same overall format as Baring-Gould's work, with anno- tations and illustrations, but covering an additional 37 years of Sherlock- ian scholarship, and with a different arrangement: two volumes, with all of the short stories and a total of more than 1900 pages, will be published in November ($75.00), and a third volume, with the long stories, is due next year. There's a fine introduction by John le Carre, and Les' own excellent exploration of the world of Sherlock Holmes (and Conan Doyle, and the Sher- lockians). Les modestly suggests that "this is not a work for the serious student of Arthur Conan Doyle," but he's seriously wrong: you may think you know it all, but you'll find that you don't, and I recommend the NEW ANNO- TATED to everyone. You can read much more about the new work at Les' web- site , where there's also a schedule of his appear- ances on tour coast-to-coast in November and December. Forge/Tom Doherty Associates have begun their paperback reissues of Carole Nelson Douglas' series about Irene Adler, with new titles and uniform cover artwork by Glenn Harrington, offering Carole an opportunity for minor revi- sions to make the series' time-line more consistent: ANOTHER SCANDAL IN BO- HEMIA (formerly IRENE'S LAST WALTZ) was published in Jan. 2003, and THE AD- VENTURESS (formerly GOOD MORNING, IRENE) in Dec. 2003. Ken Lanza spotted a review in Scotland on Sunday (July 25) of PABLO NERUDA: A PASSION FOR LIFE, a new biography by Adam Feinstein (London: Bloomsbury, 2004; 544 pp., L25.00) (there's an American edition from Bloomsbury USA); Neruda, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 for his poetry, was born Ricardo Reyes, and at the age of 16, when he wrote his earliest poems, adopted a pseudonym, taking his surname from the violinist Wilhelmina Nor- man-Neruda, who is mentioned in "A Study in Scarlet". Further to reports that Stephen Fry will star as Sherlock Holmes in an ITV "Sherlock Holmes" television film, and speculation that Fry is too heavy to play the part effectively, the Sun has reported (July 16) that Fry has pur- chased a running machine so that he can slim down for the role. But he had yet to try out the machine: "It's out of the box," he explained, "but I am going to see a doctor to see how much I can do." Michael Meer has reported on his visit to the Dia:Beacon Museum in Beacon, N.Y., which has an installation by German artist Hanne Darboven that (ac- cording to the catalog) weaves together "cultural, social, and historical references with autobiographical documents." It includes displays of film stars, and the film stars include Rathbone and Bruce, captioned as Holmes and Watson (all the other films stars are captioned with their names). The museum's web-site is at . And Michael notes that Beacon is not far from Poughkeepsie, home of The Hudson Valley Sciontists. Aug 04 #2 "Conan Doyle Comes Home to Portsmouth" was the headline on the Portsmouth City Council's press release announcing that Richard Lancelyn Green's collection has been bequeathed to Portsmouth. Richard's will stipulated that the collection should be kept together, and he wanted it offered first to Portsmouth. The books and printed material will go to the Central Library, and the artifacts to the City Museum. Richard's bro- ther Scirard said that "It's truly fitting that Richard's life work should go to Portsmouth. Conan Doyle wrote the first two Sherlock Holmes stories there, so in some way his work is going home. Richard would have been very pleased that Portsmouth is the final resting place for his eclectic and am- azing collection." Ken Lanza noted a review of A MOMENT ON THE EDGE: 100 YEARS OF CRIME STOR- IES BY WOMEN, edited by Elizabeth George (New York: HarperCollins, 2004; 560 pp., $24.95); the stories include Gillian Linscott's "A Scandal in Win- ter" (reprinted from HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS). The eight "historical" masks (includ- ing a Sherlock Holmes mask) (see Aug 03 #5) are still available for $19.95 plus shipping, from HearthSong (item 710564); Box 1050, Madison, VA 22727) (800-533-4397) . Bud Livingston has reported an adver- tisement for Thomas Wheeler's THE AR- CANUM (New York: Bantam, 2004; 336 pp., $22.00); "1919, New York City: With body after mutilated body discovered in the Bowery, an alliance of investi- gators known as the Arcanum--including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--takes matt- ers into its own hands to thwart an unnamed evil." Jane Hoffman died on July 26. She made her Broadway debut in 1940, and was a founding member of the Actors Studio; she also appeared in many films and television programs, and was the 2nd Telephone Operator in "They Might Be Giants" (1971). If don't have anything in Mongolian in your collection of translations of the Sherlock Holmes stories, there are two volumes available from The Mon- golia Society (322 Goodbody Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 STORIES ABOUT SHERLOCK HOLMES, BOOK 6 [FIVE/SPEC /ABBE] and BOOK 7 [DANC/CROO/SECO]; $30.00 each plus shipping (credit-card orders welcome). Andrea Plunket, who was Andrea Reynolds when she (and her husband Sheldon Reynolds) controlled the Sherlock Holmes copyrights (which were eventually recovered by Dame Jean Conan Doyle) continues to claim control of the char- acters but has now had a third judge summarily dismiss a third lawsuit she has filed against people and companies that have ignored her demands. The most recent suit was against USA Cable over their television film "Case of Evil" (2002); the court granted summary judgement in favor of USA Cable in June, and awarded attorneys' fees to USA Cable, and ruling that it was "ob- jectively unreasonable" for the lawsuit to have been filed invoked a "rule 11" sanction that made Andrea's attorney also liable for USA Cable's fees. Aug 04 #3 Hardcover Theater will present "Sherlock Holmes: Murder at the Abbey Grange" (a new adaptation by Mark Steven Jensen) at the Minneapolis Theatre Garage on Aug. 7-14, according to Julie McKuras. The box office address is 711 West Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55405 (612- 604-4466) . Further to the item (Jan 04 #4) on the East Lynne Theater Company's staged readings of Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" during the "Sherlock Holmes Week- ends" in Cape May, N.J., the weekends also offer S'ian mysteries written by John Pekich that are solved by participants with the assistance of Sherlock Holmes (played by Jeff Craig). The next weekends are Nov. 5-7, and on Mar. 4-6 and Nov. 4-6, 2005. Additional information is available from the Mid- Atlantic Center for the Arts, Box 340, Cape May, NJ 08204 (800-275-4278) . Eugene Roche died on July 28. He began his acting career on radio at the age of 15, and went on to character work, with a long list of credits on stage, screen, and television; and he played a policeman in "They Might Be Giants" (1971). The web-site at offers an interesting look at what can be done with computers. "WordCount is an artistic experiment in the way we use language. It presents the 86,800 most frequently used English words, ranked in order of commonality," according to the web-site. You will find "sherlock" at 19364, just after "deformation" and just before "expertly". "holmes" is 7677, "watson" is 6308, and "moriarty" is 49311. "scuttlebutt" (alas) "is currently not in the archive." Add The Occupants of the Empty House to the list of Sherlockian societies that have indexed their journals: THE CAMDEN HOUSE JOURNAL INDEX 1979-2003, edited by William R. Cochran, covers 25 years of monthly issues, indexed by author and subject. There are 63 pages, with essays about society founder Newt Williams and other editors, and it's available from Stan Tinsley (Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999); $23.95 postpaid (checks payable to The Occupants of the Empty House, please). Birlstone Manor is in a film (again); the first film was "The Draughtsman's Contract" (1982), and the second one is "The Four Feathers" (2002), based on A. E. W. Mason's novel and starring Heath Ledger, Wes Bentley, and Kate Hudson. The scenes at Jack Durrance's country home, where he recovers from his wounds, were shot on location at Groombridge Place (on which Sir Arthur modeled Birlstone Manor in "The Valley of Fear"). The film aired on Show- time cable in July, and on The Movie Channel in August; it's also available on DVD, and presumably will be broadcast by a network eventually. If you have been one of those complaining that the U.S. Postal Service has not issued a stamp honoring Sherlock Holmes, you now have an opportunity to fill that gap: the USPS has authorized Stamps.com to create personalized postage for anyone who sends in a digitzed photo. It's not cheap, since a sheet of 20 37c stamps costs $16.99 (and shipping costs $2.99 per order). And there are some restrictions: no politics, violence, obscenity, or trademark infringement, and users are required by law to own the rights to or to obtain permission to use any image to create postage. Aug 04 #4 Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (2003) was a best-selling first novel, and it has drawn a great deal of attention to Asperger syndrome (according to Mel Gussow's story in the Aug. 3 issue of the N.Y. Times, a form of high-functioning autism char- acterized by obsessive behavior, brilliance in some areas, and social inep- titude). And Sherlock Holmes is the favorite author of Christopher Boone, the book's protagonist. Some Sherlockians (and non-Sherlockians) have dis- cussed whether Sherlock Holmes had Asperger syndrome, and psychiatrist Oli- ver Sacks (who has written widely on medical subjects), queried by Gussow, said that "There is a strange constellation of characters whom we now call Asperger's people. It's reasonable to see Holmes in that direction." David Raksin died on Aug. 9. He worked as a musician in Philadelphia, and in 1935 moved to Hollywood to work with Charlie Chapin on "Modern Times", and went on to write music for more than 400 films and television series. Nominated for two Academy Awards, he is best remembered for his score for "Laura" (1944); he also wrote original music for "The Hound of the Basker- villes" (1939) and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (1939). There are nice Sherlockian (and Watsonian) touches in Jeffrey Deaver's "The Westphalian Ring" in the September-October issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. George Bernard Shaw once suggested that "England and America are two coun- tries divided by a common language," and the Canon offers occasional exam- ples of words and phrases that don't mean the same thing on different sides of the Atlantic (John Bennett Shaw's liked to cite "knocked up"). The sec- ond edition of Mike Etherington's THE VERY BEST OF BRITISH: AN AMERICAN'S GUIDE TO SPEAKING BRITISH was published in 2000; it's now available on-line at , and it's both educational and amusing. Stephen Kempski has noted that Edward R. Hamilton (Falls Village, CT 06031- 5000) offers a wide range of remaindered and dis- counted books, including at least a dozen paperback pastiches published by Breese Books, discounted to $3.95 from $12.95. Al Gregory notes that the television series "Fawlty Towers" may be unique in that all of its stars have appeared in at least one Sherlockian produc- tion: John Cleese (Basil) in "The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It" (1977), Prunella Scales (Sibyl) in Peter Cook's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1978), Connie Booth (Polly) in "The Strange Case of Civilization as We Know It" (1977), Andrew Sachs (Manuel) in Clive Merri- son's BBC Radio 4 series, Ballard Berkley (Major Gowen) in Peter Cushing's BBC-1 "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1968). Can anyone cite another can- didate? Karen Murdock noted a story in the Townsville Bulletin (July 30) about "The Paddy in Oz" held at the University of Southern Queensland, July 12-17 (the name of the stage and film-fighting workshop honors Patrick "Paddy" Crean, who was Errol Flynn's choreographer and stunt double); one of the features of the workshop was an exhibition of bartitsu, described by fighting-styles designer Tony Wolfe as "the art of defending oneself while twirling one's moustache." The article noted the connection with Conan Doyle and baritsu. Aug 04 #5 "Let us accept, until proven otherwise, that bin Laden is what he seems--a worthy and dangerous foe--and agree with what Mr. Holmes told Dr. Watson, that eliminating all other options, 'Whatever re- mains however improbable must be the truth." Spotted by Sam Fry in IMPER- IAL HUBRIS: WHY THE WEST IS LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR, by Anonymous (Dulles: Brassey's, 2004; 309 pp., $27.50); the author is Michael Scheuer, a veteran CIA employee whose first book was THROUGH OUR ENEMIES' EYES: OSAMA BIN LAD- EN, RADICAL ISLAM, AND THE FUTURE OF AMERICA (2002). Edinburgh plans to ask UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) for the agency's first award of the title "world city of literature", according to reports in the Scottish press this month. The city cites writers past (Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) and present (Alexander McCall Smith, J. K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh, and Dame Muriel Spark, and economics experts have estimated that UNESCO recognition would be worth L2.2 million in extra bus- iness to the city. The award would come from the Global Alliance for Cul- tural Diversity, which was launched by UNESCO in 2002 "to reinforce cultur- al industries in developing countries and countries in transition while im- proving the protection of intellectual property rights." And at the end of 2003 the Alliance reported its first results: promoting Algeria's book pol- icy and strengthening its publishing sector, boosting the music industry in Jamaica, helping to market hand-woven items from Tibet abroad, making small Central American publishers more competitive, and creating new musical pro- duction standards in Africa. Edinburgh's backers hope that the new award (for cities that "celebrate and extend their literary culture and share it with others") might help the city be the site for future award ceremonies of the Whitbread and Booker prizes and the Nobel Prize for Literature. Peter Woodthorpe died on Aug. 12. His acting career spanned four decades, and he was seen as the pathologist Max in the "Inspector Morse" television series, and as Wilson Kemp in "The Greek Interpreter" in the Peter Cushing television series broadcast by BBC-1 in 1968. Patrick Anderson reviewed Denise Mina's new thriller DECEPTION in the Wash- ington Post on Aug. 30, mentioning Sherlock Holmes in the review, but also reminded readers that "last week I questioned whether it is truly possible for someone, using only his or her tongue and teeth, to tie a cherry-stem into a knot." Readers were quick to assure him that the feat is no urban legend, and "a Sherlock Holmes fan in Nashville reports that 'a nationally recognized Sherlockian scholar' once demonstrated her cherry-stem skills at a Sherlockian convention in St. Louis." The "Sherlock Holmes fan in Nash- ville" is as yet unidentified, and the talented female Sherlockian scholar as well, but an investigation is underway, and there may or may not be more to report in the next issue. Of course tying a knot in a cherry-stem is elementary, compared to a more difficult feat: you put a skein of thread and a packet of sewing needles in your mouth, chew thoroughly, and then slowly pull the end of the thread out of your mouth with all the needles threaded on it. That's what Harry Hou- dini did, and if you think Houdini didn't really thread those needles using only his tongue and teeth, then perhaps you might not believe those cherry stems get tied using only tongue and teeth. Aug 04 #6 Further to the report (Jun 04 #7) on BBC-1 plans for a Sherlock Holmes film starring Rupert Everett and Ian Hart, Rupert told a columnist for The Independent (Aug. 24) that he "won't wear a deerstalker or smoke a pipe. The deerstalker is never mentioned in the books. It was invented by the actor Basil Rathbone, and now I'm taking it away and going for a mysterious and moody Holmes." The new film (now called "The Return of Sherlock Holmes") is in production; Everett and Hart filmed their first scenes on Aug. 22 at Greenwich Naval College in London. Ken Lanza has noted a new "Sherlock Holmes Action Figure" in the "Action Hero" series from Archie McPhee & Co. (Box 3852, Seattle, WA 98113 (425-349-3009) ; it's 5.25" tall, with removable magnifying glass and deerstalker, and it costs $8.95 postpaid (item 11360). "A Thousand Italian Exclamations!!!" is the title of the next presentation by Mycroft's League, at Maggiano's Restaurant in Philadelphia on Oct. 9. There will be cocktails at 11:30 am, followed by an Italian luncheon and a program devoted to the Italian aspects of the Canon; the proceedings are expected to end at 4:00 pm. The deadline for reservations is Oct. 2, and additional information is offered by Gideon D. Hill (215-887-8110) e-mail . Gideon also plans for a theater party on Sept. 19 to attend a matinee performance of Charles Marowitz's play "Sher- lock's Last Case" at the Stagecrafters in Philadelphia; contact Gideon for details. And if you can't join the theater party, the play will open on Sept. 17 and close on Oct. 2; the theater is at 8130 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118 (215-247-8881) . First performed as a one- act play in London in 1974, it was expanded into a two-act play produced in Los Angeles in 1984, and Frank Langella played the title role in Washington and New York in 1987; it's billed as a comic thriller, and it offers plenty of surprises as well as dark comedy. And yes, this issue of my newsletter is a bit late, because I was in south- western England at the end of August, visiting Dartmoor for the first time (kindly guided and driven by local expert Shirley Purves), visiting Sabine Baring-Gould's home at Lew Trenchard (they served a spectacular Devonshire clotted cream ice cream for dessert at lunch), and Cornwall to see Tintagel (non-Sherlockian, but for those who fondly remember the film "Excalibur", that's where Uther Pendragon, fully armored, had his way with Igraine and fathered the legendary Arthur), and Bath (where one might recall the tales Conan Doyle told of Roman legions), and Longleat, where the four-poster bed in the Chinese Bedroom was used by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree in his produc- tion of Shakespeare's "King John" in 1899, and a peignoir that's tastefully displayed at the foot of a bed once owned by Lillie Langtry (Sir Herbert, who once discussed with Conan Doyle the possibility of a dramatization of Sherlock Holmes, was the grandfather of Virginia Parsons, the mother of the present 7th Marquess of Bath). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Sep 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press The Practical, But Limited, Geologists will meet for drinks and dinner, to honor the world's first forensic geologist, at 7:00 pm on Nov. 10, at Dix- on's Downtown Grill in Denver during the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. We traditionally discourage scholarly papers, quizzes, and slide shows, and our agenda consists entirely of toasts (some scholar- ly, but many not). The restaurant is at 1600 16th Street, and locals and visitors are welcome. Something to look for, for those who admire the animations of "A Study in Scarlet", "The Sign of Four", and "The Hound of the Baskervilles" produced in Australia and release by Burbank films in 1985 (with Peter O'Toole pro- viding the voice of Sherlock Holmes): all three stories (adapted by Nigel Flynn and Richard Widdows, with artwork from the films) were collected in THE ILLUSTRATED SHERLOCK HOLMES (London: MMB/Multimedia Books, 1993), and the book turns up from used-book dealers. "You don't read Holmes for the plots. These are not Agatha Christie, these are not brain-twisting mysteries. Unless you're 12 years old, you'll prob- ably figure out the mystery in the first four pages." Leslie S. Klinger, author of THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES, interviewed by Lenny Picker in Publishers Weekly (Sept. 6). And the magazine ran a starred review, indi- cating "a book of outstanding quality." Roger Johnson notes Rod Baser's web-site , which offers an interesting look at his research on "Sherlock Holmes in In- dia"; he will be returning to India this winter to finalize plans for the guided tour scheduled for October 2005. "Finding Neverland" (the new and final title for the film "J. M. Barrie's Neverland") premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Sept. 8, and received excellent reviews; it's the story of how J. M. Barrie was inspired to write "Peter Pan" and it will be released in the U.S. by Miramax on Nov. 12. The film stars Johnny Depp as Barrie, Ian Hart as Conan Doyle, Dustin Hoffman as Charles Frohman, Julie Christie and Kate Winslett. Meredith Henderson, who starred in "The Adventures of Shirley Holmes" for three seasons Canadian television, from 1997 to 2000 1997 (Shirley was the great-grandniece of Sherlock Holmes), went on to guest star in series that included "Queer As Folk" and "The Eleventh Hour" and she has now been cast as superstar Shania Twain in a CBC biography that began shooting this month but my not air until late next year. The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection are continuing their ann- ual Cameron Hollyer Memorial Lectures: Dan Posnansky is their guest speaker this year, on the topic of "collecting" (about which he has some delightful tales to tell), at 4:00 pm on October 23, at the Elizabeth Beeton Auditor- ium in the Metro Toronto Reference Library (no charge for admission). And as usual The Bootmakers of Toronto plan to gather for an informal supper at 6:00 pm at the Red Lion Pub not far from the library; you can rsvp for the supper to Karen Campbell (235 Bloor Street East #919, Toronto, ON M4W 3Y3, Canada) (415-924-1487) . Sep 04 #2 The new edition of MS. HOLMES OF BAKER STREET, by C. Alan Brad- ley and William A. S. Sarjeant (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2004; 205 pp., $34.95) has a new introduction by Barbara Roden and a new afterword by Alan Bradley that explains the history of a book that was received in the Sherlockian world with outrage or admiration, and occasion- ally both, when it first appeared in 1989. The authors carefully examined the Canon, and present evidence that Holmes was female, twice pregnant, and possibly once a mother. It is a delight to see their conclusions in print again (Bill Sarjeant called the book ultimate heresy, and was as proud of it as any of his scholarly geological publications). Sherlock Hound (the famous dog detective) and Dr. WhatsUp Wombat (his loyal friend) are featured in THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING NECKLACE, written by Karen Wallace and illustrated by Emma Damon, pub- lished by Scholastic Ltd. in Britain in 2002 (48 pp., L3.99); there were three other titles in the series (all 2002): THE CASE OF THE HOWLING ARMOUR, THE CASE OF THE GIANT GULPING BLUEBELLS, and THE CASE OF THE FIENDISH DANCING FOOTPRINTS. THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING NECKLACE was published by Scholastic in the U.S. this year, with THE CASE OF THE HOWLING ARMOR to follow; they're "only available for distribution through the school market" here, so you'll need to find a cooperative teacher, or order from Britain (all four titles are listed at . Dante Torrese notes that The Biblical Archaeology Review (Sept.-Oct.) has recognized "Sherlock Holmes, Paleographer" as the world's first manuscript sleuth (with a photograph of Clive Brook). Douglas Warren died on Jan. 19. He was a military and then a civil engin- eer (when he retired in 1974 the Dudley Council named a street in Sedgly in his honor), He was also an early member of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, and contributed to The Sherlock Holmes Journal and other S'ian pub- lications, and lectured about Holmes widely and often in the Midlands. "Do you know the exact difference between a mystery story and a detective story?" a mystery reviewer for the N.Y. Herald Tribune once wrote. "Are you aware that such and such a tale--let's call it 'The Haunted Tooth'-- even though it contains a certified sleuth hot on the trail of the missing emeralds, is not properly a detective story at all, but should be classi- fied as a mystery, genus B, subspecies 3-x? Or don't you go in for that sort of fine distinctions? Neither do I." The reviewer was the delightful American humorist Will Cuppy, and the quote is the opening paragraph to his introduction to WORLD'S GREAT MYSTERY STORIES (1943); Cuppy also edited the anthology, and Conan Doyle is represented, not by a Sherlock Holmes story, but by "The Fiend of the Cooperage". SHADOWS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (Ware: Wordworth Classics, 1998) is a 378-page anthology of 19 stories written by Conan Doyle's predecessors and success- ors, from Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins to E. W. Hornung and Baroness Orczy, selected by David Stuart Davies, who also contributed a perceptive introduction; it's still in print, at L1.50 from . Sep 04 #3 Further to the item (Aug 04 #3) about scenes filmed at Groom- bridge Place in "The Four Feathers" (2002), yet another film is being made featuring the house on which Conan Doyle modeled Birlstone Manor (in "The Valley of Fear"): a new dramatization of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", scheduled for release next year, with Keira Knightley (Eliza- beth Bennett), Donald Sutherland (Mr. Bennett), and Dame Judi Dench (Lady Catherine de Bourgh). Working Title's location manager said "the house has immense charm and the landscape seems to merge seamlessly with it," and the company filmed there in July and August. "That's Elementary, My Dear Joe" is the mot- to on the Cinnamon Schoolbook Cookies avail- able at Trader Joe's grocery stores; Connie and Betty Berdan enjoy the alphabet cookies, their father Mike reports. "As a kid, I was a Holmes fan. I wanted to know what makes the puzzle work," Gary Sin- ise told James Brady (Parade magazine, Sept. 12). Sinise (who stars in the CBS-TV spin- off "CSI: New York") told Brady that "CSI" a powerful television franchise because of "the stylishness of the show, the writing, the cast, and the Sherlock Holmes element." But he didn't mention any plans for a "CSI: Baker Street" series. Watson's Tin Box have published the second volume of Irene's Cabinet, and the 52-page pamphlet costs $10.00 (postpaid) from Beth Austin (9455 Chad- burn Place, Gaithersburg, MD 20886); the contents include Steve Clarkson's explanation of how to tell whether it was Fred Dannay or Manfred Lee who signed "Ellery Queen", and Beth Austin's explanation of what an entail was (and wasn't). Les Klinger will moderate a panel on "The World of Sherlock Holmes" at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington on Dec. 1 (the panelists being Peter Blau, Dan Stashower, and Patrick Loughney, who is curator of the Moving Im- age Dvision at the Library of Congress); copies of Les' THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES will be available for purchase and signing after the pro- gram. More information can be found at , and a schedule of his other appearances on tour promoting the book is available at . Karen Murdock spotted something for completists: Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME has been condensed and published by the Reader's Digest Association in its "selected editions" series of four- in-one volumes; the volume also has David Weich's "Conversation with Mark Haddon (an interview reprinted from Powell's Books' web-site). there's al- so a side-bar report that mentions that "a story about THE CURIOUS INCIDENT was recently featured on the website of The Sherlock Holmes Society of Lon- don, where Baker Street loyalists meet to ponder all things Sherlockian." The narrator of Haddon's award-winning best-seller is an autistic teen-ager who enjoys the Sherlock Holmes stories, and turns detective himself. Sep 04 #4 Stephen Fry continues to garner publicity for his comments on his suitability to play Sherlock Holmes. "It's very noticeable that words like 'lean' and 'cadaverous' are used in Holmes, but words like 'lard arse' are not," he told The Independent (Sept. 20). "Not once does Conan Doyle say, 'Holmes wobbled over to his chair and sat down and stuck a pipe into one of his chins." Fry and Rupert Everett, both openly gay, will be playing the same role in competing television films; "I don't know about the private life of William Gillette, the first movie Holmes," Fry told the interviewer, "and I can't believe that Basil Rathbone was camp." James C. Cleary ("Howard Garrideb") died on Sept. 9. He had a long career as a photograph and as public-school and university audio-visual special- ist, and was an energetic member of The Three Garridebs and of the wider Sherlockian world in the New York area; he received his Investiture from The Baker Street Irregulars in 1988. "Franz Kafka singled our four writers as his 'blood relations," according to Dennis Drabelle (in the Washington Post Book World on Sept. 19): Dosto- yevsky, Flaubert, Grillparzer, and Kleist. Franz Grillparzer (1791-1872) was a highly-regarded Austrian dramatist, relatively unknown today, except to those who know the early history of The Baker Street Irregulars: one of its predecessors was the Grillparzer SittenPolizei Verein, an informal so- ciety whose records were kept in a copy of Gustav Pollak's FRANZ GRILLPARZ- ER AND THE AUSTRIAN DRAMA. George Fletcher's excellent essay "Before the Rise: The Grillparzer Book" will be found in Jon L. Lellenberg's IRREGULAR MEMORIES OF THE 'THIRTIES in the BSI's archival-history series. I reported earlier (Aug 04 #3) that the U.S. Postal Service had authorized Stamps.com to issue person- alized postage stamps; so far Don Hobbs is the only one who has used such a stamp on mail to me, with a photograph showing him and his grand-daughter Madi- son Claire Hamill in his Sherlockian library. Ac- cording to a story in the Washington Post on Sept. 25, pranksters at the web-site The Smoking Gun ord- ered stamps that showed Monica Lewinsky's stained dress, convicted spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and notorious war crim- inals, and the company set new restrictions on images. And the program was authorized only through the end of September, so it may be too late to cre- ate your own postage stamps showing Sherlock Holmes. PBS Home Video has added a DVD ($24.98) of "Hands of a Murderer" (the 1990 television film starring Edward Woodward and John Hillerman) to its list of Sherlockian film and video; 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314 (800- 645-4727) . Further to the item (Aug 04 #5) on Patrick Anderson's report in the Wash- ington Post on people who could tie knots in cherry stems using only their tongue and teeth, mentioning "a nationally recognized Sherlockian scholar" who once demonstrated her cherry-stem skills at a Sherlockian convention in St. Louis, the lady in question has been identified (which wasn't all that difficult, since she confessed). "I can't tell you the ambivalent feelings I have about being identified as tongue-talented," Julie McKuras wrote. Sep 04 #5 "A Blaze of Silver" is the title of this year's "Saturday with Sherlock Holmes" sponsored by the local Sherlockian societies at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore on Nov. 13; the event starts with morning coffee in the Edgar Allan Poe Room at 10:00, and ends at 1:00, and the program will feature John Sherwood and Bill Hyder's performance in a sketch in which Holmes meets the ghost of Poe in Baltimore's Westminster churchyard. There's no charge for the festivities, and the library is at 400 Cathedral Street in Baltimore. The fall issue of The Magic Door (the newsletter published by The Friends of the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at the Toronto Reference Library) has Doug Elliott's report on the Bootmakers' recreation of Edith Meiser's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in 2001, Doug Elliott's tribute to the late Na- than L. Bengis, and Doug Wrigglesworth's account of his adventures at the Conan Doyle auction at Christie's in May. The newsletter is available from Doug Wrigglesworth, at 16 Sunset Street, Holland Landing, ON L9N 1H4, Can- ada . Phil Attwell reports that Radio Times is offering Granada's entire "Sher- lock Holmes" series as a boxed set of 23 DVDs (region 2) for L123.99; the title is "Sherlock Holmes - The Complete Collection" and the product number is 658703; Radio Times, P.O. Box 190, Peterborough PE2 6UW, England. Or go to their web-site and click on "Shopping". The set is apparently not yet available on region 1 DVDs. Gus Dallas died on Sept. 22. He was a journalist and a Sherlockian, active in the Sherlockian societies in New York, specializing in witty and punny one-act dramatics at society meetings. He worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the N.Y. World-Telegram and Sun, and was an editor and writer at the N.Y. Daily News for more than 25 years, and an editor at Newsday from 1993 to 2003, and he wrote many stories about Sherlockian events for news- papers in Cleveland and New York. The Marine Conservation Society has a "jellyfish survey" running at their web-site at ; one of the society's goals is pro- tection of the endangered leatherback turtle, which enjoys dining on jelly- fish. The society is seeking detailed records of jellyfish strandings on beaches in the United Kingdom, and the web-site shows colorful photographs of various jellyfish, including *Cyanea capillata* (the lion's mane); "this jellyfish stings," the web-site notes, "DO NOT TOUCH." Thaddeus Holt, a lawyer and formerly a deputy under secretary of the Army, also is a military historian, and has written THE DECEIVERS: ALLIED MILI- TARY DECEPTION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR (New York: Scribner, 2004; 1168 pp., $49.95); he's a member of The Baker Street Irregulars as well, and has not neglected the Canon, citing Holmes' deductions from Watson's watch (in "The Sign of the Four"). Something not-quite-new: TOLERANCE VS INTOLERANCE, edited by Marjorie Nich- olson, is a 28-pamphlet published in 1995 by FOREST [The Freedom Organisa- tion for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco]; it's a collection of stories favoring smoking, and one of them is Guy N. Smith's "The Adventure of the Dark Shag" (with Sherman Hulme, Dr. Wilson, and Professor Morrissey). Sep 04 #6 Alan Vanneman's second pastiche, SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE HAPS- BURG TIARA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004; 272 pp., $24.00), also is available read unabridged by Simon Vance, from Audio Editions (Box 6930, Auburn, CA 95604) (800-231-4261) ; $44.95 on 7 cassettes, or $64.80 on 9 CDs, or $24.95 on 1 mp3-CD. Audio Editions also offers other Sherlockian recordings, including pastiches by Laurie L. King and Larry Millett, and some of the Canon read in Spanish. Jean C. Keating is an author and a dog- lover, and when she tours promoting her books she is sometimes joined by Sher- lock Bones: her papillon Puff, dressed in Sherlockian attire designed and con- structed by Donna Jacobson, a costume costumer who works for Colonial Will- iamsburg; Puff weighs only five pounds, and was described by Jacobson as "two fleas wide and half-a-grasshopper long" in an article in the Outer Banks Senti- nel (Sept. 21), spotted by Ken Lanza. The web-site has some book reviews written by Sher- lock Bones. There are two new issues of SHERLOCK at hand, and welcome as always for a good mix of Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian material. Issue #61 includes an inter- esting pastiche by Gillian Linscott, and Gavin Collinson's tribute to the film "The Pearl of Death" on its 60th anniversary; issue #62 offers Paul M. Chapman's examination of the American aspects of the Canon, and editor Dav- id Stuart Davies' perceptive discussion of film portrayals of Moriarty. SHERLOCK appears six times a year and a subscription costs L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 continent)/$45.00 (elsewhere); the publisher is Atlas Publish- ing Ltd., Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hants. BH24 6QJ, Eng- land . Classic Specialties (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) is their American agent. Credit-card orders welcome at both addresses; back issues are available. SHERLOCK also offers an Internet newsletter SHERLOCK EXTRA, without charge. Go to their web-site and register by supplying your e-mail address. Some of you are aware that my old e-mail address doesn't work (my old ISP has been sold, and the new owners are struggling to update the hardware; if they succeed, I may actually gain access to the newest and, alas, not down- loaded, version of my e-mail address book. So I have a new e-mail address, and you can update your e-mail address books; if you have sent me messages that I haven't acknowledged, I've not seen them. The electronic world is a treasure, when it works. But when it doesn't . . . The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Oct 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press "Letterboxing" may seem to be a modern pastime, but it has a 150-year-old history; the goal is to find letterboxes, often in rather remote locations, following straightforward or cryptic clues, and record your visit. There's a web-site, of course, at , where Letterboxing North America lists some 5,000 letterboxes in the United States, a story in the Middlefield (CT) Town Times reports (Sept. 23). But according to legend, letterboxing was born in England in 1854, when Dartmoor guide James Perrott left his calling card in a jar in a remote area near Cranmere Pool, and en- couraged his clients to leave their cards in the jar. Visitors then began leaving a self-addressed postcard in the jar, hoping they would be mailed by the next visitor. Mike Berdan, exploring Connecticut, has enjoyed Sherlock's 221 Restaurant, formerly Anne's Bistro but renamed by its new owner Jane Sherlock); there's no Sherlockian decor or food, but the cuisine is upscale and tasty, and the address is Old Lyme Marketplace, Halls Road, Old Lyme, CT 06371. Alan Olding reports from Australia that a plaque commemorating the 75th an- niversary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's visit to Adelaide with his family in Sept. 1920, originally dedicated in 1995, was vandalized recently; it was refurbished with the help of local authorities, and rededicated last month. The plaque is outside Hungry Jack's restaurant, which occupies part of the site of Gibson's Grand Central Hotel, where Sir Arthur stayed in 1920. More and more authors have their own web-sites, including John Gardner, who has written fine books about Professor Moriarty, James Bond, Boysie Oakes, and others , and Marian Jackson, who has written four pastiches about Abigail Patience Danforth . The Baker Street Journal has a web-site , and a new subscription option that includes the Christmas Annual. $24.95 (U.S.) or $27.50 (elsewhere) for only the BSJ; $34.95 (U.S.) or $38.00 (elsewhere) for the BSJ and the Christmas Annual (the Christmas Annual alone is $11.00/ $12.00). The 2004 Christmas Annual is DUBIOUS AND QUESTIONABLE MEMORIES: A HISTORY OF THE ADVENTURESSES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, edited by Susan Rice and with contributions by other Adventuresses; "this delightful work of Rice's should clear up old mysteries and, with luck, create a few new ones." The BSJ's postal address is Box 465, Hanover, PA 17331. Laurie R. King's next Mary Russell novel, LOCKED ROOMS, is now in the hands of her publisher, due to be published next summer; it's set in San Francis- co. Her web-site includes Mary Russell's imaginative new interview with Laurie, and other material of interest. "The Case of the Silver Earring" is a new computer game developed by Frog- wares , distributed in Britain by Digital Justice (sell- ing for L29.99 and (as "Secret of the Silver Ear-ring") in the U.S. by Ubisoft ($19.99) . It's on a CD-ROM that runs on Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, and you play as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson; it's advertised as offering "30 interesting hours of play," with 40 different 19th-century locations and five levels of play. Oct 04 #2 "Indeed, if anything could ever put one off being a Wodehouse fan, it would be the somewhat cultish element among his admir- ers and biographers. Such people have a tendency to allude to him as 'The Master.' They publish monographs about the exact geographical location of Blandings Castle, or the Drones Club. They hold dinners at which bread- stuffs are thrown. Their English branch publishes the quarterly *Wooster Sauce*, and their American branch publishes the quarterly *Plum Lines*: two painfully unfunny titles. They materialize, in other words, Evelyn Waugh's view that Wodehouse created a delightful self-contained world of his own. The only modern comparison I can think of is to the sterner 'Irregulars' who have their shrine at 221 Baker Street." Christopher Hitchens in his long review of Robert McCrum's WODEHOUSE: A LIFE in the November issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Charles J. Shields ("17 King Edward Street") died on Sept. 15. Charley was a reporter for the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Chester Times in the late 1940s, and then features editor and business editor for the Star newspapers in suburban Chicago. And he was an energetic and long-standing member of local Sherlockian societies, including The Hounds of the Baskerville (*sic*), Hugo's Companions, and The South Downers. Scarlet Street publisher Richard Valley reports that he supplied the liner notes for an Alpha Video DVD with three films: Arthur Wontner's "Murder at the Baskervilles" (1937), Reginald Owen's "A Study in Scarlet" (1933), and Basil Rathbone's "Dressed to Kill" (1946). The DVD costs only $5.99 at the Scarlet Street web-site . MC Black has reported that he will maintain a "Diary of Events" for Sher- lockian societies, and societies devoted to other authors and detectives, in the United Kingdom and in other countries that UK residents might visit, by way of helping avoid conflicts, and helping people learn what's sched- uled where and when if they're planning a trip. To have an event listed, contact him at (44-0-1920-467930) and let him know your provisional or confirmed dates; he will also answer questions about schedules. Wanda Dow notes that CITY ABLAZE, the latest round-robin pastiche from The Pleasant Places of Florida (three years in the writing and 12 pages) now is available for $6.00 postpaid ($7.00 outside North America) from Wanda (1737 Santa Anna Drive, Dunedin, FL 34698. Great Britain's Public Lending Right Act of 1979 gave British authors a le- gal right to receive payment for the free lending of their books by public libraries; the current rate is 4.85 pence for each time a book is borrowed, and the maximum payment for a year is L6,000. But "classic authors" don't get paid (you need to be alive to collect); Barbara Roden has reported that an item in The Bookseller has listed the most-borrowed classic authors, and Conan Doyle ranked at #14. The top 20 are Tolkien, Heyer, Milne, Potter, Tranter, Dickens, Shakespeare, du Maurier, Austen, Hardy, Orwell, Trollope, Hemingway, Conan Doyle, Stevenson, Forster, Kipling, Forester, Buchan, and Nesbit. Some years ago (Feb 93 #2) the ranking was Hardy, Tolkien, Dick-ens, Milne, Austen, Lawrence, Trollope, Kipling, Orwell, and Conan Doyle. The Public Lending Right Office has a web-site at . Oct 04 #3 Rodney Dangerfield died on Oct. 5. He started his career as a stand-up comedian in the late 1930s, and his big break came in 1967 when he appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" complaining that "Nothing goes right for me." After he saw "The Godfather" in 1972, he changed his catch-phrase to "I don't get no respect," and made the line famous. In the film "Back to School" (1986) he played a self-made millionaire who decided to join his son as a college student; in an early scene he told the dean of the business school, "Listen, Sherlock, while you were tucked away up here working on your ethics, I was out there busting my hump in the real world." The dean of the business school was played by Paxton Whitehead, who earlier had been Sherlock Holmes on stage in "The Crucifer of Blood" (1978). The British Library is planning an exhibition of Conan Doyle material that will open on Dec. 3, displaying a selection of material bequeathed to the Library by Dame Jean Conan Doyle, and from the Library's purchases from the material sent to auction earlier this year by Anna Conan Doyle's heirs; the details of what will be on display will be announced in due course, as will the closing date of the exhibition, and the Library has announced that the archive of Conan Doyle material is available for researchers and scholars. The display will be in their headquarters entrance hall at St. Pancras, and will be open through January 30. There various ways to be a tourist in Britain, from do-it-yourself to pack- aged coach tours with groups, and there's an alternative: companies such as British Tours . They offer a car driven by an expert guide, and you can choose one of their standard tours or ask for something that suits your particular interests, Sherlockian or otherwise. And their postal address is 49 Conduit Street, London W1S 2YS, England. Ken Lanza reports that Janet Pascal's biography ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE: BEYOND BAKER STREET, published by the Oxford University Press in 2000 at $22.00, is available for $10.00 at their web-site ; check the "Oxford Fall Sale" and then the "$10 and under" books. Fritha Goodey died on Sept. 5. Her acting career on stage, screen, radio, and television was brief but promising, and she played Caroline Addleton, the title role in "The Determined Client" with Clive Merrison in the BBC's "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." Raymond C. Murray first encountered forensic geology in 1973, when he was teaching geology at Rutgers University and received a request for assist- ance from a federal agent; he went on to co-author the first textbook (FOR- ENSIC GEOLOGY) in 1975, and now has written EVIDENCE FROM THE EARTH: FOREN- SIC GEOLOGY AND CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION (Missoula: Mountain Press, 2004, 226 pp., $20.00). It's an up-to-date review of the science, with due credit to Sherlock Holmes as the first forensic geologist. He also has a web-site at , where you'll find some Sherlockian artwork. Michael Chabon's "The Final Solution" (set on the Sussex Downs and in Lon- don in the summer of 1944, and featuring an aged beekeeper detective) was in The Paris Review (summer 2003); THE FINAL SOLUTION: A STORY OF DETECTION is due in November (New York: Fourth Estate, 2004; 144 pp., $16.96) and as an audio CD read unabridged by Michael York (HarperAudio, $22.95). Oct 04 #4 Lenny Picker reports that HOUDINI: THE MAN FROM BEYOND is due in December from Image Comics; a graphic novel by Brian Haber- lin, Jeff Phillips, and Gilbert Monsanto, with Houdini returning from the dead to team with Conan Doyle to prevent the murder of Houdini's wife Bess. And THE GHOSTS OF BAKER STREET: NEW TALES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is scheduled by Carroll & Graf in February, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lell- enberg, and Daniel Stashower; an anthology of stories in which Holmes and Watson battle the supernatural. Lenny also has noted that THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2004, edited by Nelson DeMille and Otto Penzler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004; 448 pp., $27.50 cloth and $14.00 paper), includes Richard Lupoff's Holmes/Dupin pas- tiche "The Incident of the Impecunious Chevalier"; an unabridged CD also is available at $30.00. The September issue of the quarterly newsletter published by The Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers much discussion of (and photographs from) the conference held in Minneapolis in June, and other news about the collections; it's available from Richard J. Sveum, 111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455 . Betty Pierce did on Sept. 4. She was for many years an untiring member of and publicist for The Mexborough Lodgers of El Paso, and an editor of their newsletter The Register of the Mexborough Private Hotel; she loved to trav- el, and to collect stereoscopic photographs, the older the better, and her letters about her tourist activities were always delightful. Mattias Bostr”m has translated the Canon into Swedish, and EN STUDIE I ROTT has just been published by Lind & Co.; the remaining volumes will follow at two volumes per year. Mattias also has edited SHERLOCK HOLMES 150 AR: EN JUBILEUMSBOK FRAN THE BASKERVILLE HALL CLUB OF SWEDEN, a handsome 185-page anthology of Swedish scholarship (with translations of contributions from Roger Johnson and Stephen Fry). The books are available from Mattias (Dom- herrevagen 12, S-178 39 Ekero, Sweden) for $40.00/L20.00/E30.00 each (post-paid); currency only, please, and you can let him know by e-mail that you are sending an order . Further to the report on Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier's Black Coat Press (Jul 04 #2), they have now published LORD RUTHVEN THE VAMPIRE and THE RE- TURN OF LORD RUTHVEN, with John William Polidori's original story (1819), dramatizations (including a sequel by Alexandre Dumas), and new stories by translator Frank J. Morlock (one of Morlock's stories, in the first volume, pits Ruthven against Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown); each vol- ume costs $20.95, and there's a web-site at . Updating the earlier forecast (May 03 #5): Locus Press (Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661) offers a CD-ROM edition of Allen J. Hubin's CRIME FICTION IV: A COMPREHENSIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 1749-2000 ($49.95); an ink-on-paper version is available in five volumes ($400) from George A. Vanderburgh (Box 204, Shelburne, ON L0N 1S0, Canada). Locus also offers a CD-ROM of the third edition of Walter Albert's DETECTIVE AND MYS- TERY FICTION: AN INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SECONDARY SOURCES ($29.95). Oct 04 #5 The Seattle Monorail Project hasn't made public the details on design and costs that contractors have proposed for a new 14- mile transportation line, and opponents launched a "Monorail Recall" cam- paign and filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court. The Seattle Times reported (Oct. 14) that opponents wore "Sherlock Holmes garb outside mono- rail headquarters, snooping for the 'secret' bid." Richard Carleton Hacker has celebrated 20 years of writing about pipes with "The Adventures of the Singular Pipes of Sherlock Holmes", a handsome full- color six-page monograph available from Rick at Box 634, Beverly Hills, CA 90213; $6.50 postpaid ($10.00 foreign). Barnes & Noble has three volumes from the Canon available in a "Collector's Library" series ($4.95 each): THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, THE CASE- BOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, and THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES & THE VALLEY OF FEAR, each with an afterword by David Stuart Davies, possibly the start of a set that eventually will include the entire Canon. The first two volumes are available in Britain published by the Collector's Library (L5.99 each). William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" is being performed by Theatre Calgary through Nov. 7; the theater is at (220 9th Avenue SE, Calgary, AB T2G 5C4, Canada) (403-294-7447) . Next year's annual STUD-Watsonian Weekend is scheduled for Apr. 29-May 1, in and near Chicago; there will be a dinner (with Henry Zecher speaking on William Gillette), a running of The Silver Blaze at Hawthorne Race Course, and a Fortescue Honours brunch. If you would like to be on their mailing list, you should contact Allan Devitt and Susan Diamond, 16W603 3rd Avenue, Bensenville, IL 60106 . Karen Murdock recommends Peter Harrigan's article on "Reading the Sands" in Saudi Aramco World (Mar.-Apr. 2004) for a description of what truly expert trackers can do (and there's a passing allusion to Holmes). You can read it at , and an ink-on-paper copy of the issue may still be available (Box 2106, Houston, TX 77252). David Pirie's third Conan Doyle pastiche is THE DARK WATER (London: Random House/Century, 2004; 372 pp., L17.99); "Imprisoned in a dank cottage deep in the English countryside, Arthur Doyle lies half-unconscious and at the mercy of his nemesis--Cream." The first two novels in his "Murder Rooms" series, THE PATIENT'S EYES and THE NIGHT CALLS have been reissued as paper-backs by Random House/Arrow at L6.99 each. The fall issue of the Tonga Times (published by the Mini-Tonga Scion Soci- ety) has lots of news about the world of Sherlockian miniatures, including color photographs of the spectacular "221B Dollhouse" created by Ardie and Murray Strauser, which is now available for purchase; if you're interested, you can contact Murray at 301 South 4th Street, Sunbury, PA 17801 (570-286- 7699). Trish and Jay Pearlman will be happy to e-mail photographs of the house on request. Membership in the society in- cludes the newsletter, and the cost is $10.50 a year (or $11.50 to Canada or $13.50 elsewhere) from the Pearlmans (1656 East 19th Street #2-E, Brook- lyn, NY 11229) . Oct 04 #6 The Baker Street Irregulars' excursion into the Valley of Fear on Oct. 22-24 was a delightful event that featured fine weath- er, colorful fall scenery; comfortable accommodations at the New American Hotel in Mauch Chunk (now the Inn at Jim Thorpe); an excellent agenda arr- anged by Julia C. Rosenblatt that offered scholarship and entertainment by Sherlockians, discussion of local history by experts on the Molly Maguires, and guided bus tours of the area; bus extrication by Priscilla Ridgway; and an excellent excursion book, edited by Steven T. Doyle, that includes five pages of Conan Doyle's manuscript notes for the story, reproduced in facsi- mile and published for the first time. MURDERLAND, with 168 pages of Sher- lockian scholarship, will be available for $19.95 at the BSI table in the dealers' room at the Hotel Algonquin during the birthday festivities. Paul S. Clarkson, Jr. ("Morse Hudson") died on Oct. 19. Steve followed his father's footsteps into the Sherlockian world (his father was a founder of The Six Napoleons of Baltimore), and he was generous with his expertise and time and support, especially for younger Sherlockians; Julian Wolff asked Steve to help answer the queries sent by neophytes, and he was pleased to be of service, founding the Board School Beacons, and more recently editing The Baker Street Journal's 2003 Christmas Annual ("'The Strength and Activ- ity of Youth': The Junior Sherlockian Movement"). His other contributions to the cause included Sherlockian sculpture, scholarship, and THE SHERLOCK HOLMES COMPENDIUM. Steve was awarded his Investiture by The Baker Street Irregulars in 1970. Ted Nye's THE ADVENTURE OF THE TEDDY BEAR'S RIBBON AND OTHER TALES, illus- trated by Bruce Mahalski (Duneden: Halvon Press, 2000), is a 168-page pap- erback collection of pastiches, still available from the publisher (51 Ir- vine Road, Dunedin, New Zealand); US$17.00 or L6.00 postpaid. "A Study in Scarlet: Sherlock Holmes Revisited and Updated" is the title of a program by Lawrence A. Pesley at Arcadia University on Nov. 30. "Using the character of Sherlock Holmes and one of his famous cases ... the pre- sentation shows the relationship of biology, chemistry, and mathematics in crime solving. Some audience participation is required." Arcadia Univer- sity is in Glenside, Pa.; there's no charge for attendance, and additional information is available from the Office of Graduate and Proessional Stud- ies (215-572-2877) . Karen Traviss, author of a new video-game spin-off novel STAR WARS: REPUB- LIC COMMANDO: HARD CONTACT, has noted in an interview at that she was raised in Portsmouth, which she has described as the "'Bermuda Triangle of fiction,' thanks to the iconic authors H.G. Wells, Nevil Shute, and Conan Doyle who once lived there as well." Further to the report (Feb 04 #6) on the sale of Maurice F. Neville's coll- ection at Sotheby's , the sale's second part (on Nov. 16) will include the first 40 pages (in two exercise books) of the manuscript of "The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist" (estimated at $200,000-300,000) (the last two pages, in a third exercise book, are owned by another collec- tor); the original artwork for Sidney Paget's illustration showing Holmes and Moriarty grappling at the Reichenbach ($60,000-80,000); and a page from the manuscript of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" ($18,000-25,000). Oct 04 #7 Sherlock Holmes' 151st birthday will be celebrated on Friday, Jan. 7, with the traditional festivities in New York, but the first formal event will be The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes' ASH Wed- nesday dinner at 6:00 pm at O'Casey's (22 East 41st Street); attendees pay their own checks, but it would be helpful to let Ev Herzog (360 West 21st Street #5-A, New York, NY 10011) know if you're com- ing to the event. On Thursday, The Baker Street Irregulars' Distinguished Speaker Lecture be- gins at 6:15 pm on the 6th floor of the Williams Club (24 East 39th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues); the speaker will be noted author and ar- tist Gahan Wilson, who drew four pages of delightful cartoons for the Dec. 1959 issue of Playboy, and who has not neglected Sherlock Holmes since then ($11.00); seating is limited, and you are advised to reserve early (details below). On Friday, the William Gillette Memorial Luncheon starts at noon, at Mor- an's Chelsea Seafood Restaurant at 146 Tenth Avenue at 19th Street; $42.00 (Susan Rice, 125 Washington Place #2-E, New York, NY 10014). Otto Penzler will hold his traditional open house at The Mysterious Bookshop (129 West 56th Street) from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm; Sherlockian authors are likely to be on hand to sign their books. The Baker Street Irregulars will gather at 6:00 pm at the Union League Club at 38 East 37th Street. The Baskerville Bash (open to all Sherlockians and their friends) offers dinner and entertainment at 6:30 pm at the Manhattan Club at 201 West 52nd Street (between Broadway and Seventh Avenue); $70.00 (checks payable to Maribeau Briggs should be sent to Maribeau (183 Stokes Road, Medford Lakes, NJ 08055); please include your e-mail address and pri- mary Sherlockian society affiliation). Early reservations are advised for the William Gillette luncheon and the Baskerville Bash. Those who wish to have seasonal souvenirs in the dinner packets can send 175 copies (for the BSI) to James B. Saunders (3011 47th Street, Astoria, NY 11103), 125 copies (for the Bash) to Francine Kitts (35 Van Cortlandt Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10301), and 20 copies (for The Women) to Mary Ann Bradley, 7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278); your material should arrive by Dec. 15. On Saturday a wide variety of Sherlockiana will be offered in the dealers' room on the second floor of the Hotel Algonquin (59 West 44th Street) from 9:30 am until 12:30 pm; Ralph Hall (2906 Wallingford Court, Louisville, KY 40218) (502-491-3148) will be glad to supply informa- tion about dealers' tables. And the Clients of Adrian Mulliner (devotees of the works of both John H. Watson and P. G. Wodehouse) will hold their Junior Bloodstain (a somewhat less than totally reverent gathering) in the lobby of the Hotel Algonquin at 12:30 pm; if you are planning to attend, please let Anne Cotton know (12 Hollywood Street, South Hadley, MA 01075) . Also on Saturday, the BSI annual reception, which is open to all Sherlock- ians and friends, will be held from 2:30 to 5:30, at the National Arts Club at 15 Gramercy Park (on 20th Street between Park and Third Avenues); there Oct 04 #8 will be hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, a cash bar, and the usual traditional and untraditional entertainment, and the event will cost $45.00 (details below), or $55.00 after Dec. 1 or at the door. And on Sunday, The Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes will hold their usual informal brunch, open to all; details on where and when are not yet available, but I hope to report more in the next issue. The Baker Street Irregulars are a tax-exempt organization, and Mike Whelan has arranged with the Hotel Algonquin for single or double rooms at $165.00 a night (Tuesday through Saturday); this is the total cost, since there is no tax due on reservations arranged by the BSI. Breakfast is not included in the price this year. Other charges (telephone calls, meals, room serv- ice, drinks, etc.) are not covered. The offer's available to all Sherlock- ians, and room reservations must be made directly to the Algonquin (mention The Baker Street Irregulars) at 212-840-6800 on or before Dec. 14. And here are the details: if you've not already received Mike Whelan's an- nouncement with the prices and a reservation form for the Thursday lecture and the Saturday reception, you can request a copy from Michael F. Whelan, 7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278. Mary Ellen Rich has kindly provided a list of hotels that offer reasonable (as defined by New York landlords) rates, along with a warning about non- optional extras: $2.00 a day occupancy fee, and 14% in state and city tax. Ask for the lowest available rate, don't be shy about asking for discounts (AAA, senior, corporate), and if you plan to arrive on Thursday you should confirm that weekend rates apply, and request written confirmation. Vanderbilt YMCA (224 East 47th St.) $79 bunk bed or $105 double bed (with shared bathroom (212-756-9600) ["it's a modern building in a nice neighbor- hood"]; Best Western President Hotel (234 West 48th St.) $85 double bed $94 queen (212-246-8800); Cosmopolitan Hotel (95 West Broadway) $109 single $130 double (212-566-1900); Ramada Plaza (481 8th Ave. at 34th St.) $112 promotional rate (212-971-1010); Howard Johnson (851 8th Ave. at 46th St.) $115 (212-581-4100); Comfort Inn Central Park West (31 West 71st St.) $130 double bed or $140 queen (212-721-4770); Wyndham Hotel (42 West 58th St.) $135 single $152 double AAA promotional rate (212-753-3500). Specials and general information are available at , and discounts can be found at , , , and , The Dr. John H. Watson Fund offers financial assistance to all Sherlockians (membership in the BSI is not required) who might otherwise not be able to participate in the weekend's festivities. A carefully pseudonymous John H. Watson presides over the fund and welcomes contributions, which can be made by check payable to John H. Watson and sent (without return address on the envelope) to Dr. Watson, care of The Baker Street Irregulars, at 7938 Mill Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278; your letters are forwarded unopened, and Dr. Watson will acknowledge your generosity. Requests for assistance should also be mailed (quickly) to Dr. Watson at the same address. The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Nov 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press An update to last month's forecast of events during the birthday festivi- ties: Jim Cox reports that the annual Christopher Morley Walk will begin at the Hotel Algonquin (59 West 44th Street) on Thursday, Jan. 6, at 9:00 am; the walk will end with lunch at McSorley's. And on Sunday, Jan. 9, there will be a bus tour to Gillette Castle for a maximum of 50 participants. Mike Whelan notes that many years ago Julian Wolff organized a trip to Gillette Castle during the birthday festivities, and this year being the 100th anniversary of Julian's birth, the BSI will reprise the event, which will include the bus trip from the Hotel Algonquin at 8:00 am, a private tour of the renovated castle, brunch at a restaurant on the Connecticut River, and return to the Algonquin at about 5:30 pm; the cost is $60.00 a person (which includes transportation, tour, and brunch). If you're interested, please call Mary Ann Bradley (317-293-2212) to make sure there's still room available before sending any money. There will also be a brunch in New York on Sunday, but the time and loca- tion are not yet settled; if you're interested in attending, please contact Judith Freeman (280 Ninth Avenue #1-C, New York, NY 10001) "Once upon a time, but not so long ago, in a tropical island midway between Asia and Australia, there lived a race of little people, whose adults stood just three and a half feet high," Nicholas Wade reported in the N.Y. Times on Oct. 28. "Despite their stature, they were mighty hunters. They made stone tools, with which they speared giant rats, clubbed sleeping dragons, and hunted the packs of pygmy elephants that roamed their lost world." The island is Flores, and the new human species is *Homo floresiensis*, discov- ered last year and the subject of two article in Nature magazine (Oct. 28). They lived on Flores until as recently as 18,000 years ago. Peter Brown, associate professor at the University of New England in Australia and one of the authors of the articles in Nature, reports that there are still very large rats on Flores, and that "Pleistocene rats were bigger than a North American raccoon." Flores is about a thousand miles from Sumatra, so it's obvious that giant rats had good travel agents. Karen Murdock reports that George Vanderburgh now has his catalog on-line at ; he offers more than 200 print-on-demand titles, Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian. Barlieb Wallace Productions and the Crowded Kitchen Players produced Will- iam Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" last year, and they're now getting ready to do "Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Goose" (adapted from "A Study in Scarlet", "The Speckled Band", and "The Blue Carbuncle") at Stage 9 in All- entown, Pa., on Dec. 3-5, 10-12, and 17-19; information and tickets avail- able at (610-395-7176) . John A. Lanzalotti is a sculptor and a doctor, and a Sherlockian who does not neglect Sherlock Holmes at his web-site ; click on "Sherlock Holmes and Sculpture" to see John's research on Devine's bust of Napoleon, and the busts of Holmes by Meunier and Tavernier. Nov 04 #2 This year's Christmas card from The Sherlock Holmes Society of London honors Richard Lancelyn Green: he selected the colorful cover of the Jan. 1902 issue of the American edition of The Strand Magazine for his Christmas card for 1998, and the Society is using the same artwork this year. The cost is $13.00 postpaid for ten cards (L5.50 to the U.K. or L6.00 to Europe or L7.00 elsewhere); checks (payable to the Society) can be sent to Judi Ellis, 13 Crofton Avenue, Orpington BR6 8DC, England. Thomas Dandrew reports that a "Complete Sherlock Holmes Box Set" is avail- able at with the entire Canon as broadcast by BBC Radio 4 with Clive Merrison as Holmes and Michael Williams as Watson; 48 hours on 64 CDs, with a book written by Bert Coules (who dramatized many of the pro- grams in the series), offering "a look behind the scenes at the highs and lows that came with the undertaking of such an enormous project." L145.00 plus shipping, and the BBC Shop's postal address is P.O. Box 308, Sitting- bourne, Kent ME9 8LW, England. Times change: it's not uncommon, when one goes to the theater, to see warn- ings that there will be strobe lights, or gunfire. The University of Wis- consin (Stevens Point) produced Charles Marowitz's "Sherlock's Last Case" in October, with warnings that "Gunshots will be fired during the perform- ance" and that "A pipe will be smoked during the performance." Michael Dirda's weekly page in the Washington Post's Book World was devoted to "Ghost Stories" on Oct. 31, and he had nice things to say about Barbara and Christopher Roden's Ash-Tree Press (their Calabash Press likely is bet- ter known to Sherlockians and Doyleans); the story likely still can be read on-line at . The OXFORD DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY was published in September, and John Baesch has forwarded a report in the Daily Telegraph (Sept. 23). The 60 volumes contain 60,305 pages, 62.5 million words, and 50,113 articles, and the set cost only L6,500 if you ordered by Nov. 30 (you'll need 12 feet of shelf space, and the set weighs 282 pounds). The Telegraph noted that the dictionary includes "biographies" of people who never existed or whose identities are unknown, including King Lear, Robin Hood, Sweeney Todd, Jack the Ripper, and John Bull. But: "Not included is Sherlock Holmes because 'everybody knows he's a fictional character.'" The OXFORD DNB does, it should be noted, have interesting entries for Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (by Owen Dudley Edwards) and for Dame Jean Lena Annette Conan Doyle (by Jane Potter); thanks to Philip K. Wilson for check- ing the edition on-line. The web-site at offers infor- mation, free tours, and subscriptions ($295 a year for individuals). David Shulman died on Oct. 30. His obituary in the N.Y. Times called him "a self-described Sherlock Holmes of Americanisms who dug through obscure, often crumbling publications" to identify the first published use of words and phrases such as "The Great White Way," "Big Apple," "hoochie-coochie," "jazz," and "hot dog" for the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY. He was a founder of the American Cryptogram Association, and wrote two articles for The Bak- er Street Journal: "Sherlock Holmes Cryptanalyst" (Apr. 1948) and "The Or- igin of the Dancing Men" (Mar. 1973. Nov 04 #3 "Kitty Winter for State Attorney: She'll Throw More Than a Book at Your Common Criminal" and "Helen Stoner for Prosecutor: She Knows a Snake When She Sees One" are only two of the political slogans in- cluded in a special issue of Communication (the newsletter of The Pleasant Places of Florida) that arrived the day after the election; editors Wanda and Jeff Dow also offer amusing political Canonical commentary in the six- page issue. $12.00 a year ($13.00 overseas) including a subscription, from Carl Heifetz, 1220 Winding Willow Drive, New Port Richey, FL 34655; if you want just the one issue, that's $2.00 postpaid. Old-time radio continues to be popular, not only on the air but also on the stage: the Corbin Theatre Company performed "The Musgrave Ritual" and "The Tolling Bell" on three evenings at the Corbin Theatre in Liberty, Mo., last month. They have a web-site at . The winter issue of The Sherlockian Times has arrived from Classic Special- ties; it's billed as a catalog/journal/newsletter, and it combines things nicely, offering news, books, ornaments, and much more (Box 19058, Cincin- nati, OH 45219) (877-233-3823) . There's also a new "Quick Watson" supplement that includes Sherlock Holmes' passport (for $125.00); they're hand-made rather than off-the-shelf, tied to Basil Rath- bone's films, with his photograph and appropriate visa stamps, and imagina- tively done. Elmer L. Anderson died on Nov. 15. A former governor of Minnesota, he also was a businessman, community leader, a bookman, and a philanthropist, and he helped make possible the new University of Minnesota Library, named in his honor, that houses their Sherlock Holmes Collections. "Sherlock Holmes and the West End Horror" (dramatized by Anthony Dodge and Marcia Milgrom Dodge from Nicholas Meyer's novel) has opened at the Asolo Theatre Festival, where it will run through Mar. 3. The box office is at 5555 North Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, FL 34243 (941-351-8000) (800-361-8388) . Reported by Ralph Hall: Dark Horse Comics will publish THE IRREGULARS on Jan. 12; the 128-page graphic novel ($12.95) has Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars in pursuit of a murderous madman who is stalking the streets of Whitechapel. It has been almost 25 years since Edmund Aubrey brought Sherlock Holmes out of retirement in SHERLOCK HOLMES IN DALLAS to solve the murder of President Kennedy; now Sherlock Holmes comes out of retirement again in Kenneth Fraw- ley's SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE CASE OF THE MISSING AMERICAN CULTURE (Phila- delphia: Xlibris, 2004; 221 pp., $31.99 cloth, $21.99 paper). Bill Clinton is president, and Holmes and Watson travel to New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles in pursuit of an evil mastermind who is well on his way to turning American culture into mind-numbing lowest-common-denominator trash. Mark Alberstat's 2005 Sherlock Holmes Calendar is illustrated with artwork from The Strand Magazine, and displays important Sherlockian birthdays and William S. Baring-Gould's dates for the cases. The cost is US$12.00 post- paid, and his address is 5 Lorraine Street, Dartmouth, NS B3A 2B9, Canada. Nov 04 #4 "Who Shot Sherlock Holmes?" is the title of an upcoming episode of the series "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (on CBS-TV) ac- cording to a report spotted by Ken Lanza on a fan-site . It's not really Holmes who gets shot, but "Joe Bell, a man who has trouble distinguishing the difference between fact and fiction. Bell is the lead- ing member of a literary society whose members dress up in period costume and role-play Sherlock Holmes mysteries with each other." The site warns that this is rumor based on early script drafts, but the episode is billed as #511. Episode #509 ("Mea Culpa") is scheduled for Nov. 25, so "Who Shot Sherlock Holmes" may air in December or January, depending on pre-emptions and repeats during the holidays. A new French film of "Arsene Lupin" (with Romain Duris as Lupin, and Kris- tin Scott Thomas as Josephine, comtesse de Cagliostro) was screened in Sep- tember during the Toronto Film Festival; it doesn't seem to be Sherlockian, but the web-site is interesting. Further to the report (Oct 04 #6) on the sale of Maurice F. Neville's coll- ection at Sotheby's , the sale's second part (on Nov. 16) yielded nice prices for Sherlockiana: $8,400 (including the buyer's premi- um) for the signed first edition of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES; $78,000 for a page from the manuscript of "The Hound of the Baskervilles"; $220,800 for the original artwork for Sidney Paget's illustration showing Holmes and Moriarty grappling at the Reichenbach; and $344,000 for the first 40 pages (in two exercise books) of the manuscript of "The Solitary Cyclist". John Genova, who was at the sale, reports that the Paget artwork sold to someone who bid by phone, and that underbidder for the artwork was present, and won the manuscript of "The Solitary Cyclist". Further to the report (Jul 04 #6) on Abbey National's agreement to be taken over by Spain's largest bank, Banco Santander Central Hispanico (BSCH), an overwhelming majority of Abbey shareholders approved the takeover in Octo- ber. BSCH plans to trim Abbey's staff by some 3,000 employees, but appar- ently has no plans to dispose of the statue of Sherlock Holmes at the en- trance to the Baker Street underground station. SAYERS ON HOLMES: ESSAYS AND FICTION ON SHERLOCK HOLMES was published three years ago (Jun 01 #5), and it's still available ($8.00) at and elsewhere, and I'm happy to recommend it once more: Dorothy L. Sayers was one of the earliest and best of the people who played the grand game of Sherlockian scholarship, and the booklet reprints all her essays on Sher- lock Holmes and offers (for the first time in print) the script she wrote for Lord Peter Wimsey's comments during the centenary birthday tribute to Holmes broadcast by BBC radio on Jan. 8, 1954. Further to the item about Edinburgh's hopes to be the first "world city of literature" (Aug 04 #5), the city formally submitted a bid to UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) on Oct. 13, expecting to wait several months for a decision, and UNESCO awarded the distinction only a few hours later. Edinburgh cited Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the list of its important writers, of course, and Patricia Ferguson, the Scottish culture minister, said from Paris that the award "confirms Scot- lands' position as a country of literary excellence." Nov 04 #5 Bruce Holmes, continuing his pursuit of Sherlockian philately (and philatelic Sherlockiana), offers Vincent Starrett's sonnet 221B: ILLUSTRATED WITH POSTAL RELATED ITEMS; the cost of the 18-page book- let is US$29.50 (color)/$15.00 (black and white), and his address is 3170 Joseph Howe Drive, Halifax, NS B3L 4G1, Canada. "I have been sitting, for the past week, like a parrot on a perch," Conan Doyle wrote to George H. Doran on Jan. 23, 1930, "while your sculptor oper- ated on me." The sculptor was Jo Davidson, and there's a photograph of the bust in Davidson's BETWEEN SITTINGS (1950). The two-page letter, which al- so discusses Harry Houdini and ON THE EDGE OF THE UNKNOWN, is available for $2,500 from David Schulson (225 West 34th Street #1908, New York, NY 10122 (212-629-3939) "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" (the interactive exhibit with Victorian flavor, and a mystery that visitors can solve) is now at the Dis- covery Center in Springfield, Mo., through Jan. 2 (417-862-9910); they have a web-site at . "Finding Neverland" (Sep 04 #1) is well worth seeing, and not just for Ian Hart as Arthur Conan Doyle in a couple of scenes (as noted by a few review- ers, Barrie's friend is not identified as Conan Doyle until the final cred- its); Johnny Depp is excellent as Barrie, and the film is romantic and emo- tional, and while the script plays fast and loose with some of the history, that's only to be expected in any film. Planning is underway for the fourth meeting of The Sherlock Holmes and All That Jazz Society, to be held the last weekend in July in Davenport, Iowa (the birthplace of Dixieland great Bix Beiderbecke); details are available from Donald B. Izban, 1012 Rene Court, Park Ridge, IL 60068. Reports to the "Mary Russell" electronic mailing list from Bouchercon (held in Toronto this month) offer some teasers about Laurie R. King's next Mary Russell novel (LOCKED ROOMS), set in San Francisco, where Mary meets Dash- iell Hammett when he was working for Pinkerton in 1924; there's mention of a case in Japan (where Laurie would love to visit to do research). Charles Press' LOOKING OVER SIR ARTHUR'S SHOULDER: HOW CONAN DOYLE TURNED THE TRICK (Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2004, 132 pp.) is a collection of essays analyzing the techniques and appeal of the Sherlock Holmes stories; copies of the book, inscribed on request, are available from the author at 987 Lantern Hill Drive, East Lansing, MI 48823 ($15.00 postpaid). Further to earlier reports on plans for competing Sherlock Holmes films to be broadcast by BBC-1 (starring Rupert Everett) and ITV (starring Stephen Fry), there's a third broadcast in the works: "The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle". According to a story in the [Glasgow] Sun- day Herald (Nov. 28), David Pirie, author of the "Murder Rooms" novels and television series about Dr. Joseph Bell and Arthur Conan Doyle, has written a script suggesting that some aspects of Sherlock Holmes were based on Ar- thur Conan Doyle's alcoholic father. "Joseph Bell gave us half of Sherlock Holmes," producer Richard Downes said, "but there's a lot more." The tele- vision film will star Douglas Henshall (Conan Doyle) and Brian Cox (Bell) Nov 04 #6 I'm catching up with obituaries of actors and authors who had Sherlockian connections, and I'm happy to acknowledge my debt to Roger Johnson for much of this news. His excellent monthly newsletter, published for The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, is the District Mess- enger, and it costs $15.00 a year (checks payable to Jean Upton, please) or L6.00 (payable to Roger); it is also available via e-mail without charge, and his address is Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DF, England . The current issue also is available on-line at , the The Sherlock Holmes Society of London's web-site, which offers lots of other news and interesting links. Hugh Manning died on Aug. 18. He began his acting career on stage in the 1940s, and went on to films and radio and television; he was in John Giel- gud's "The Dying Detective" (1954) and in Carlton Hobb's "The Stockbroker's Clerk" and "The Cardboard Box" (1960) on BBC radio. Charles Eaton died on Aug. 22. A child star on stage and in silent films, he made the transition to sound, and starred with Helen Twelvetrees in "The Ghost Talks" (1929), and was shown in publicity photographs with deerstalker and calabash pipe, looking very much like Sherlock Holmes, but in the film he was merely an amateur detective who had learned to be a sleuth from a mail-order detec- tive course. Hildy Parks died on Oct. 7. She was a producer, writer, and actress, and a long-time partner with her husband Alexander H. Cohen; she wrote the first 20 Tony Awards and many other television specials that he produced, and was his production associate for the musical "Baker Street" in 1964. Jacques Derrida died on Oct. 9. He was the inventor of the philosophy known as de- constructionism, arguing that "there is nothing outside the text," and that the meaning of a collection of words is not fixed. His Sherlockian connec- tion is Mark Tansey's painting "Derrida Queries De Man" (which owes a great deal to Sidney Paget's illustration of Holmes and Moriarty at the Reichen- bach) (Jun 93 #5). Christopher Reeve died on Oct. 10. He was became a member of Actors Equity at the age of 15, and still a relatively unknown actor when he starred in "Superman: The Movie" in 1978, and later films in the series. He had lead- ing roles on stage as well, and after a 1995 accident left him paralyzed he became an outspoken advocate for research on spinal injuries. In 1985 he narrated "Dinosaur!" (a one-hour video for Family Home Entertainment), and noted that "in 1922 Sherlock Holmes' author promoted a hoax" when he showed scenes from "The Lost World" to magicians in New York. Sheila Keith died on Oct. 14. She began her acting career on television in 1964, and went on to supporting and starring roles in films as well; best- known for the Grand Guignol film "Frightmare" (1974), she also played Miss Stoper in Douglas Wilmer's BBC-1 broadcast of "The Copper Beeches" (1965). Robert Lang died on Nov. 6. He made his professional debut with the Bris- tol Old Vic in 1956 and had a long career on stage, screen, radio, and tel- evision; he played Blessington in BBC Radio 4's Merrison/Williams broadcast of "The Resident Patient" (1992). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (telephone: 301-229-5669) Dec 04 #1 Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press Late-breaking news: CBS-TV plans to help celebrate Sherlock Holmes' birth- day by airing "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Who Shot Sherlock Holmes" on Jan. 6. As noted earlier (Nov 04 #4) Joe Bell, a man who has trouble dis- tinguishing the difference between fact and fiction. Bell is the leading member of a literary society whose members dress up in period costume and role-play Sherlock Holmes mysteries with each other. A hitherto unrecorded copy of Beeton's Christmas Annual turned up at auc- tion at Sotheby's in New York this month (estimated at $45,000-65,000), and it sold for $153,600 (including the buyer's premium); it was described as complete, in unrestored original wrappers, in a half red morocco slipcase, and it went to auction from the library of the late Mrs. J. Insley Blair, who was well known as an active collector of American furniture (there was an interesting article about the Blairs in the Jan. 2000 issue of Magazine Antiques, available at ). According to Sotheby's it was the first complete and unrestored copy to appear at auction since 1990, when a copy once owned by Vincent Starrett sold at Sotheby's for $57,200. And it is possible that it's the same copy that was offered in a Scribner's catalog in 1934, bound in half red morocco, for $45. The sale also included a good copy of the Feb. 1890 issue of Lippincott's Magazine (with "The Sign of the Four"), estimated at $3,000-5,000 and sold for $63,000; and other nice first editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories. The highlight of the sale was a rare contemporary printing of the Declara- tion of Independence, estimated at $250,000-350,000 and sold for $456,000. "There used to be a lunchtime radio programme called Workers' Playtime and I still remember one sketch from it in which a character complained that he was tired because he had been sitting on his shooting stick all day. The straight man said that shouldn't have tired him. The comedian said it did if you had the stick the wrong way up," Owen Kelly recalled in the [Dublin] Irish Times (Oct. 23). "I thought that hilarious because at the time the master in school was reading us a Sherlock Holmes serial in which shooting stocks figured largely," he continued. "They were used by villains because real heroes would never have used a gun disguised as a walking stick." So: which Sherlock Holmes serial might that have been? The Parallel Case of St. Louis will hold its second "Holmes Under the Arch" conference on May 20-22, 2005; information on the schedule and registration is available from Joseph J. Eckrich (914 Oakmoor Drive, Fenton, MO 63026) (636-861-1454) . Carolyn and Joel Senter, who have presided over Classic Specialties for 17 years, offering a wide variety of Sherlockian merchandise in their mail-or- der catalogs and at their web-site (last month I noted their reproductions of Sherlock Holmes' passport), are thinking about retirement, and selling Classic Specialties, which has a data base with some 7,200 people in North America and about 800 overseas. Anyone interested in acquiring a business with an excellent track record and reputation is welcome to discuss things with the Senters (Box 1958, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-133-3823); the web- site is at . Dec 04 #2 It has been noted that Dr. Gregory House, played by Hugh Laurie on the highly-regarded television series "House" (broadcast by Fox on Tuesdays) resembles Sherlock Holmes. That's no accident, according to an interview with series creator David Shore in the Winston-Salem Journ- al (Dec. 10). "Part of the inspiration for the House character was Sir Ar- thur Conan Doyle's fictional 19th-century detective Sherlock Holmes, who was highly observant and frequently more interested in solving cases than in social niceties. When Shore and actor Hugh Laurie first met, they dis- cussed the similarities between House and Holmes." Jennie Paton reports that she has another new address (Box 221, Randsburg, CA 93554-0221); she hasn't moved far, but at long last she has found a post office that will give her Box 221. Reports to the "Mary Russell" electronic mailing list from Bouchercon (held in Toronto in October) offer some teasers about Laurie R. King's next Mary Russell novel: LOCKED ROOMS, set in San Francisco, where Mary meets Dash- iell Hammett, who was working for Pinkerton in 1924; there's mention of a case in Japan (where Laurie would love to visit to do research). And while you're waiting for the book to be published in June, you can see the cover at . Gayle Harris has reported some new DVDs at Walmart, priced at $1.00 each: two volumes of "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" each with three shows from the Ronald Howard television series, from Digiview Productions; the quali- ty's quite reasonable, and purists will note that there's new music presum- ably substituted to establish new copyright protection). Mystery Scene continues to publish interesting articles about and reviews of the mystery genre; the fall 2004 issue has a long and well-illustrated article by Jerome Coopersmith on his 1964 musical "Baker Street". The mag- azine costs $7.95 ($32.00 for a five-issue annual subscription); 331 West 57th Street #148, New York, NY 10019 . Mary Hoehling died on Dec. 7. She started writing biographies and popular histories because her "children were coming home from school complaining of the dullness of history," and one of her biographies was THE REAL SHERLOCK HOLMES: ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1965). The winter issue of The Serpentine Muse offers news from and about The Ad- venturesses of Sherlock Holmes, and a poetic report by Dorothy Belle Poll- ack on her discovery of a mention of Sherlock Holmes in Marcel Proust's A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU; it's in ALBERTINE DISPARUE (1925), in case you want to find it on your own. The Serpentine Muse costs $10.00 a year (four issues); $10.00 a year (checks payable to the Adventuresses, please) from Evelyn A. Herzog (360 West 21st Street #5-A, New York, NY 10011). Scott Monty has suggested "a little gem" for the newsletter:: if you want to make the birthday festivities truly spectacular for someone, the Hotel Algonquin is offering a $10,000 martini, and the hotel has been getting a lot of publicity (but so far no buyers). The Algonquin's martini arrives at your table with a loose diamond at the bottom (you'll need to give them 72 hours' notice, and meet with a jeweler to select a diamond). Dec 04 #3 Sherlock Holmes has been on display at the Smithsonian Institu- tion for many years, in the exhibit "Exploring the Planets" in the National Air and Space Museum, and it should be noted that he's now al- so on display in the exhibit "Within These Walls" in the National Museum of American History: look for the booklet prepared by the National Association of Realtors (they sponsored the exhibit), and the nice Sherlockian artwork in the booklet. "Medical Errors in Fiction" is the title on an item in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Dec. 3, 1904) that commented on an error in "The Golden Pince-Nez" in Collier's Weekly, where the lenses in the pince- nez are convex (they're concave, correctly, in the Strand). The item in JAMA in 1904 seems to have been overlooked by bibliographers and scholars. The Lamp-Post is an occasional electronic newsletter published by the Baker Street Journal: go to to see the current issue, which offers the editorial and the leading arti- cle in the winter 2004 issue of the BSJ, and other news about the BSJ and The Baker Street Irregulars. The Sherlock Holmes Society of London has settled on June 15-23, 2005, for its next Swiss Pilgrimage; if you think you might be interested in joining their festivities, you should contact Bob Ellis (13 Crofton Avenue, Orping- ton, Kent BR6 8DU, England) . Andrew Gulli has now edited and published 13 issues of his new Strand Maga- zine; I mentioned the magazine last year (Sep 03 #6). And he's offering a Sherlock Holmes 2005 Calendar in full color ($16.95) and other Sherlockiana in four-page flier (Box 1418, Birmingham, MI 48012) (800-300-6652) and at his web-site . Diana Schatell died on Dec. 15. She was the widow of Norman Schatell, and with Norm a founder of Mrs. Hudson's Cliffdwellers of New Jersey (in which her thoroughly apt Investiture was "A Certain Gracious Lady"). Reported: MRS. HUDSON AND THE CASE OF THE SPIRITS' CURSE, by Martin Davies (New York: Berkley, 2004; 320 pp., $13.00); Mrs. Hudson takes an interest in one of Holmes' cases, and with Flottie, the orphan girl in her care, is determined to solve the mystery. The exhibition of Conan Doyle material at the British Library (Oct 04 #3) continues through Jan. 30, and there's another event of interest scheduled for Jan. 17, when their "West End Poetry" series will offer T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" read by Edward Fox and Dame Eileen Atkins. On Feb. 14 the poetry will be Oscar Wilde's "The Ballade of Reading Gaol" read by Brian Cox. One hears of Sherlock everywhere, as some say: T. S. Eliot used Conan Doyle's word "grimpen" in "East Coker" in "Four Quartets", Edward Fox was Watson on television in "Dr. Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery" (1974), Eileen Atkins attended the memorial service for Jeremy Brett at St. Martin- in-the-Fields in Nov. 1995, Oscar Wilde dined and corresponded with Conan Doyle, and Brian Cox is to play Joseph Bell on television in "The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle" in 1995 (and his son Alan played Watson on screen in "Young Sherlock Holmes" in 1985). Dec 04 #4 Ted Friedman has noted a brief item in the N.Y. Post (Dec. 12) about a pair of paintings by Claude-Joseph Vernet (the great- great-granduncle of Sherlock Holmes); they were bought from Vernet by the famous Clive of India in 1773, and last year Clive's family sent the paint- ings to auction and they were bought for L2.4 million by American billion- aire David Koch, who then fought and lost a battle with the British govern- ment, which classified the paintings as part of Britain's cultural heritage and refused to allow them to be exported to the U.S. And there has been an amicable resolution that involved Koch agreeing to donate the paintings to the National Gallery in London, and the National Gallery agreeing to lend the paintings to Koch until he dies, when the paintings will be returned to the National Gallery. The National Gallery will display the paintings un- til next summer, and then they'll be turned over to Koch. Reported: THE CASE OF THE 2ND SEANCE: A JOHN DARNELL MYSTERY, by Sam McCar- ver (New York: Signet, 2000; 216 pp., $5.99); it's set in 1916, and Lloyd George's teenage daughter is kidnapped during a seance at 10 Downing Street attended by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who asks paranormal investigator John Darnell to help solve the mystery. Issue #63 of SHERLOCK has two interesting interviews by editor David Stuart Davies: one with Allan Cubitt, who wrote the scripts for BBC-1's "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (with Roxburgh and Hart) and the new "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" (with Everett and Hart); and the other with Clive Francis, whose dramatization of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" for a cast of four men was performed this year in England. And much more, as usual, Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian. SHERLOCK is published six times a year and subscriptions cost L23.70 (to the U.K.)/L26.00 continent)/$45.00 (elsewhere) from Atlas Publishing Ltd., Jordan House, Old Milton Green, New Milton, Hants. BH24 6QJ, England . Classic Speci- alties is their American agent (Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219) (877-233- 3823) ; credit-card orders are welcome at both ad- dresses, and back issues are available. Reported: Carole Nelson Douglas' SPIDER DANCE (New York: Forge Books, 2004; 464 pp., $24.95); the 8th mystery novel in her Irene Adler series. Accord- ing to Kirkus Reviews, the book is "a paean to women's audacity, pugnacity, and street smarts, told with frisky good humor and nicely integrated histo- rical asides." The 14th (and last) volume of The Shoso-in Bulletin, edited by Yuichi Hira- yama and Mel Hughes and published by The Men with the Twisted Konjo, offers its traditional mix of articles, essays, and artwork by contributors from nine countries, with 200 pages (all in English); of particular interest is Yuichi's long review of KONAN DOIRU SATSUJIN-JIKEN, the Japanese transla- tion of Rodger Garrick-Steele's book (not available in English) about his belief that B. Fletcher Robinson was murdered by his wife and Conan Doyle (Yuichi's conclusion is that the book "is full of mistakes, errors, inaccu- racies, and ill will," and "it is hard to call it a non-fiction work, and it is even a poor work of fiction." Yuichi will have copies of the Bulle- tin for sale in New York during the birthday festivites, or you can order from him: $12.00 postpaid, with US dollar checks (payable to Mel Hughes) to be sent to Yuichi (2-10-12 Kamirenjaku, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181-0012, Japan). Dec 04 #5 The Pioneer Drama Service continues to offer scripts for Sher- lockian plays, including Craig Sodaro's "Hound of the Clacker- villes" ($5.25); Granny, the local witch, announces the curse of the hound of the Clackervilles, and Holmes and Watson are kept hopping to solve the mystery. And there's Robert W. LaVohn's "Murder at the Banquet" ($4.50); it's set at an awards banquet for the world's greatest detectives, and as Foster Holmes, Sherlock's descendant, steps up to speak, Jenny Watson arr- ives to protest *her* ancestor's role as Sherlock's side-kick. "The lights go out, and when they return the banquet's host is dead and the prize money is missing." Pioneer's address is Box 4267, Englewood, CO 80155 (800-333- 7262) . The November issue of The Holmes & Watson Report offers Bill Cochran's in- teresting commentary on the classics in John Bennett Shaw's recommendations for a basic Sherlockian library, and Stu Shiffman's report on Lloyd Alexan- der's THE GAWGON AND THE BOY, a children's book published in 2001 and still in print, with some nice Sherlockian echoes. $16.00 a year (six issues) or $22.00 outside North America, or $3.00 for one issue, from Brad Keefauver (4009 North Chelsea Place, Peoria, IL 61614). Warren Randall celebrated the recent excursion into the Valley of Fear (Oct 04 #6) with a lapel pin, and extra copies of this official souvenir are available for $10.00 postpaid (in North America) or $12.00 (elsewhere); checks (payable to Warren) can be sent to him at 15 Fawn Lane West, South Setauket, NY 11720. Warren reports that he considered distributing pieces of coal, but concluded that would be more appropriate for December, and for naughty boys and girls, rather than for October and the well-behaved expeditionary force. I would also recommend the film "The Molly Maguires" (1970), avail- able on DVD and VHS; it has fine performances by Sean Connery, Richard Har- ris, Samantha Eggar, Frank Finlay, and others, and many of the scenes were filmed on location in Mauch Chunk/Jim Thorpe. VICTORIAN DETECTIVE FICTION AND THE NATURE OF EVIDENCE: THE SCIENTIFIC IN- VESTIGATIONS OF POE, DICKENS, AND DOYLE, by Lawrence Frank (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003; 249 pp., $69.96), is an academic exami- nation of the relationships between detective fiction and 19th-century sci- entific texts; three of the seven chapters are devoted to Conan Doyle. Masamichi Higurashi continues to translate Sherlockiana for Jaanese read- ers: Ken Greenwald's THE LOST ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1989) has been published by Hara Shobo, and Ted Riccardi's THE ORIENTAL CASEBOOK OF SHER- LOCK HOLMES (2003) by Kobunsha; Mitch also has added two new volumes to the MEITANTEI HOLMES children's paperback series illustrated by Hitoshi Wakana and "Ki" and published by Kodansha. Thomas Mann has worked for many years as a reference librarian, and like so many librarians also is a collector, and has written about his collection in HORROR AND MYSTERY PHOTOPLAY EDITIONS AND MAGAZINE FICTIONIZATIONS: THE CATALOG OF A COLLECTION (Jefferson: McFarland, 2004; 184 pp., $35.00). Tom reports that there are a dozen entries for Sherlock Holmes (including maga- zine fictionizations of Rathbone films) and four for "The Lost World" (and he knows of a fifth that he discovered after the book went to press). Dec 04 #6 ROBERT RIPLEY'S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! ENCYLOPEDIA OF THE BIZARRE (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2002; 318 pp., $17.95) is (of course) full of things that are "amazing, strange, inexplicable, weird, and all true!" And the chapter on literature has a portrait of Sherlock Holmes and an explanation that "the fictional detective each year is sent hundreds of letters to his nonexisting address at 221B Baker Street." I'm not sure whether that's amazing, strange, inexplicable, or weird. "Sherlock Holmes and the Clocktower Mystery" (the interactive exhibit with Victorian flavor, and a mystery that visitors can solve) currently at the Discovery Center in Springfield, Mo. (Nov 04 #5) will be next at the Lake- view Museum in Peoria, Ill., from Apr. 16 to Aug. 14 (309-686-7000); their web-site is at . "Great Books: The Hound of the Baskervilles" was broadcast on TLC (formerly The Learning Channel) last year (Nov 03 #3), and the series was then aban- doned by TLC. But the series hasn't vanished completely: the program aired on the Discovery Civilisation channel in Britain on Dec. 28, as I learned on Dec. 29 (and confirmed with a Google search on the name of the program). And some of the programs air on Discovery HD Theater and The Science Chan- nel; you can check the listings at . "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is worth watching, and not merely because two Sherlockians in Washington were interviewed on tape for the show. I'll do my best to write this item so that it will get through e-mail filt- ers: "The game's a footsie" is one of the phrases used by the producers to describe "The Secret of H*rl*t Hill" (2001), which also is described as "a wild and wicked tale of deception, sensual awakenings, and dangerous liai- sons" involving Sherlock Holmes and his trusted companion Dr. Emma Watson. The 87-minute film is available at (800-293-4654) for $19.95 on DVD or VHS; another web-site offers full- color stills from the film. Asterisk #1 is an "a" and asterisk #2 an "o". And thanks to Joe Coppola for the report. Further to the report (Jul 04 #6) on cartoonist Zhu Ziquiang's suit against Nike over their copying his "Little Match Man" artwork in their worldwide "Creativity in Sports" television advertising campaign, a court in Beijing has ruled in favor of Zhu, who had asked for 2 million yuan ($240,000) and a public apology. The court ordered Nike to pay 300,000 yuan and issue a public apology. Nike plans to appeal; the company's lawyer argued earlier that Zhu's artwork lacks originality: "From murals and stone paintings in ancient times to Sherlock Holmes stories, the logo has been used repeated- ly." Thanks to Bill Vande Water for spotting the AP dispatch. The Feb. 2005 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which will on the newsstands during the birthday celebrations, is its annual tribute to Sher- lock Holmes: there's nice cover art by Susan Smith, and Bill Vande Water's discussion of the photograph of Christopher Morley and Fred Dannay inset on the cover, and an amusing pastiche by Steve Hockensmith ("Gustav Amlingmey- er, Holmes on the Range"). The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD 20817-4401 (301-229-5669)