The Life and Death of Sherlock Holmes

I guess I would have first encountered Sherlock Holmes on TV many years ago and have watched all of the most recent series starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Many years ago I bought the complete sets of novels and short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and read them with much enjoyment. I came across the book The life and death of Sherlock Holmes in a bookshop a few weeks ago and I later downloaded it in kindle form and read it. It is basically everything you ever wanted to know about the subject. Instead of stopping with the death of Conan Doyle the Swedish writer carries on describing what the surviving family did and didn't do and tracing the parallel life of the character in parodies, films, plays and TV presentations, etc. In the end it is too much but the author writes well and keeps you interested for most of the well over 500 pages! It is an exhaustive and through piece of work that name drops all the way written by a genuine enthusiast and probably would not be appreciated by everyone. I would love to see something similar done with P G Wodehouse's Jeeves although I notice that Bostrom thinks Jeeves is a derivative of Holmes. Strangely it didn't create a desire in me to read the original stories or the book of parodies I also have.

10 Fictional Addresses of 10 Fictional Detectives

Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>,
via Wikimedia Commons

1. Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker St, London W1, England (Arthur Conan Doyle)
2. Hercule Poirot, 56B Whitehaven Mansions, Sandhurst Square, London W1, England (Agatha Christie)
3. Miss Marple, Danemead, High Street, St Mary Mead, England (Agatha Christie)
4. Jules Maigret, 132 Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, Paris, France (Georges Simenon)
5. Sam Spade, 891 Post St, San Franciso, CA, USA (Dashiell Hammett)
6. Philip Marlowe, #615 Cahuenga Bldg, Hollywood Blvd, LA CA, USA (Raymond Chandler)
7. John Rebus, 17 Arden Street, St Leonards, Edinburgh, Scotland (Ian Rankin)
8. Lord Peter Wimsey, 110A Piccadilly, London W1 and Bredon Hall, Duke's Denver, Norfolk, England (Dorothy L Sayers)
9. Brother Cadfael, Shrewsbury Abbey, Shrewsbury, Salop, England (Ellis Peters)
10. Albert Campion, 17a Bottle St, Piccadilly, London W1, England (Marjorie Allingham)

10 Writer Doctors of medicine

1. Dr Luke the Evangelist
2. Dannie Abse
3. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
4. A J Cronin
5. Alexander McCall Smith
6. William Carlos Williams
7. Oliver Goldsmith
8. Tobias Smollett
9. Robert Bridges
10. Anton Chekhov

Novelists 38 Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) is best known for stories rather than novels as such. A Scot, he was a medical doctor who became a writer, most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He also wrote about a second fictional character of his own invention, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels. I've read all the Sherlock stuff but nothing else. He was born exactly a hundred years before me (and Morrissey of the Smiths).

His middle name is Hamish

 

The current round of Sherlock on BBC 1 reveals that John Watson, assistant to Holmes, has the middle name of Hamish. (Conan Doyle only gives the middle initial H, and Hamish is Dorothy L Sayers' educated guess). It made me think of another Anglo-Scot, to whom so many of us are indebted, with the middle name Hamish.

 

 

Unusual words 08 Cantle

In Surprised by Joy C S Lewis talks about how much he hated going to parties at a certain age. He says

To me it was all inexplicable, unprovoked persecution; and when, as often happened, such engagements fell in the last week of the holidays and wrested from us a huge cantle of hours in which every minute was worth gold, I positively felt that I could have torn my hostess limb from limb.

A cantle can be part of a saddle but here it is a corner, segment, or portion; a piece.

AnoOher example

They are here set down, most holy father, upon a cantle of sheep-skin Conan Doyle in The White Company

Descendants and Sherlock Holmes II

Sat down to watch a couple of DVDs recently. The George Clooney film Descendants had seven Oscar nominations and so one expected something extra special. In fact it was quite an ordinary film really though quite watchable apart from the needless swearing, with plenty of drama and a refreshing Hawaiian backdrop. The only Oscar it won was for screenplay adaptation (it is based on a novel) and that seemed quite deserved. So, quite a good drama on a humanist level and worth watching if you can cope with the foul language.

As for Sherlock Holmes A Game of Shadows the less said the better. I thought they just about got away with it in the first film but this sequel is pretty useless and I gave up watching half an hour from the end. I suppose that if it wasn't called Sherlock I never would have watched a Guy Ritchie film. It does seem unfair to hijack a name like that. Surely he should be a bit like the character in the Conan Doyle books.

More here and here.

10 Famous goalkeepers

As someone who played in goals as a boy myself this list is of interest as a fine bit of trivia. (We are talking about soccer, of course).

1. Algerian born writer and philosopher Albert Camus played for Racing Universitaire Algerios (RUA) junior team (“All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.”)

2. Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias played for Los Blancos Juniors

3. Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) played for Krakow University

4. Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti played in goal for Modena Juniors before moving to the wing position

5. Writer Arthur Conan Doyle played for a team called Portsmouth F C (but unconnected to the present day team)

6. Writer Vladimir Nabokov played during his time at Cambridge

7. Scientist Niels Bohr played for Akademisk Boldklub (his lesser known brother Harrald played for the national side when Denmark took silver at the 1908 Olympics)

8. Revolutionary Che Guevara (in goals and not on the left wing due to asthma)

9. Religious oddity David Icke played for Coventry City

10. Boyband Westlife singer Nicky Byrne played for Leeds United youth who won the FA Youth Cup in 1997

Book Buys July

Rather quiet on the book buying front this month in some ways. Almost no Christian books bought but two events piled up my supply of secular books.

First, The Times were giving away Penguin paperbacks free in certain places. By this means I picked up the following

1. Green (Adventure)
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Treasure Island by R L Stevenson
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
(I missed Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne)
I've read the first two but not the second two. It would be nice to get round to them.

2. Pink (Romance)
The Lady with the Little Dog and other stories by Chekov
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence
(I missed Madame Bovary by Faubert)
I don't think I've read any of these.

Then, second, I was on Oxford Street and they had a closing down sale in Borders (no surprise there, they never seemed to know quite what they were doing). For £1 each I got

Julia Pastrana: The Tragic Story of the Victorian Ape Woman/Gylseth and Toverud

Hans Christian Andersen/Jack Zipes
Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakepseare/Stephen Greenblatt
Text and Experience: Toward a Cultural Exegesis of the Bible/Ed Smith-Christopher

I also got in July for £1 each biographies of George Elliot and Chrisopher Wren in the very interesting people series from OUP (I have one on Ruskin already). The other buy was the very interesting

Why not Catch-21 by Gary Dexter

Noson Cwis

Enjoyed a nice evening yesterday with Eleri, Rhodri and others at the Welsh School. The main event was a seven round quiz and over £450 was raised. We were with two other parents (the fine by meez we were) and nearly won. We did well on the rock and pop (using our joker) and music intro rounds (thanks to Rhods and me and others). Thankfully John did the maths questions for us (though kicked himself over the formula for measuring a cone). We were okay but not great on the people bits but got caught out in the movies round not knowing the final line of Some like it hot*. Literature should be my forte but I hadn't heard of Sophie Kinsella, couldn't remember the surname of Chocolat woman Joanne (Harris) and boobed on Sherlock Holmes' address (it's a number and I'm disnumerate!). (BTW caught an excellent programme on Radio 4 - Gyles Brandreth looking at Conan Doyle, R L Stevenson, Wilde, Bram Stoker and J M Barry. See here.). Anyway we went into a tie break and had to say how many days a red blood cell lasts - not a clue. We said 4 days, the other team 14 so they won - though we were both miles out. Answer here. Ah well, *nobody's perfect*.