Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti Press 2012 - Red Circle of ...

Feb 12 #5 NINE LIVES OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, by Graham Holderness (Lon-
don: Continuum, 2011; 215 pp., £18.99/$27.95) is an interesting
literary biography in which Holderness uses a combination of critical ess-
ays and fictional narratives to explore nine aspects of Shakespeare's life
and career. "The Adventure of Shakespeare's Ring" is a pastiche that has
Holmes, Watson, Lord Alfred Douglas, and Oscar Wilde examining the possi-
bility that Shakespeare was a homosexual.
Bruce Holmes died on Dec. 21. An early member of the Bimetallic Question
of Montreal, he was an energetic philatelist and greatly enjoyed publishing
Sherlockian pamphlets illustrated with carefully-selected and appropriate
postage stamps and cancellations.
BMW has launched the Baker Street Mini
(a special limited edition, which will
go on sale on Mar. 1; the car will be
priced from £16,365 in Great Britain
and available world-wide. It's named
for the area of London where Sherlock
Holmes lived (one press report noted
that Baker Street also is the name of
a hit song by Gerry Rafferty, and sug-
gested that the car might be come with
a saxophone rather than a horn).
The next annual STUD-Watsonian Weekend will be held in and near Chicago on
Mar. 30-Apr. 1, with a dinner at the Sheraton Four Points in Schiller Park,
the annual running of The Silver Blaze at Hawthorne Race Course, and a For-
tescue Honours brunch, and the registration form is available from Susan Z.
Diamond (16W603 3rd Avenue, Bensenville, IL 60106) .
"Studying Sherlock Holmes" is the theme of this year's "Gathering of South-
ern Sherlockians" in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Apr. 20-21; their program will
feature a tribute to "A Study in Scarlet" and "The Sign of the Four", and
their mailing list is maintained by Kent Ross (721 Hartford Road, Spring-
field, OH 45503) (678-464-8321) .
The latest issue of Carolyn and Joel Senter's The Sherlockian E-Times will
be found at , offering Sherlock-
iana, old and new, books and much more, including news and views of society
meetings here and there, and a nice photograph of the Senters.
The Sherlockian "Mr. Gallagher & Mr. Shean" duet performed by Jim Saunders
and Henry Boote during the birthday festivities last month is now available
to a wider audience, at .
The December issue of the quarterly newsletter of The Friends of the Sher-
lock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota offers a "100 Years
Ago" discussion by Dick Sveum of early Danish translations of the Canon and
a "50 Years Ago" tribute by Julie McKuras to H. W. Starr and Ron Haydock,
plus other new from and about the collections; copies of the newsletter are
available from Richard J. Sveum (111 Elmer L. Andersen Library, University
of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455) .