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

May 12 #6 Scott Monty has reported that the Post-Meridian Radio Players'
"Summer Radio Mystery Theatre" July 27-28 will offer new ver-
sions of three classic programs, including "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
(adapted from the CBS Radio Mystery Theatre) in Somerville, Mass., on July
27-28. Details at .
A high court judge heard arguments on May 23 in the Undershaw Preservation
Trust's campaign to block conversion of Conan Doyle's home into flats (May
11 #3); the judge is expected to rule soon on whether the Waverly Borough
Council properly considered a third-party offer to purchase the house.
There's a new version of the delightful parody of "The Hound of the Basker-
villes" that was written by Steven Canny and John Nicholson in 2007: it's a
radio-theater adaptation that will be performed at the Bath Fringe Festival
on June 4 . It was inspired by a performance with a
live audience that was recorded for BBC Radio 4 in March; the program will
air as the Saturday Drama on July 7. Nick Hern Books publish the original
script and license it for amateur productions ;
the company also offers David Edgar's dramatization of Julian Barnes' novel
ARTHUR AND GEORGE.
There was a flurry of publicity last month about the discovery in the John
Murray Archives at the National Library of Scotland of Conan Doyle stories
that were considered to be "not very good and not used as the quality was
too poor." The stories, none of them unpublished, were found in a set of
typescripts that likely were prepared for possible reprinting in THE CONAN
DOYLE STORIES (1929); they've been republished since, in the volume of UN-
COLLECTED STORIES (1982) edited by Richard Lancelyn Green.
"Forensic Firsts" begins on the Smithsonian channel on June 17 and the ser-
ies offers an interesting look at how forensic sciences are used by detect-
ives today . They
may even mention Sherlock Holmes.
Les Klinger reports that Ronald Unz has digitized The Bookman [London] and
The Bookman [New York] the files are searchable, and of course contain much
about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle.
and . Unz has digitized many other magazines that
contain Sherlockiana and Doyleana.
"Good Bad Books" is the title of an essay by George Orwell in Tribune (Nov.
2, 1945) and reprinted SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT AND OTHER ESSAYS (1950); he ac-
knowledges G. K. Chesterton for coining the phrase, which Orwell applies to
"the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains read-
able when more serious productions have perished." And his list of "obvi-
ously outstanding books in this line" includes "Raffles", "Dracula", "Uncle
Tom's Cabin", and the Sherlock Holmes stories. Orwell had earlier written
a Sherlockian parody "The Adventure of the Lost Meat-Card" for Eton Coll-
ege's Election Times (June 3, 1918), unmentioned in his essay, which can be
read on-line at .
The Spermaceti Press: Peter E. Blau, 7103 Endicott Court, Bethesda, MD
20817-4401 (301-229-5669)