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

Jun 12 #4 "The Adventure of the Immortal Detective: Discovering Sherlock
Holmes in the Archives" is the title of an interesting post by
Arcadia Falcone to the Cultural Compass blog at the Harry Ransom Center at
the University of Texas. The collection has some wonderful Sherlockian and
Doylean material (including two pairs of his socks); you can read her post
at ,
and the slide show is fascinating (there's a button to turn on captions).
ARMCHAIR MYSTERIES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES is a new collection of pastiches by
Alan Downing, available (without charge) via the Internet as PDF and Kindle
files at .
There will be some intriguing Conan Doyle material at auction on July 10 at
Sworders . Mary Jakeman
was working as a servant in Surbiton in 1909, when she applied for a posi-
tion as lady's maid in the Conan Doyle household, and Conan Doyle's letter
offering her the job ("The wages start at £26. The servants find their own
beer or wine.") is included in the collection, along with other correspond-
ence from the family (she left their employ in 1932) and photographs, and
signed and inscribed books; she is mentioned in THE WANDERINGS OF A SPIRI-
TUALIST (1921) and MEMORIES AND ADVENTURES (1924).
Richard Carpenter died on Feb. 26. He was acted on stage and television,
and in the 1970s turned to writing for ITV and the BBC, becoming a popular
and prolific screenwriter for children's television, including two of the
four programs in the series "The Baker Street Boys" (1983).
Twickenham Film Studios has closed, one year short of celebrating 100 years
of British film-making. Founded as St. Margaret's Studios in 1913, it was
renamed in 1929 by the company's owners producer Jules Hagen and director
Leslie Hiscott. Films made at Twickenham included the Beatles' "Help!" and
"A Hard Day's Night", Michael Caine's "Alfie", Angela Lansbury's "The Mirr-
or Crack'd", Meryl Streep's "The Iron Lady", and most of Arthur Wontner's
Sherlockian films in the 1930s.
Further to the report (Dec 01 #4) on the "Hound of the Baskervilles effect"
(the conclusion that fatal heart attacks and stress are linked in fact as
well as fiction), Don Pollock has noted references to a "Hound of the Bas-
kervilles pattern" . It's a financial phenomenon,
"when a pattern or anticipated behaviour in prices does not occur in spite
of compelling recent evidence," and it seems to have been named by someone
who thought that the dog that did nothing in the night-time was the Basker-
ville hound.
The latest Sherlockian audio from Big Finish is SHERLOCK HOLMES: THE ADVEN-
TURE OF THE PERFIDIOUS MARINER, on a CD ($14.07) and as a download ($7.99);
PO Box 3787, Maidstone, Berks. SL6 3TF, England . Nich-
olas Briggs stars as Holmes, and Richard Earl as Watson, with Michael Malo-
ney as J. Bruce Ismay (the most hated man in England, blamed for the Titan-
ic disaster); it's an intriguing mystery, and as always well-acted and re-
corded. There's a 30-minute podcast at the web-site, and downloadable cop-
ies of the company's monthly magazine Vortex, as well as information about
their Sherlockian and non-Sherlockian recordings.