Description
Date of publication: 2010
Edited by Jonathan McCafferty
58 Pages
The Society’s 2010 expedition visited the landscapes and buildings associated with two Sherlock Holmes tales: following the tyre tracks of Miss Violet Smith in the area of Farnham in The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist, and investigating the possible sites of The Crooked Man in the military town of Aldershot. The handbook provides a range of scholarly commentary upon aspects of each tale, with articles ranging from Catherine Cooke on the typography of the Solitary Cyclist to Anna Smyth on the natural history of the mongoose. Highlights include Helen Dorey on the idiosyncratic iconography of the Watts Mausoleum and Jane Arnold Foster on Brooklands and the Raleigh Bicycle Collection. Other content includes Nick Utechin looking back on publication format in The Strand and Collier’s, Oscar Ross on Freeman Wills Crofts,
Eva Zenk Iggland on Guildford’s Spike, a little-known survivor of our social history, and Jonathan McCafferty digressing upon the employment of Miss Smith’s father at the Imperial Theatre. Not least amongst the many charms which clamour for the reader’s attention, Dr Auberon Redfearn has contributed a dialogue in dramatic verse on the perils of a canary beset by a mongoose.
This handbook iwas a debutante publication, for whereas all the Society’s previous handbooks have been published alongside the expedition weekend, the publication follows upon our travels. The delay was deliberate; it allows us to create an especially handsome issue including original photographic material and maps. We have also taken the opportunity to republish, as a convenience to the reader, Cmdr. Geoffrey’s Stavert’s original material on the location of Charlington Hall and Mr Bernard Davies’s work used by the Society in our recent excursion.
