The Sherlock Holmes Journal is published twice a year, usually in June and December. It is the official voice of the Society and contains its transactions, news and reviews, letters and editorial notes. It is also home to the most erudite scholarship, publishing learned articles from Holmesians world-wide who have something to say on any aspect of Sherlock Holmes and his world. It has been appearing without a break since the first issue in May 1952.

The Winter 2018 issue is now out.

You can download the book reviews here: I Am an Omnivorous Reader

And here is a summary of this issue’s contents:

Editorial Notes
* Our Founding Member and former President, Freda Howlett celebrated her hundredth birthday on the 3rd September.
* A previously unrecorded copy of Beeton’s Christmas Annual for 1887 is offered for sale, priced at £59,350.33 – plus postage.
* An English Heritage Blue Plaque has been installed at Peter Cushing’s childhood home in Surrey.
* Barry and Bob Cryer’s novel Mrs Hudson’s Diaries has been adapted for broadcast at Christmas. Some members of the Society were at the recording of Mrs Hudson’s Radio Show.
* Before Sherlock Holmes: The Musical Leslie Bricusse collaborated with John (“Rumpole”) Mortimer on Sherlock! The Musical Mystery.
* As far back as 1911 you could have bought a “Sherlock Holmes Robe” for only $20.00.

“Travel in the Blood” by Marcus Geisser
     It wasn’t only an artistic temperament that Holmes inherited from his Vernet ancestors.

“The Rivals of Professor Moriarty” by Michael Dirda (part two)
     Moriarty set a high standard, but there was no shortage of ingenious super-criminals, male and female, in late Victorian and Edwardian popular literature. This concludes the abridged version of the 2017 Richard Lancelyn Green Memorial Lecture.

“The Koi, the Waterfall, and the Chopping-Block” by Nicholas Dunn-Meynell
     A curious tattoo was a key to Moriarty’s criminal society – and to that fateful encounter at Reichenbach.

“’The Professor and the Prime Minister’ : A Reply to Jacoby” by Roger F Kilshaw, MA
     A refutation, in fact, of the late Peter Jacoby’s theory that if not for Sherlock Holmes, Professor Moriarty could have become the eminence grise to Winston Churchill.

“An Attempt to Throw Some Light on ‘The Musgrave Ritual’” by Mike Ruddock
     A careful examination of the date, according to the evidence.

“A Capital Return”
     David Jones, Audrey Jones and Roger Johnson recall the London Mini-Festival in May.
*   The AGM on Thursday preceded the story of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, dramatically recounted by David Stuart Davies.
*   On Friday we visited the excellent new Postal Museum at Mount Pleasant, where our former Volunteer Archivist, Jessica Woolf, is Curator. A high point was a trip on London’s secret underground railway line.
*   On Saturday, a full day of events at Undershaw, the house that ACD built for himself and his family at Hindhead, concluded with Torchlight Mysteries’ funny, fast-paced and farcical production of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
*   Richard Burnip’s guided walk through the City on Sunday morning began at Tower Hill and took in sites associated with at least seven canonical cases, as well as Jack the Ripper, Basil Rathbone and Sherlock.

“The Old English Capital” by Roger Johnson
     The Society spent the weekend of the 31st August to 2nd September in Winchester, a return visit after nearly thirty years.
*   After dinner on Friday the military historian Julian Spilsbury spoke about the Indian Empire, a topic of great significance in the Holmesian canon.
*   Saturday morning’s fascinating guided walk was specially devised for us by Karen Dagwell, a Winchester City Guide. Lunch preceded a broadcast commentary by the incomparable Peter O’Sullevan on the running of the Wessex Cup at Winchester.
*   Then it was off by coach to Alresford for a trip on the restored heritage railway, the Watercress Line. That evening’s talk on Victorian attitudes to crime was given by Neil McCaw, Academic Director of the Conan Doyle Collection at Portsmouth.
*   ACD’s son Kingsley served in the Great War with the Hampshire Regiment; on Sunday morning the Society visited the Regimental Museum, currently housing an exhibition on Sir Arthur’s campaign to provide British soldiers with body armour.

“For the Game’s Own Sake” by Nick Utechin
     Winners of the 2018 Victorian Cricket Match against the P.G. Wodehouse Society were … the PGW Society’s ‘Gold Bats’. But the Sherlock Holmes Society of London is still one ahead!

“It Seems to Me” by Auberon Redfearn
     The new, improved, up-dated Hound of the Baskervilles.

“(Don’t) Cut Out the Poetry, Watson”
     The results of the Clerihew Competition.

Obituaries
     Those we have lost over the past six months include the master bibliographer, Ronald Burt De Waal; Joel Senter, retired Professor of Psychology turned specialist dealer in Sherlockiana; and two great comic dramatists, Neil Simon and Denis Norden.

“I Am an Omnivorous Reader”
     Book reviews by Lisa Burscheidt, Alistair Duncan, John Radford, Catherine Cooke, Paul Miller, Mark Mower, Valerie Schreiner, Jean Upton, Nicholas Utechin and Roger Johnson.

“Wigmore Street Postbag”
     Letters to The Sherlock Holmes Journal.

“There Can Be No Question as to the Authorship”
     Contributors to this issue.

“Overrun by Oysters” by Julie Cohen
     Our resident cartoonist strikes again!