Dim & Distant Rare and Second-hand Bookshop. Heathfield, East Sussex TN21 8HU. Dave Berry’s hidden treasure of a bookshop. Don’t miss the chance to pick and choose wonderful books, including bargains outside the shop. A sister store opened in Eastbourne Summer 2012.
And to the following for their valuable research assistance:
V&A Theatre & Performance Enquiry Service, a superb, friendly resource on matters Victorian and Edwardian. For example, ‘We have checked our archives and relevant reference works and the earliest evidence we can trace of Vesta Tilley performing as a soldier is during World War One. In particular, she had two characters - ‘Tommy in the Trench’ and ‘Jack Tar Home from Sea’ - which formed part of her recruitment drive. This was accompanied by singing suitable topical songs such as The Army of Today’s Alright , Jolly Good Luck to the Girl Who Marries a Soldier , and In Dear Old England’s Name. She visited hospitals and sold War Bonds, as well as encouraging men at her shows to enlist (during the early part of the war before conscription was put in place).’
Dr Michael Pritchard FRPS, Director-General, The Royal Photographic Society, for technical advice on the advances in cameras and photography in the late-19th and early-20th Centuries, viz ‘When abroad, Watson, being a doctor and probably a keen amateur photographer, would most likely have developed his plate in his hotel room and then made a contact photograph from it which he would have sent to the Strand by post, or perhaps had a fellow traveller hand-carry it back to London.’
Jeff Sobel, son of Eli Sobel, my favourite Dean of Honours at UCLA, for technical advice on contemporary weaponry, especially the very unpleasant Apache revolver.
For friendly and encouraging reviews of my recent novel, Sherlock Holmes And The Dead Boer At Scotney Castle:
Felicia Carparelli in faraway Chicago, who writes under the pseudonym ‘maurice chevalier’ (quote: the Dead Boer contains ‘Lots of action and plot devices and a villain who Holmes says rivals Moriarty. This is a healthy Sherlock pastiche with many commendable elements.’)
Ditto Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, Sir Malcolm Rifkind who emailed, ‘Dear Tim Symonds, just to say that I have just finished reading The Dead Boer at Scotney Castle. I greatly enjoyed it and found it a great yarn! It kept one guessing right to the end which all good crime novels should do. Sherlock Holmes (and Conan Doyle) would have been impressed!’
And to Tracey Snape for her review of the Dead Boer in the Association of British Investigators Journal (‘cleverly written in the style of Conan Doyle’ and ‘well worth a read for lovers of the inventive art of detection’).
Google and Amazon and Wikipedia for all the research I needed at my very fingertips even seated on logs in the ancient woods of East Sussex.
Last and certainly not least, my partner Lesley Abdela for her happy involvement in both the Dead Boer and the Bulgarian Codex, and her wonderful journalist’s eye on my plots.
Select Bibliography Of Works Consulted
In addition to the several Conan Doyle stories mentioned in the Adventure - :
Buchanan, George, My Mission to Russia, and Other Diplomatic Memories, (Vol I), (Cassell, 1923)
Buchanan, Meriel, Ambassador’s Daughter, (Cassell, 1958)
Constant, Stephen, Foxy Ferdinand, Tsar of Bulgaria, (Franklin Watts, 1980)
Haslip, Joan, The Emperor and The Actress: the love story of Emperor Franz Josef and Katarina Schratt, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982)
Cloete, Stuart, A Victorian Son: an autobiography 1897-1922, (Collins 1972)
Poiret, Paul, My First Fifty Years, (Victor Gollancz. 1931)
Jezernik, Božidar, Wild Europe: the Balkans in the Gaze of Western Travellers, (Saqi Books, 2003)
Upward, Allen, The Prince of Balkistan, (Chatto & Windus, 1895). A novel of international intrigue set in a mythical Balkan state very much like fin de siècle Bulgaria.
also
Dickson Carr, John, The Life Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Carroll & Graf, 1949)
Lycett, Andrew, Conan Doyle, the Man who created Sherlock Holmes, (Phoenix, 2008)
Glossary
Those who have read Sherlock Holmes And The Dead Boer At Scotney Castle, and now Sherlock Holmes And The Case of The Bulgarian Codex will note that Watson gets a better deal than he does in the original canon or in most television and motion picture portrayals. Though not gifted with Holmes’s sharp intellect, Watson has a good intelligence and many excellent qualities which should be burnished like the brass on his old Regimental uniform. Words written later by an editor describing the Crime writer John Carr could equally have applied to the fictional Dr. John H. Watson: ‘All his instincts were for a less scientific world, a less mechanised one, a more romantic one...he would have been happier in the 18th Century, with sword play and sudden personal dramas, with costumes and carriages, and beaus and belles, with long talks over mugs of wine near the fireplace, and if any crimes had been committed, they were fashionably done, with éclat’.
Watson is brave, honourable, loyal, unshakeable in pursuit of justice, an immediate and deep admirer of women. The actions of a man falling in love are never far from comedy. Every so often Conan Doyle seemed tempted to offer his character schoolboy infatuations, as I have here with Mrs. Barrington, alas, far too young for him in Victorian or Edwardian England. Best Man at her future wedding, courtesy of Holmes, is all I could offer him.
Watson puts up with Holmes’s put-downs with good grace, although they sting. He thinks hard about life. The fact he has so many friends ever ready to meet him at one of his several watering-holes like The Guards or the Punjab Club indicates he is an engaging presence and a man of the world.
Orient Express: The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.
The two city names most prominently associated with the Orient Express are Paris and Constantinople (Istanbul), the original endpoints of the timetabled service.
‘Swamp adder’: this appears in Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Speckled Band. The (mythical) dangerous creature is said to be yellow with brown speckles and to slither around in India.
A Scandal in Bohemia: this was the first of Watson’s chronicles to be published in the Strand and is one with no dead bodies. While the currently married Dr. Watson is paying Holmes a visit, the great detective is called upon by a masked gentleman introducing himself as Count Von Kramm, an agent for a wealthy client. Holmes quickly deduced he is in fact Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and the hereditary King of Bohemia. The King admits this, tearing off his mask. The King is to become engaged to a young Scandinavian princess but his in-laws-to-be would certainly not agree to the marriage if any evidence of his former liaison with an American opera singer, Irene Adler, was passed to them. A well-known adventuress, Adler is threatening to reveal the relationship upon the announcement of the King’s betrothal by sending a photograph of the King (then the Crown Prince) and Adler together to the newspapers.