Final Thoughts and Future Reads

East cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. Look out! It's coming! I was at Holmes' elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant, Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downwards upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog . A hound it was, an enormous coal black hound , but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and jew lap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog . So hello everybody. What a tremendous reading and done I have to say under great pressure as the savage face was staring at me from my screen. So The Savage Face of Sherlock Holmes. Exactly, of Sherlock Holmes, yeah. So that was the Hound of the Baskervilles. It's one of the most celebrated scenes in all popular literature at the moment that Holmes and Watson confront the, eponymous Hound of the Baskervilles, written of course by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first serialised in the Strand magazine in nineteen oh one and nineteen oh two and then was published as a novel, and Tabby is by far the best known Sherlock Holmes stor y, isn't it? Arguably the the most famous of all detective stories. I mean I'd I'd definitely say so. Le Monde ranked it as the forty fourth best book of the century. Wow. And that's two places ahead of Great Gatsby , the Great Gatsby, and fourteen ahead of the Lord of the Rings. Shocking. Tragic. I think we both like the Head of the Bascals, but we like the Lord of the Rings more, don't we? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a win-win, really in, my book . Yeah. So I first read it when I was about nine, and I remember it very well because it was on a family holiday. And I remember being totally enthralled by it, but also very genuinely very frightened by it. I remember I had to have a night light on because I was really spooked out um at night. I know, but and then um this time, God, I found it such a joy to reread. I would hope that the my tu my tr my tube would carry on so that I didn't have to stop and get off and stop reading. It's such a page turner. Yeah no it's a great book. I think it's a wonderful book. Uh I don't think anyone listening to this will be um surprised by us saying this because it's a book that people feel very fondly about. Yeah. I think it's the um the combination I know you I know we've talked about this, the combination of the coziness of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the familiarity of the formula, the fact that we're in safe hands with them, but also as you say, the supernatural, sort of horrific um mystery of the hound on the moors. I mean, that's something that really sticks in your mind. There's more action in this than actually Wuthering Heights. There is. Yeah. Much, much more. So for people who haven't read The Hound of the Baskervilles and are sort of puzzled why we're so enthusiastic about it, we'll give a bit of the plot, won't we, but we won't give the end away. We are going to We will not be revealing the identity of the murderer. Yeah. So no spoilers for those who will be reading it in the future. So we open far from these kind of creepy moors, we open in a re reassuringly familiar scene, and that is 221 B Baker Street, of course, as always, where the great Victorian detective Sherlock Holmes is in conversation with his loyal friend, flatmate, chronicler, helpmate, Dr. Watson. And so, I mean, everyone has heard of Sherlock Holmes, everyone knows about Sherlock Holmes, but he is the most brilliant detective of his age, he's a genius, he's eccentric, and he has a kind of endearingly selective knowledge. So he knows everything about the different types of tobacco ash, but he do esn't know, didn't know for instance, that planets revolve around the sun, stuff like that, which I think is so such a clever little detail. Um and then Dr. Watson is the guy who narrates the story. And Dr. Watson was a former British Army surgeon injured during the Afghan Wars who goes live with Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. And the two friends are in conversation at breakfast. Holmes is putting Watson through this kind of slightly patronizing test to see if he's kind of assimilated what Holmes calls his methods. And Watson is trying to analyse the character of a mysterious doctor who's called earlier that day, purely by studying his walking stick. And he does this pretty well, but you know, not even nearly well enough to um to please Holmes, who who then kind of blows him out of the water with his own takes or or conclusions. Holmes is an unbelievably condescending, isn't he? Yeah. So um Watson is is a bit embarrassed, isn't he? Because Holmes has made a fool of him. But that's basically set the tone perfectly. It's reminded us of the the dynamic between them. Because as we shall discuss , there has been a bit of a hiatus in the Sherlock Holmes canon. So this is the return of Sherlock Holmes after a long absence. And it is just classic Sherlock Holmes. Like it's everything you expect. Like the condescension, the way that Sherlock Holmes like picks extraordinary details out that no one else humanly would be able to. There's even a violin, it's just fantastic. So that has set the scene very nicely for the arrival of the of this guy , uh this the anxious visitor, who has come to consult the one man in London, the the top consulting detective, not just in Britain but in the world, um, who can solve this most serious and extraordinary problem. And this is uh it's he turns out to be a doctor and he's from Dartmoor and he is Dr. Mortimer. And Dr. Mortimer has come to see Holmes because his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville, has been found dead on the grounds of his estate, Baskerville Hall, on the sort of fog wreathed moors of Devon . And doctor Mortimer says, you know, in the newspapers it was reported as just he died of natural causes. But something I think something weird has been going on. My friend was running away from his house towards the moors, which seems weird, and on his face was an expression of perfect fear. And around him there were these footprints, and this is one of the most famous passages in the book. Tabby, since you're the great uh dram dramatic uh performer, would you like to read this excellent passage? So it's this. Uh it's so good, it's so good. Footprints? Footprints. A man or a woman's doctor Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound. A gigantic hound, wow, so the guy who wrote the French Lieutenant 's Woman, John Foles, great novelist, he um said that the title of the next chapter, which is The Problem, must be the least read chapter title in all literature because basically, people are so desperate to skip on to find out what happens next that they ignore the heading at the top and they move straight on to the text. And you are, I mean, when you see that, the footprints of a gigantic hound, you are hooked. Because it's the perfect, it's one of the things about the Sherlock Holmes story is there's always this element of the weird and the kind of a possibility of the supernatural or something utterly inexplicable. That's the hook that draws you in. Even at this moment, you know, the cog's attorney in Holmes's mind, and he's probably figured it all out. Yeah. But of course we haven't. So then after this, Mortimer gives him this manuscript and we learn about the curse of the Baskervilles, and this is the legend surrounding the family in question of Sir Charles Baskerville, in which an ancestor, Hugo Baskerville, was murdered by a gigantic hellhound who kind of came for him after Sir Hugo himself committed kind of a terrible crime against a young maiden. And the curse is said to have dogged the Bas yeah. Do you notice that? Yeah. That's it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm here for a reason. Um said to have haunted every Baskerville ever since, with several members of the family dying under strange circumstances. So and Sir Charles lived in fear of this. He was terrified of them all. And then we are introduced to his nephew and heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, who, in a very, very classic Sherlock-Holmes way, has travelled from America to take up his fortune and his estate. And he's I find him quite an amusing character. He's a both sturdy man with a pugnacious face, but alert, brave and practical. And there's this really funny moment when uh he and Watson have to rush out to confront a terrifying murderer living wild on the moors, and he's armed with nothing more than a riding crop. But that's because he's a he's a hardy sort of um stalwart soul who's been in North America, hasn't he? He's been in the US and in Canada. Yes. And so he's another as you said, he's a very familiar figure in the sort of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle world of the sort of um the guy who's gone out to the British Empire or to, you know, similar parts and has been outdoors, he's got a ruddy face, he's a kind of man's man, he's he's he's young and he's vigorous and all of this kind of thing. Yeah, absolut ely. But because of this, because he's young and vigorous, he is determined to live in the hall, despite the warnings, despite the curse, despite the fact that Holmes himself fears for his safety. But then, while still in London , mysterious things start happening. He sent this warning with words cut out from yesterday's times, with only the word more written in ink, and it's as you value your life or your reason, keep away from the more . Um and then his boot mysteriously disappears from his hotel. And you love this detail, don't you? This is the best part for you. But again that's the kind of really weird bizarre detail that sticks in your mind. When you first read this as a child, so I read this when I was, I don't know, um, ten or eleven or something, and that it's sort of a a a sort of abridged kid's version. And it really stuck in my mind that his boot had been stolen. You know, who would steal one boot? Now we we find out the reason later on. Of course this is the kind of detail that Sherlock Holmes loves. Yes. Because he's able to now you know create the the sort of put the puzzle together with the missing boot and the words cut out of the times and the mysterious hellhound and the curse and all of this kind of thing. But interestingly, at this point, Watson says, Well, I'm gonna go off to Dartmoor with Sir Henry to find out what's going on. But Sherlock Holmes doesn't go because there's a big blackmail case in London and he has to stay behind and and deal with that. So Holmes, our hero, is taken out of the narrative, isn't he? Yeah, it's left to Watson to help Sir Henry and kind of solve the case and report back to Holmes everything that he witnesses. But they arrive now at the moor and the house, and this is really when we get into this kind of gothic, creepy, supernatural part of the book. Because it's a really gloomy, desolate place. Anyway, while there, they encounter a cast of characters who all kind of turn out to be suspects to some degree or another. So there's the hall's servants, the Barrymores . It turns out that Mrs. Barrymore's brother is this terrifying convict that's been on the loose and and he's hiding on the moor. Yeah. And there the Barrymores are kind of, you know, protecting him. Do you know what you're not mentioning about the Barrymores? Uh wait, let me guess. I know you know and you're not saying it just to be difficult. I've played Frank Barrymore in our sister podcast, Sherlock and Co . Yeah. It was a great performance. I'm the underkeeper. I was so hoping this wouldn't come up. Well, it has. Yeah. Okay, so that's the least interesting thing about the Baron Wars. Thank you, Dominic. Um But it's really interesting because this murderer being on the loose is kind of a red herring, 'cause we're kind of at some point or another kind of um encouraged to think of him as maybe a suspect, as maybe like a a force of danger, but actually not so. Or or perhaps so. Anyway, then there's the this naturalist, Jack Stapleton, and his appearance is oddly familiar. But he has, and he's obsessed with catching butterflies in a net, and he has a beautiful sister, Beryl, with whom Sir Sir Sir Henry quickly becomes infatuated, and Stapleton, her brother, is furious about this, disproportionately, really. Um, and Watson kind of dislikes him from the first, and and there's a lot of stuff about people's features in this, the way your face looks, the way your skull is shaped, whatever. Um and then Stapleton's sister, the one that Sir Henry's kind of infatuated with, is secretly warning Sir Henry and Watson to get back to the safety of London. You know, there's danger here. Um, and then there's another character, Mrs. Laura Lyons. She's a woman abandoned by her husband, but she's also entangled in some way with the dead Sir Charles and this Stapleton. We don't know why. So they're there with this strange sort of cast of characters. Um there's all kinds of strange howling on the moors, eerie kind of nighttime howls. It's genuinely creepy, the howling, I think. It is creepy, completely. Yeah. Um Watson is reporting back all the time his clues to Holmes in London and then they find there's another man, there's a strange man on the moors. Um they spot him, don't they? Or or there's reports of him in the distance. In the moonlight, his his silhouette. This sort of long, lean figure. Amazingly tabby, this turns out to be. Now I bet you didn't guess this when you first read it. It's Sherlock Holmes. Yeah. Of all people. Extraordinary. So he's been here all along , solving the case under our very noses. And poor Watson, who's been kind of writing and you know, large portions of the book, uh Watson's kind of journal, and Watson who's been sending him these long, painstaking letters with every detail of the case. Turns out like never even needed them. Sh Holmes had it in hand all along. Poor Watson. This is like me doing my own notes for these episodes and then it turns out you've actually been doing them all along. I know, I know. It's always so sad. So uh Holmes says to Watson, you know, I I know what's going on here. It's murder, Watson. Refined, cold blooded, deliberate murder. And then um they hear the hound one night And rational mind. Yeah, he's shaken to his very soul, and they then stumble across the body of the latest victim . Well, if you want to find out who the victim is, um the truth behind the hound, all of this kind of thing, we will come to this, won't we? We'll be exploring the story behind the hound of the Baskervilles. We will and the and particularly there's gonna be a lot of stuff and we're not the we're the book club, not the Kennel Club, but there's a lot of stuff about dogs. You've done a lot of dog based canine research, Tavy. Yeah, exactly. We're hoping to get sponsorship from Crafts at some point. Um dead dogs. Actually no, actually there are dead dogs in this, I take that back in time. It wouldn't be the the book club without dead dogs. Without dead dogs, exactly. So let's talk a little bit about Saratha Conan Doyle. Yeah. So put this into some context. Because obviously it's a product of the late Victorian Edwardian um period. It's it's a wonderful kind of period piece and a great window into the anxieties of the age and whatnot. And and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, one of the great celebr ities of the day, he is a tremendous, tremendous character, isn't he? He absolutely is. He's got a very striking face. He looks just as you would hope the man who wrote Sherlock Holmes would look. But he was born in Edinburgh in 1859 to an Irish Catholic background. His father is a civil servant, turned artist, suffered from alcoholism and mental illness. And they live in some pretty grim tenement flats. But then the young Arthur's uncle sends him to a Jesuit prep school and then on to Stonyhurst in Lancashire. And he finds school very austere and harsh, very like Emily Bronte, complains that the curriculum is kind of pre modern, it's all kind of rhetoric, uh the classics, geometry, all of that. Yeah. And then at some point in his teens he goes and spends a year in Austria to f perfect his German. Um and then from eighteen seventy six to eighteen eighty one he studies medicine at Edinburgh, but he also this is when he also starts writing his short stories and tellingly his first which is published in eighteen seventy nine is The Mystery of Sasassa Valley . And this is so this is very kind of foreshadowing what will later come. It's an adventure story about a diamond hunt in South Africa. And the valley is haunted by this frightful fiend, and people who see its glowing eyes are are blighted by the malignant power of this creature, which obviously anticipates the hellish hound of the Baskervilles. And he then after this, Arthur Conan Dor he has a very adventurous life. He becomes a doctor on a Greenland whaler, which is a fascinating detail, I think. Then a ship surgeon on a voyage to West Africa, so very mastering commander. He graduates as advanced doctor of medicine in eighteen eighty five with a dissertation on neuro syphilis. Yeah neuro syphilis. Interesting. Valuable information that. And then he sets up a practice in Plymouth and then Portsmouth, but is neither of very successful. He spends mo a lot of his time writing fiction , goes to Vienna for a bit, study eye you know, eyes. I don't know how to say the word, but he's an eye surgeon. Ophthalmology. Yeah. Yeah. Again, not very successful. And, you know, charmingly spends most of his time ice skating with his wife, Louisa. So I approve of that. Anyway, then back to London, tries to set up a practice again. Total failure. No patience. And I know Dominic that you're a very big fan of Arthur Conan Doyle and I can see why. Yeah. So just give us a portrait of the man, the character a bit more. So I mean he's not a terribly successful um surgeon, it's absolutely true, but he's an really, really endearing character, I think, Arthur Conan Doyle. He's a man of great enthusiasms. He's irrepressible. He's got a real zest for life. So among other things, he he was a goalkeeper. He played critical He's a Goldsman. He's a Goldsman as you would call it. Yeah, like Albert Camus. Um It's great to have the Goldsman back on the show. Great to have Goldsman's back on the show. Yeah. Goldsmans. Goldsman's. Surely Gul Goldsman. Anyway. Yeah, this is We're lost. We're lost. He's a Goldman. He's a cricketer for the MCC. He founded his own rifle club. Uh he was a keen amateur boxer. He loved playing golf. He was a judge, I discovered um from doing some im important research in the Bodin Library. He was a judge at the world's first bodybuilding competition. So he's all in for that. He'll do anything basically. He's always available. He literally is a jack of all trades, master of none. He is. So you mentioned him going ice skating with Louisa, his wife. So she was called Tui was her nickname. She they had two children. Um she got T B. And uh by the time he writes The Hound of the Baskervilles, I think she's already quite seriously ill, and he has become infatu ated with a younger woman called Jean Leckie. It's not clear whether they had an affair or whether he just completely and utterly fell in love with this Jean Lecky. Um, but he's basically in this love triangle, possibly a kind of platonic love triangle, but he's in it nonetheless. He's also very interested in his politics. So he stood twice a parliament as a liberal unionist. So these were liberals who were keener on the em pire, um more kind of hard line on foreign policy issues than than mainstream liberals, and they ended up in coalition with the Conservatives. He lost both times. But he's very into his kind of social activism. So one example of this is he um lends his voice to the campaign against the atrocities in the Belgian Congo. Very admirable. Good man. Another one actually so people always laugh at Conan Doyle because part of being such a massive enthusiast, he's an enthusiast for spiritualism, for seances, he believes in fairies. I love that. You know, there's all the stuff we'll we'll come on to this, his interest in the supernatural, 'cause it's really important part of the Had of the Bascules. But he's also really passionately devoted to the underdog and to justice. So I there's a brilliant book by Julian Barnes called Arthur and George. It's such a good novel. And it's the story of how Arthur Conan Doyle crossed paths with this guy who was a lawyer called George Adel gey, just outside Wolverhampton actually, who was framed for all these attacks on um horses, I think it was, called the Wiley Outrages , basically ended up in prison. And uh Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lent his voice to try to free him. And it's a really, really moving story. And it's a good example of the sort of humanity and decency that I think is it part of the Arthur Conan Doyle story. Definitely. When everybody laughs at him about the fairies, which we'll come to, I think they're being a bit harsh. Anyway, we're getting a bit of ahead of ourselves because obviously all of his fame is based on one character above all, and that is Sherlock H olmes. And he started writing Sherlock Holmes in eighteen eighty six. He sent a story to this company called Ward Lock and Kerr, who did a Christmas annual every year, and the story was called A Study in Scarlet. Of course, so famous . And this is Watson. He's come home to London. He's been wounded in the second Afghan War. He needs somewhere to live. And a friend says there's a bloke in 221B, Baker Street, who's looking for a flatmate, this enthusiast in some branches of science, and Watson goes to meet him, and this bloke is very tall, he's very lean, he's got a sort of hawk like nose, he's got sharp piercing eyes , he's got a general air of kind of alertness and decision. And this is Sherlock Holmes, who, it turns out, is actually modelled on one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's former tutors. I love this guy. This is so funny. So he's yeah, he's inspired by Conan Doyle's former Edinburgh tutor at Edinburgh and this guy called Joseph Bell, who is a pioneer of forensic science. And Arthur Conan Doyle said of Belle, he would sit in his receiving room and diagnose people as they came in before they even opened their mouths. He would tell them their symptoms and even give them details of their past life, and hardly ever would he make a mistake. I mean if someone's gonna tell you details about your past life, it's not like you can be like, actually that's wrong. I was the Duchess of York or whatever. But still, I mean that is very, very Sherlock Holmes, isn't it? Yeah, I mean I guess it's well a doctor does that. I mean that's part of I guess a doctor's you know, how many GPs would say they can actually read things about people when they're describing their symptoms or whatever. They definitely don't go into past lives though, GPs in my experience. But anyway, he um and then Arthur Conan Dwar that she said to Belle in a letter, it is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes. Round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I've heard you inculcate, I have tried to build em up a man. Yeah. Yeah, lovely , really good. But then there's also, you know, the other main character of the great Sherlock Holmes duo, and that's Dr. Watson. He's another great creation. He's curious. I mean, there's something of Arthur Conan Doyle in him, I think, maybe. He's curious , he's honest, he's warm hearted, he's very brave. And I was very struck by his humanity because Sherlock Holmes isn't always very human, I think, you know, he's sort of too genius. Yeah. Except perhaps in his kind of fondness for um Watson. And through Watson, you know, we have a more human reaction. He reacts to scary or dangerous scenarios in the way that a normal person would, you know, rather than Sherlock Holmes himself. Yeah. He speaks for the audience, doesn't he? I guess. He speaks for the audience, except in this story when Sherlock Holmes is genuinely rattled. And so through him we experience m the mystery as a normal person would. And his loyalty to Holmes is so touching and so unwavering, no matter how many times he's told kinda you've got it wrong or you haven't put the the the method to to proper use and he admits time and time again that he's no match for Holmes's intellect. But he nevertheless he's brave and capable under pressure. And the thing is that Sherlock Holmes himself is very, very fond of Watson. You know, theirs is one of the great literary friendships, and there's this lovely moment when Watson is almost killed by a bullet, and Holmes is very relieved. This is Watson. It was worth a wound, it was worth many wounds to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear, hard eyes were dimmed for a moment, and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single minded service culminated in that moment of revelation. Oh tabbies if someone shot you, that's how I'd react. What? No, but I'm Holmes in this scenario. Oh yeah, of course I've m I've I've I've mistaken myself. Yeah, I forgot that I'm actually the junior partner. Get back in your box. Yeah, okay. Yes, it is um it is as uh a motive as is you know the the firmest and most loving goal hanger presenter dynamics. Right. So you can see why this, you know, this f this friendship is kind of the beating heart of the book and I think a massive attraction for a lot of readers. Anyway, so turns out that Sherlock Holmes is a massive hit, huge success. So Wardlock asked for much more, and then The Sign of the Four is published in february eighteen ninety, that's another hit. Um and it's so it seems that Arthur Conan Doyle has kind of perfected his famous formula for these books. He absolutely has, because he then goes to the Strand Magazine and he does he takes Holmes with him and he publishes I think twenty-three more um Sherlock Holmes stories. And mention youed a formula. I mean, there is a formula. They open at 221B Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes is usually, you know, he's injecting himself with cocaine or playing the violin or behaving madly because he's a bit bored. A visitor arrives, Holmes does all his rigmarole with the kind of bizarre details. There is a weird story, and the weirdness is often the point of the story. It's not just a sort of generic who done it story. There's some mad thing like with orange pips or a blue carbuncle, a missing goose, or any of these kinds of weird things. And there's often, it turns out, a connection to the British Empire to set to things that have gone on abroad. You have that in the sound of the four, you have that in the Hound of the Baskervilles with the idea of the guy returning from North America to claim his inheritance. Holmes will think for a while, he'll play the violin, stare out the window. Then he and Watson will rush off somewhere by cab or by train. Holmes will often arrange some deranged trap or put on a kind of incredibly Baroque disguise, you know, disguise himself as a washerwoman or something. And then the villain is revealed and uh Holmes explains all to a bewildered Watson and everybody loves it and everybody goes home happy, except for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Because he writes that these stories, they're very successful and he gets quite bored of it. And he actually says of Holmes, I must save my mind for better things, even if it means I must bury my pocket book with him. In other words, I'm being very well paid, but actually I would much rather write the sort of stuff that Saratha Conondor wants to write, which are basically historical novels about the Napoleonic Wars and stuff. So in December 1893, he publishes the final short story, The Final Problem. And this is this, you know, absolutely titanic confrontation with Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, and it ends with Watson looking down into the waters. Holmes has disappeared in this cauldron of swirling water and seething foam, and there, says Watson, will lie for all time, the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation, a man whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known. Oh you're crying. It's so sad, Tappy. Watson is sobbing into his microphone. Exactly, because Holmes is dead. Or is he? Or is he? This is the twist. Whether he's dead or not, there certainly is a long hiatus from the Sherlock Holmes novels . As Arthur Conan Doyle throws himself into writing what he calls his real books, and these are so this is actually very like A. A. Meln, the guy that became very famous for Winnie the Po But so the the real books, you know, that Arthur Conan Doyle believes are kind of his Magnus op uses , um these are historical novels set in the Hundred Years War, the Napoleonic Wars, etc. I think they sound excellent. Have you read any? Uh I've read the uh some of them. I think they're all right, but they're not as good as Sherlock Holmes. I mean this is the reality. There were some people listening to this who say, Oh, what about the white company? Isn't that wonderful? Or whatever. They're nice period pieces, but the Holmes formula is what you come back for. Yeah. And you know, for that very reason the public is constantly pestering him to bring Holmes back. And at first he says no . He said, I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards Pate de Foie Gras, of which I once ate too much, so that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day. That's how I feel about kettle crisps, actually. Really? I mean you would you would you would get this about foie gras or something like that or like no Pringles the green Pringles. Yeah you always eat those on planes actually don't yeah but then um two years later, he allows there to be an American stage adaptation, but says, as long as there's no love business, so you know, strictly kind of English values. Yeah, that'll be a big contrast to the book we're doing next week, Tabby. I was gonna say so that's a far cry from Sarah J. Master's A Court of Thorns and Roses. Or is it? Um and then in December nineteen hundred, he does an interview with Titbits and says he has never regretted the the course I took in killing Sherlock. That does not say, however, that because he is dead I should not write about him again if I wanted to, for there is no limit to the number of papers he left behind. Oh and then this sets the stage for the Hound of the Baskervilles. Yeah. So we can date precisely when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came up with the idea for the Hound of the Baskables. He is in North Norfolk. Alan Partridge's hunting ground. Um so he's gone to North Norfolk with his mate Bertie Fletcher Robinson, who's a young journalist, and they've gone golfing in chroma. And he's feeling very low, uh, Conan Doyle. He can't sleep. He's he went to the Burr War as a kind of war correspondent and he got uh fever. He then lost his campaign to become a liberal unionist MP in Edinburgh. He was blown away in the sort of khaki election as it was called uh during the Boer War. And then he took part in Queen Victoria's funeral procession. God, it's all so Victorian, isn't it? Yeah, it is. He's been but it's a sign of his celebrity that he's doing all these things. Yeah. And he was in Queen Victoria's funeral procession, he started having this very melancholy reflections about the state of the nation and all this kind of thing. Also, his soul is, and I quote, wrenched in two because he's torn between two eyes, who's bedridden with T B and this woman Jean Leckie that he's fallen in love with. So it's all going on for him mentally. And on Sunday, the 28th of April, they can't play golf, him and this bloke, uh Fletcher Robinson, because it's so windy. And so they sit around at the hotel kind of having tea and whatnot, and Fettel Robinson tells him a story of a black dog that haunts the countryside, and we shall come 'cause I know you've done an absurd amount of research into into folkloric dogs. Yeah, I can't get enough of folklore. So we Conodor loves this story about the dog haunting the countryside. He actually writes to his mother a few days later and says, you know, I've had a I've actually had a brilliant time, I've slept soundly at last, all goes well in every way. Fletcher Robinson and I are going to do a small book together, The Hound of the Baskervilles, a real creeper. And then he writes to the editor of the Strand magazine as well , uses the same expression. I've had the idea of a real creeper for the Strand. He says it'll be at least forty thousand words. You'd love it, it'll really suit you. It's going to be called the Hound of the Baskervilles. And he says, um, I'll co-write it with Fletcher Robinson. I'll do all the the writing and it'll be kind of in my style. But Fletcher Robinson will provide the ideas and the colour. And the the uh the point about the ideas and the colour takes us to well what's at the heart of this story, which is this idea of the supernatural and of the kind of the dog from the realms of folklore. So you love all this, don't you, Tabby? Because you love bizarrely, I would never have had you down as a fol klore enthusiast, but here we are. I absolutely love it. Yeah, I can't get enough. My ha my um my flat is listed with kind of books of mythical beasts and stuff like that. But we'll we'll probably get into this in the second half. But it's kind of it's rooted in this long tradition of English folklore, these kind of hellhounds that kind of roam the countryside, and and and there's this idea that it may have derived in kind of a real story featuring an ancient English family, but that itself is kind of a mythol ogy. But Conan Doyle loves this whole idea because he's, as we've said, he's a huge enthusiast for the supernatural. He loves stories of curses, spells, ghosts, haunted houses, etc. Um, that's also very Victorian, you know, this period of you know fairies and seances. And they kind of tap into that in one of the um, I think Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes's. It's all to do with like, you know, wizards and not wizards, like magicians, mystical practices , that kind of thing. And Conan Doyle himself, he's a founding member of various kind of psychical research groups. And then later in life, he's the best known champion of spiritualism, seances, as we've said, mind readings, etc. And then in nineteen twenty two he kind of famously endorses this whole hoax around the existence of fairies. Yeah, the cotton of fairies. So Yeah, I think there's a film about it, a charming film actually. Yeah. So there's these girls who basically sent him photos that they've uh mocked up of fairies in the garden and everybody laughs at this and says, um, well obviously these are completely fake, but poor Conan Doyle, um, he's he l he wants to believe it. He loves all this and he gives he basically lends his name to these these hoaxed photographs and everybody laughs at him again because of course by this point he's getting on a bit and so he's kind of a bit of a sort of old war horse and people like poking fun at him. But it's a sign of this sort of longing within him that he really wants to believe in the power of the supernatural and stuff. So this is why he loves the story. And he at first he's not thinking of it as a Sherlock Holmes story, but then he he starts to sort of ponder it and he says, Well, if I'm gonna have this this hound on the moors, I need a really, really good central character, I need a hero. And he basically says to the editor of the strand, Look, I can do you two options. Option one is it'll just be the Hound of the Baskerville's a kind of ghost story and I'll charge you fifty pounds for every thousand words. Or I can put Sherlock Holmes in it and I'll charge you a hundred pounds for every thousand words . Which would you prefer? And then he adds, Holmes is at a premium in America right now. And the directors of the Strand magazine immediately come back and they say we'll pay you the hundred pounds per thousand words. And so Sherlock Holmes is back. Yeah. And on that extremely exciting note, Dominic, I think we should take a break. And when we come back, we will be explaining how Sherlock Holmes is resurrected. We'll be discussing the book itself in much more detail, and most excitingly of all, we will be definitively solving the dark mystery of the hellish hound of the Baskervilles itself. Oh, exciting . They say go big or go home, but now you can go big at home with the big arch on delivery. When you're hungry for something big Like really big. Big arch for big McDonald's hunger. Order on the McDonald's app. Served from 11am. Upcharges and fees applied to delivery orders. Subject to availability. Price and participation may vary. Welcome back to the book club. Now, Dominic, before the break you taunted us with the prospect of Sherlock Holmes's resurrection in the Hound of the Baskervilles. So how is it that he's written back into existence? So um he's got the idea when he's been on the golfing trip with this guy, um what's his name? Fletter Robinson in North Norfolk. And he has come back and he is absolutely enthused because as we said, um Conan Door is a man with this tremendous zest for life and his future wife Jean Leckie said he could write a Sherlock Holmes story in a room full of people talking. He could write it in a train. He would just once he got stuck in, you know, you couldn't stop him. He's a machine. And so he had that idea in late April nineteen oh one and a month later he and uh this guy Fleta Robinson go on a sort of walking tour of Dartmoor to get, you know, local colour and stuff. And by that point he's already written half of the book. God, he's faster than you. Well he's as fast. He's turned it around really quickly. They stay near Dartmoor Prison, which gives him the idea for that part of the book because Dartmoor Prison features in the book. And Conan Door, we know he's writing to his mother, and he says, You know, I'm exploring the moor over our Sherlock Holmes book. It's a great place, very sad and wild, dotted with dwellings of prehistoric man, strange monoliths, and h uts and graves. They go to the bog, they go to some abandoned stone forts, and they read books about local folklore, which is where they get the idea of resemblances being passed down through the gener ations. So kind of your f so your face the face recurs in the portraits of the Baskerville family. Yeah, there's this scene where they walk down this gallery and it's it's almost like I mean it's almost like comical then it's like these faces repeated down the generations. Very Victorian theme that Yeah, with different wigs. And it is a very Victorian theme, I agree with you. Because a lot of writers in this period, so eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties, nineteen hundreds, they are fascinated by ideas of heredity, which is what of course what gives rise to eugenics later on. So if you look at novelists of this period, eighteen nineties, nineteen hundreds, like Emile Zula in France, or Thomas Hardy, the idea that traits are passed down through the generations, particularly criminal traits, or violence or drunkenness or whatever, that they are inherited. Yeah. These ideas play a a big part in the kind of novels, the realist novels of the late 19th and early 20th century. And that's you can see that admittedly in this very cosy kind of benign way in The Hound of the Baskervilles. And then there's one last element which of course is the title. A few days after they finish this trip they go to Fletcher Robinson's family seat, which is also in Devon, and the coachman to the Fletcher Robinson family is called Harry Baskerville. And later on, Fleta Robinson gave a copy of the book to his coachman, to Harry Baskerville, with apologies for using the name Red the Dedication. So that's nice. Yeah, and um also the first release carries this footnote, acknowledging Arthur Conan Doyle's debt to Fletcher Robinson, and then he later expands this in the novel's dedication, which is reprinted in all editions today. So to the publication. So the first nine instalments come out in Strand magazine again in August 1901 and runs alongside, interestingly, the first part of H. G. Wells' The First Man in the Moon. So obviously, you know, the fantastic al is kind of very in vogue right now among kind of Victorian audiences. Yeah, I love that. The fact I mean the fact that you could imagine buying that magazine, you can read the first installment of the first men and the moon by H.G. Wells and the first installment of The Hound of the Baskerville. It gives you a sense of how rich literary culture is at this point. And also, you know, I mean these are people who are commanding enormous sums of money by today's standards for their serializations and short stories and things. It's a literary culture that you know dwarfs anything that we have today, I think. Yeah, I mean there'd be the same kind of enthusiasm for the release of those two stories as there would be now for kind of the new big blockbuster. Yeah, that's what I that's what it was . Yeah, and then um and and it's obviously a massive hit. There are queues outside the Strand magazine's offices and at bookstalls. For the first time in its history, the magazine goes into seven prints and circul ation rises to about 300,000 from an average of 180,000. So that's massive. And it's such a huge hit that Holmes's full-time return obviously just becomes inevitable. You know, US the US publisher Colliers offers Arthur Conan Doyle a staggering sum of thirty thousand dollars for eight new stories and in income terms that's more than seven million dollars today. I mean Yeah. Colossal amounts of money. That's what cues up the adventure of the empty house, which is the next short story, which is when it turns out that he didn't die at the Reichenbach Falls. He was alive all along. He was alive all along. Exactly. But the fact that he's returned is down to this one book, The Hand of the Baskervilles, which becomes by far the most celebrated Sherlock Holmes story. In fact, I would say that if you asked a hundred people in the street , can you name one Sherlock Holmes story? I'm guessing ninety percent of them would say the Hound of the Baskervilles, and very few would be able to name many more, I think. This is by far the most the best known, even though in some ways it is not typical. Not least because the supernatural element, for example, is much more pronounced in this than any other. Much more gothic. Much more gothic. But I suppose there are some ways, aren't there? I mean, it starts with the formula. It starts with them in 221B. I mean, it's undeniably a very Sherlock Holmes story. There's a lot in it of the traditional formula. So, you know, Ruth Rendell says Conan Doyle, often featured in his fiction, are protagon ist who returned to his homeland after half a lifetime in foreign parts. The exotic countries would most usually be America, India, Australia, or South Africa, giving him the opportunity to make his main character a prospective of gold or adventure in some local war, so there we have Sir Henry Baskerville. Some protagonists return to exact revenge on the man or woman who all those years before was instrumental in sending them away, a few as blackmailers, others because they have inherited a fortune or a property in England. This is all very Hound of the Baskables. It's the classic Arthur Conan Doyle. And actually we were talking beforehand, so our executive producer Tony Pastor was saying the Hound of the Baskable, who's a massive Sherlock Holmes fan, was saying to us. Yeah, and actually I'd really recommend the the Sherlock and Co. rendition of this. It's brilliant. Yes, the scroll hanger does. Exactly. So Tony was saying to us, oh, uh the How to the Baskervilles is um unusual because Sherlock Holmes is absent for so much of the story. Which is I mean he's true he is absent, but he's often absent for bits of the short stories as well. So bits where Watson will go off on his own and then Holmes pops up later on in disguise as he does in this but I mean Holmes Holmes is always in basically whenever you meet a homeless person, um uh somebody an old crone on the streets or something, yeah. You know that three pages later they will cast aside the hat and it will actually be Watho Watson. Yeah, exactly, the great detective. But then this absence then opens the door for Watson, who actually, rather than Holmes and his presence, it's actually Watson and his kind of very sharp observations and his reports back and forth to Holmes that propel the narrative of Sherlock Holmes. And as you know, Christopher Fraling says, Watson is a long way away from the buffoon figure of Hollywood films in this novel and I totally agree. I think that's one thing that a lot of the versions of Holmes get wrong. Yeah. He's a comical foil almost exactly. But I don't think he is he's certainly not comical in this book at all. No. I think you're brilliant. I think I don't think you're a buffoon at all. Well I think you should clip they should clip that bit and they should just use that. Just you saying I think you're brilliant, I don't think you're a buffoon at all. It's what I've waited all my life to hear, to be honest. So Watson is I mean I'm not talking about myself here by the way, I'm talking about Dr. Watson. He's brave, he's very manly, he's uh He has a ponchau for cashmere sweaters. Sappy, unbelievable . I couldn't believe that you laughed so scornfully when I said that. That's shocking. But actually, Sherlock Holmes, so Watson in this book comes out rather well. Holmes makes some demented mistakes because he keeps risking the life of his clients as a sort of trap to lure the hound out, doesn't he? He does. He absolutely does. And then he says at one point, because basically they they think this Sir Henry is kind of done for, he's he's dead, and he says I'm more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I've thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know? How could I know that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings? And he doesn't actually catch the villain unusually. The villain escapes arrest and is is maybe survives. Yeah. We actually never see I was certainly thinking about that. We we think that the villain has been killed by the bog. Yeah. But the villain's body is never found. And Sherlock Holmes's body was never found at the Reichenbach Falls and he came back from the dead. Yeah, well exactly. Someone's gonna resurrect the villain. And the other thing is in this, which is very unusual for Sherlock Holmes novels, is Holmes himself is genuinely kind of frightened. Like there's this bit in the book where he says, you know, it's like he he's they hear this howling on the moor, and he's genuinely unnerved by it, and he says, Come on now, Watson, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I'm not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth. You know, he's seeking out reassurance from um his sidekick. Nevertheless, he confesses at the end of the story that, he's mismanaged the case, he's made mistakes, he's put his client in danger. But he also makes excuses. He he blames it on the fog and the terrifying hound. Yeah, but the hound was part of the business from the beginning, exactly. Holmes at the end says, Well, I could never anticipate that terrifying hound. But hold on. That's like blaming a murder on the murderer. Precisely. The book score The Hound of the Basketballs, mate. I mean, did you not notice? But I think this this weakness in Holmes's otherwise kind of gran ite, you know, d deduction and his you know cold rational mind. I think it's rather endearing. I think it's the strength of the book. And it also sho ws you just how terrifying these supernatural forces that they are working against are, or are they supernatural? Well, this absolutely brings us perfectly to the dimension of the book that I think explains why uniquely among Sherlock Holmes stories, it has made such an imprint in then popular imagination. And this is the fact that it is not just a detective story, it's a brilliant gothic story, a supernatural story. The late Victorians, the Edwardians, loved stories of of kind horror and sensation. Yeah, I mean think of Dracula, which we which we did in our miniseries back in September. Yeah, so we're only a few years after the publication of Dracula, we're only a few years after the publication of things like King Solomon's Minds, or She, the kind of H. Ryder Haggard stories of the supernatural in Africa. The Victorians love all this kind of thing. And actually, that gives it a much darker tinge, I think, than almost all the Sherlock Holmes stories that are set in London because this feels like Holmes and Watson are going out to confront something much more primal and ancient. I suppose they're going back in time, not just in to confront a beast from folklore, but also in a literary sense, because this they're going back to an older literary form, the kind of gothic novel of the 18th century or something, the haunted house, or the sensation novels of the mid-Victorian period, the kind of Wilkie Collinses and things. Yeah, I mean definitely, because just think of the curse, you know, that's said to haunt the Baskerville family. That's classic kind of late Victorian horror novel. Um and you know, this thing of the wild, profane and godless to Hugo Baskerville set upon by this hound and having his throat ripped out and being slaughtered. Um and then, you know, those who so saw it, one it has said died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days. Even the writing there it's hearkening back to an older time, an older form. And then there's Baskerville Hall itself, which is straight out of Victorian sensation fiction. It actually reminded me so strongly of um the Gothic house of horror in Guillermo del Toro's mov ie Crimson Peak, which is set in Victorian England. And then also to some extent Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre. Right. It's so it's just the typical gothic mansion that kind of features in uh, you know , games or or cartoons or whatever it may be. The haunt classic haunted house. That's exactly what it is. Exactly. And it's so there's this passage. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy blot of a building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high angled roof, there sprang a single black column of smoke. I mean it's like it's like the the archetype of the haunted house. It completely is. I mean even when they go inside, the dining room, a place of shadow and gloom, there's a sense the whole place is deserted, that it's haunted. It feels also like something from an M. R. James ghost story or something. This sort of separatal atmosphere. And then so you've got the house, and then you've got the moor. And actually, as you said, we did Wuthering Heights at the very beginning of this series. And the Wuthering Heights, the Moor is oddly absent for most of the book. Whereas in this book, if you like Moors, this is the book for you, because there's a lot of time spent on the Moor. There's some lovely writing about the Moor, sort of nature writing. And the more the point about the more is I mean you really are going back in time. Your car your your your your modern technology avails you nothing. Um it is a sort of prehistoric location. There are actually these prehistoric dwellings that they talk about all the time. Exactly. And whenever they go out there, there are there are moments like this. A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. There's a huge mottled expanse of green splotched bog which stret ched away until it merged into the russet slopes of them all. There's all this sort of stuff. This sort of melancholy, the this sense that there's you know, you're taking your life in your hands when you venture out there because there are who knows what there's there's ghosts, there's creatures, there's there's weird dogs, there's all sorts. They're constantly warned like the letter right from the start when we're in London saying, you know, if you value your life, stay away from the more . We know it's a dark, dangerous place. But the the irony at the heart of all this is that Holmes doesn't believe in the supernatural. He's kind of the opposite of the supernatural. And I think this is something else that sap separates it from the classic Sherlock Holmes formula. Because Holmes never believes in supernatural explanation. You know, he says at one point, uh, when Watson asks if if it might be something, you know, beyond the ken of man, um, he says, the devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not. But this is earlier on in the novel. This is before he's actually been on the moor and heard the hound and encountered it. You get the sense as it goes on that he begins to doubt. You know, that passage that I read when he says to Watson if that is like that is the that is the howl of a hound I tell me tell me that I'm wrong. Yeah no you're dead right I think the beauty of it is that Holmes is the incarnation of science and rationalism. I mean that when Watson first met him in their very first meeting when they decided to get a flat together, you know, they met in a laboratory and Holmes is always fiddling around with his chemistry sets and whatnot, and he you know he's never taken in by things, he's not gullible, he's he's icy cold and his logic and whatnot. And the beauty of it is he's now confronted with something that is, as you said, beyond the ken of man. Kind of it is it is kind of wreathed in myster y and all of this. And when he goes out there, he doubts himself. He totally does. I mean he deep down, in part of his mind he knows who the killer is and he knows what the plan is, but there's a bit of him that is scared nevertheless, and I love that. He experiences fear, I think, in one of the few times that you see Sherlock Holmes rattled. Yes. Yes, exactly. He is rattled, completely. And I think this contrast between the two things, the ancient evil on the one hand, so you mentioned Ruth Rendell, a brilliant detective writer in her own right, PD James, another one, um writing at the same time sort of nineteen eighties, she said that she thought, The Hand of the Baskervilles, what made what elevated it above other detective stories is that it pits on the one hand the ancient evil of the Moor against Holmes as his sort of modernity and his individualism. And that I think gives it so much power because it's it's not just a sort of uh formulaic who done it. No, but also it's that's why the the introduction of this um convict, this murderer living on the moors is so ingenious, because that would normally be in like a traditional detective fiction. He would be the bad guy. He'd be the guy that we're trying to hunt down. But the flesh and blood of him, even though he's a terrifying murderer and he's feral living on the moors, is nothing set against the the the darkness of the moors and and the howl of the hound. And, you know, he seems so puny and feeble in his comparison versus like the might of this supernatural entity. Yeah. I mean Holmes uh in all detective novels, I think the detective represents a kind of security and stability. And and so many detective novels, particularly this period, there's a single kind of masterful figure who is restoring order to a world that's been put into disorder. So he's beating off the kind of forces of evil that are threatening civilised conservative kind of modern England. That's what Sherlock Holmes does, it's what Hercule Porrow does later on with Agatha Christie or whatever. But the interesting thing about this , I think, is that the the sort of paradox of it is that actually the one person who really does believe in the supernatural is Arthur Conan Doyle. Yeah. So Sherlock Holmes is saying, well, deep down Watson, we know there's no such things as as kind of diabolical dogs. But the one man in England who really does believe in diabolical dogs. Yeah, he because he does believe in fairies. I read that from him. Ruth Rendell was so interesting about this. She said it's as though Conan Dawle, and I quote, was so deeply subsumed into the character for his most famous creation that when writing of him, of Sherlock Holmes, he was unable to do otherwise than believe in what Holmes believed. So even though Sho the Arthur Connador deep down would love to have a supernatural explanation, Holmes would judge him for it. Holmes would think badly of his creator for kind of getting into all of this kind of stuff. Absolutely. And I mean, we said earlier that obviously he was infatuated with this idea of this mythical hound. This brings us to the moment we've all been waiting for the entire episode, which is the hound itself. So if you remember in our opening reading, we gave you a very vivid and very well read Dominic description of the hound, you know, when when Holmes and Watson finally encountered it in the flesh, because our knowledge of it for much of the book is just kind of this eerie howling that grows closer and closer and closer to Holmes and Watson. So we learn that it has fire burning out of its mouth, its eyes glow with a smouldering glare, its muzzles and hackles and dulap were outlined in flickering flame. It's massive, it's very dark, it has a savage face. So it's absolutely terrifying. Yes. But Dominic, reveal for us once and for all is this a supernatural beast, you know, that has rushed straight out of the flames of hell, or is it just a very big dog ? Well, if you haven't read the book, I I think you kind of can guess what's coming, so I don't know how much of a spoiler this is. Yeah, come on. This is a Sherlock Holmes novel after all. It's Sherlock Holmes story, exactly. It's just a very big dog. Um it's a very big dog that's been covered in phosphorus that makes it kind of glow in the dark so it appears terrifying and uh and otherworldly. What we won't reveal is who has done this, um, because that would would spoil it for you. Yeah, so we will we'll be keeping the delicious secret of the of the the true murderer a secret for any of you that want to go on and and read the book. The story behind the hound is is really interesting because obviously it is the hound that that sticks in people's minds. So I think there's something about this sort of gigantic feral diabolical dog that lodges in your imagination when you first read the story, particularly if you read it when you're younger. So what did you say you were nine or so when you read it? Yeah. Couldn't sleep. So my son read it when he was he read a sort of very, very, very abridged kind of version for six year olds or something. And he loved it. I mean he loved the idea of this kind of demonic dog on the moors and Holmes and Watson , these great pals kind of running away from it and terror and all this. And critics have really got stuck into what the hound means. So in the nineteen thirties, people thought is the hound the proletariat? Is it the working classes of Britain that are sort of rising up against Sir Charles and Sir Henry Baskerville and their sort of feudal seat and whatnot? Later on, people said is it the id? You know, sh there's a lot going on in Sir Arthur Conan-Dor's personal life ? Does the Hound represent his kind of base primal sexual urges or something? Um, but what the hound obviously is is uh yeah, whether you believe all that the other explanations or not, the hound is um the latest iteration of a long running um theme, a long running feature in kind of English folklore, isn't it? Which is this idea of the black dog or the sort of the terrifying ghostly dog that haunts people for generations. And now Tabby, I'm queuing you up because you love a feral you love a feral dog and you love folklore. I love a feral dog and I love folklore. So this is just this is the best thing that's ever happened to me in the book club. It's tabby siret bingo. Yeah, exactly. So I mean I've loved folklore all my life. And as you say, there is this long tradition of black dogs in English and Wels h folklore. That's kind of a technical term. These are dogs which haunt landscapes and they warn of impending disaster, often connected with landowners' families. And remember here that Arthur Conan Doyle loved tales of the supernatural, as we've said. And so these stories of supernatural black dogs and these spectral hounds, they crop up in all s like in the in the folklore of all sorts all different parts of the United King dom. So for instance in Yorkshire you have the bargist , then in the Isle of Man you have the Mod . The Maudi Doo. The Maud . Which is the which is this is you don't know this? I don't know this. This is black dog in Manx. Okay, how's your Manx? Good? Strong. It's strong. Yeah. I'll save it for a future episode. Um but the best known of all these kind of myth ical black dogs is Black Shuck or Old Shuck and of Norfolk. And um he's terrifying. I remember being fascinated by him as a child. And then also I think when I read um The Prisoner of Ascaban, the Harry Potter book. The grim in that is like a foretelling of death. Oh yeah. That's right, yeah. He's reputed to be the size of a calf and was easily recognizable by his saucer sized eyes, weeping green or red fire. And this is blackck Shu. This is Black Shark, exactly. The editor of the Strand magazine suggested that it derived from the phantom boarhound of Hergist Ridge on the Welsh Borders. This is the Hound, the Hound of the Baskervilles. This is the Hound of the Baskervilles, yeah. Which supposedly appeared with clanking chains whenever there was a death in the local Baskerville Vaughan family. Wow. They were called the Baskervilles. The Baskerville Vaughan's, yeah. Okay. Um and there's even this story about how this husband kept the story from his wife for fear that she wouldn't marry him if she knew that their family was haunted by this terrifying hound. And then one of their children falls ill from smallpox and the wife goes upstairs to check on the invalid and only to run down again moments later to say that there's this large black dog lying on her son's bed. Anyway, the husband rushes up to only to discover that the child is dead. And then this this was a warning all along. Whoa. There's another legend, uh and this is of Squire Richard Cable of Buckfastly Dartmoor, so Dartmoor again, um and who's a supposedly incredibly evil man who murders his wife and sold sells his soul to the devil. So this is just like the original Hugo Baskerville. And this is from a guide to Devon published in nineteen oh seven. He died in sixteen seventy seven. He was the last male of his race and died with such an evil reputation that he was placed under a heavy stone and a sort of penthouse was built over that with iron gratings to prevent his coming up and haunting the neighbourhood. When he died the story goes that fiends and black dogs breathing fire raced over Dartmoor howling. And then further black still you have um a black dog that appears as a harbinger of um Simon of Athens' death. And then obviously you have like Churchill's black dog, it was a way that he like spoke about depression and Samuel Johnson as well. So it's it's a very well-known trope in England and English folklore. But dogs also feature prominently in Sherlock Holmes stories, more generally, this isn't the only one. So both Holmes and Watson are liking to dogs, aren't they? So I mean Watson is always very dog like. He's always he's like Holmes's kind of loyal dog. In a study in Scarlet, Watson likens Holmes to a pure blooded, well trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the covert, whining in its eagerness until it comes across the lost scent. And there's also, I mean, very famously in the sign of the four, there's a dog called Toby. And Toby um is a sort of he's a cross, I can't remember what he is, he's a cross between two dogs, and he is a has a brilliant nose. Holmes says to Watson, I would rather have Toby's help than that of the whole detective force of London, and so they go all this great chase across London led by Toby. Then very famously there's the dog that doesn't bark in the nighttime in Silver Blaze. Holmes says famously, you know, the great mystery is that why the dog didn't bark, and that is the key to the whole mystery. But it is the hound that stands out. It must be the most famous dog in popular literature, do you think? Yeah, I mean I'd I'd definitely say it must be. I can't think of another contender, really. But then there's another interesting detail of um the Hound of the Baskerville's that you know, we've we've spoken about how it has much more supernatural, much more gothic element than most of the other books. But also Arthur Conan Doyle's treatment of women in the book, I think, is worth discussing because in this book in particular there's an extraordinary degree of brutality towards the female characters of the book, and it's kind of interesting because Sherlock Holmes men tend to be big ger fans of the books than women, I think, on the whole. And yet women are much bigger consumers of true crime, you know, in podcasts, movies, documentaries. Agatha Christie or writers we've been talking about, PD James or whatever, they tend to be bought by women. But this s highlights how Sherlock Holmes is slightly different from the rest of the genre . It has a much bigger, almost like a Baroque scale to it , and it's less believable, it's less conceivable. Whereas, say Agatha Christie, her plots they have a smaller scale, they're closer knit, and that makes them much darker because the villains at the heart of the story, the devils, they're the devils that you know. You know, it's those that live with you, it's those that sleep beside you, and there's something so sinister about that. Whereas in Sherlock Holmes, they're often gloriously kind of inconceivable. Yeah, I agree completely. On the on the women point, I think it's absolutely true because um there's the various characters that we mentioned, Mrs. Barrymore is exploited by her brother who's a murderer, is that right? Yes. The s the relationship between Stapleton and his sister is at the core of the book, isn't it? And she ends up with kind of I mean, she basically suffers domestic abuse. Yeah. She's treated appallingly. She's tied up for a whole night, she has bruises And some of Arthur Connador's biographers have suggested that I mean I don't know whether this is a bit fanciful. You know, he is in this love triangle, he is being torn between these two women. I think it it''ss actually probably there's no psychological explanation for it. It's just um you know his ne his Ned Wardian man writing for men and it doesn't and you know he just sees the women characters as dispensable uh, I would say, rather than it being sort of the the expression of some darkness in his soul. And this is also I mean you s we said that he was almost writing quite a retro book and that a lot of it is very gothic. Yeah. It's a very common theme in Gothic literature that these kind of women are treated abominably and kind of abused by their male counterparts in some way or another. So I think it's more that than anything. I think you're dead right though that um men tend to like Sherlock Holmes uh historically have liked Sherlock Holmes probably more than women do. I think that might have changed now with things like Sherlock Sherlock and Co. or the Benedict Cumberbatch or whatever, the T V version. Yeah, I think you might be right actually. But I do think I mean part of that is to do with male friendship, I think. But also the difference between Sherlock Holmes and some of those other writers we talked about is the who done it element in Sherlock Holmes is never as pronounced as it is in the others. No, it's much more obvious. Puzzling out how they did it is fun, but you always really know who the killer was, I think in Sherlock Holmes. I think it's Sherlock Holmes feels to me more of an adventure story. Yeah, it's it's the journey, not the big reveal.. Yeah, exactly It's the characters. I think that's what keep people coming back. It's the characters and the atmosphere. It is the Watson Holmes dynamic. It is a portrait of male friendship, rather like in Master and Commander or something. Quite rare, I would say, in popular literature, to have two male characters who are in a very uncomplicated way just great friends. And that's what the the books capture. I think you're right. I think that's a massive part of its enduring appeal. 'Cause I mean it's still I mean it's so famous even today. I mean Sherlock Holmes's figure must be one of the most iconic characters in all of literature. And then I think it's also the fact that it's as we said it, you know, this kind of cozy world, but also how neatly the cases are unraveled. You know, the irresistible satisfaction of an almost infallible hero who always cracks the case, and the kind of secret satisfaction of thinking, oh well we got there before Watson, we got there at the same time as Holmes because it's so obvious right from the start. And I think with the Hound of the Baskervilles in particular, its you know popularity and its fame, I think a huge part of that is kind of the gloomy atmosphere of the Moors and sort of the prospect of hellfire and supernatural devils wound up, interwoven with this kind of safe, homely, familiar Victorian world. It's the contrast of those two things. It is. It's the modernity on the one hand of Victorian Britain, with these two friends who in their different ways represent Britain's kind of self-image. So you've got the eccentric individual, the brilliant genius on the one hand, and then you've got the Afghan war veteran, solid, dependable , decent on the other. So they're both kind of middle class archetypes, I suppose. So you've got them on the one hand, and on the other hand you have this kind of brooding evil. And it's satisfying for us to have that explained and tamed and kind of domesticated and then they can go home and Sherlock Holmes can smoke his pipe and they can he can play his violin very badly and Watson will write it all up and they'll you know their friendship will endure and take shed loads of homely co caine. Exactly, yes. Exactly. Right. So let's get to our on that on that note, let's get to our final uh takes. So we're going to mark in what, Tabby? Uh I'm gonna say fiendish hellhounds out of ten. It's a bit more predictable this week, but gotta be done. Yeah. We had dead dogs out of ten in Weathering Heights, and now we're back on the dogs. I know, but at least in these ones, the hellhounds are kind of triumphant, they're not being beaten to a pulp by the Bronte sisters. No. Okay, so Fiendish Show hands out of ten. Go for it. You can go first. Okay, I'll go first. You know what? I'm going very, very high this week. I'm going to give it a nine. So I just thought it was just so enjoyable. It's just such a good read. I I longed to sit down and read it. Um it was a massive page turner. It also has some cases really excellent writing, you know, the the moors and the swamps, the very good marriage of what is genuinely frightening and primal with this always psychomedic injection of Sherlock Holmes's quirkiness and eccentricity. It's it's genuinely chilling, any book and it's so that brings to life the Victorian world so powerfully. I'm always pretty sold on. So yeah, big fan. What about you? Um I'm going to give it eight. Wow, I'm higher than you. I didn't expect that, I have to say. I'm not taking marks off for any particular reason. I think it's George Orwell who had this idea about there being good bad books. So in other words, a book that maybe is not great literature, but it's just brilliant. Yeah. And I think The Hound of the Baskerville's fits that ticks that box perfectly. It it's not, you know, it's not Jane Austen, it's not Vladimir Nabakov, it's not Proust or something. It's not pretending to be. It's not gonna change your life. No, it's not a book that you nominate as a book that's shapes the way you think or anything like that. It is just tremendous, tremendous entertainment. So actually, the eight the eight is harsh. I'm giving it eight as a kind of literary production, but as entertainment, it is undoubtedly a ten , because Holmes and Watson are not one of, you know, they're one of the great double acts in all literature for a reason. They're beautifully observed. The writing is excellent. I mean, Arthur Conan Doyle definitely can write. There's no question about that. It's easy to laugh at him because of the fairies and because he thought that his greatest creations were these slightly dated kind of hundred years' war epics or whatever that no one reads anymore. But this is I mean, if you could write something as good as the hand of the Baskervilles, you're laughing. It's it's really, really good. Oh, you'd be chaffed. And I think, you know, that's a good point, the good bad books. And this is most definitely not a snobby podcast. Like I think books that are just a really brilliant read, even if they're not kind of literary masterpieces, I think they should they should have their day in the sun. And that brings us neatly on to next week's book, which, you know, arguably, is it a a a good bad book? Or just or a bad bad book or a good good book. Exactly. Is it a literary masterpiece? And that is at long last the book everyone's been waiting for, Serre des Mas 's A Court of Thorns and Roses . The book that taught Dominic Sandbrook how to love. Oh my God, Sabby. I can't believe you . Yeah, so uh this is our first venture, possibly last. Let's hope last. Into the world of romanti cy, which we'll be doing next week. And then after that we will be back Well, we'll be doing something very hard to the Basketball's like. We'll be doing Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White, so Victorian Sensation Fiction. Another ghost story. By Tony Morrison. After that, one of my very favourite people, Virginia Wolf, and Mrs. Dalloway. Uh from the 1920s. Then The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Uh The Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and The Code of the Worcesters by P. G. Woodhouse. So lots to look forward to. And Tabby, you never asked me who my favourite screen Sherlock Holmes was. Oh, Dominic, I'm so sorry. Um well okay, well this is actually an interesting detail. You know that according to the Guinness World Book of Records, Sherlock Holmes holds the record for the most adaptations in film and TV above any other literary figure with over two hundred and fifty appearances. So in light of that, who is your favourite on-screen Sherlock Holmes? I think there's two that stand out for me. One is um uh Jeremy Brett who did the Granada versions in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties. Yeah, that was before my time. They are definitive, Tabby. I can't believe you haven't seen them. It's shocking. The other one, of course is Will Ferrell. So Will Ferrell did the John C. Riley. John C. Riley. And it just makes me I know it got naught zero stars all the newspapers Who's your favourite? Obviously it's gonna be somebody terrible, Tabby. I know, I actually I can already anticipate a just a barrage of Backlash. I'm gonna have to say Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock. Oh do absolutely I thought he captured the eccentricity, the genius. That's terrible from you. Because the best version, just to re just to no, just to reiterate, the best modern version of Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock and Co., the Goal Hanger Podcast, is it not? Yes, agreed, agreed. And not least because you will see people, other goal hanger presenters, pop up in it. Alright, quit, cut and we're done. Okay . Bye everybody. Bye-bye.