Doings of Doyle - The Arthur Conan Doyle Podcast

This episode, Paul and I are delighted to welcome to the podcast Dr Stephen Carver, author, biographer and recipient of one of the ACD Society ’s Inaugural Doylean Honours for his excellent Wordsworth Editions blog on the Professor Challenger stories . We talk with Stephen about the appeal of Professor Challenger to readers and to Conan Doyle, The Land of Mist and Challenger’s spiritualist convers...

This time we travel to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in search of new creatures and encounter ancient ones in The Maracot Deep (1929), Conan Doyle’s last novel. You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Maracot_Deep And read the show notes here:  https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2022/05/26-maracot-deep-1929.html A closed-caption version of the episode will...

Hello and welcome to Episode 25. We’re back at Baker Street to drop in on Holmes and Watson for one of their more peculiar cases, ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man’ from March 1923. You can read the story here:  https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Adventure_of_the_Creeping_Man Or listen to Greg Wagland’s reading here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctAFqZclNOQ You can read th...

This episode, we're joined by Ross Davies and guests to talk about the new hub of Doylean activity that is the ACD Society. You can find out more about the ACD Society here:  www.acdsociety.com    The episode can be heard here:  http://doingsofdoyle.podbean.com/ . And you can read the show notes here:  https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2022/03/24-acd-society-with-ross-davies.html   A version of the ep...

This episode, we’re off to a German University town for a comic tale that draws on Conan Doyle’s school days and his early encounters with spiritualism - ‘The Great Keinplatz Experiment’ (1885). You can read the short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Great_Keinplatz_Experiment   The episode can be heard here:  http://doingsofdoyle.podbean.com/ . And you can read t...

This episode, we head back into Gothic territory with a tale of cruelty and revenge set during the Franco-Prussian war, ‘The Lord of Chateau Noir’ from 1894. You can read the short story here:  https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Lord_of_Ch%C3%A2teau_Noir Or listen to Greg Wagland’s audiobook version here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S8hubCSDeU The episode can be heard her...

This episode, we are joined by Dr Merrick Burrow, Head of English and Creative Writing at the University of Huddersfield, to talk about The Cottingley Fairies: A Study in Deception, an exhibition Merrick has curated for the Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery at the University of Leeds.    You can visit the exhibition online here:  https://library.leeds.ac.uk/events/event/1900/galleries/375/the-co...

This episode, we travel to nineteenth century Japan in the footsteps of one of Conan Doyle's childhood friends, and take part in a heist on the high seas in 'Jelland's Voyage' (1892). You can read the short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Jelland%27s_Voyage   Or listen to Greg Wagland's excellent reading of the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWEATwp0Q2o...

It’s Hallowe’en, so settle down by the fire, pour yourself a stiff drink, and get ready for a Conan Doyle ghost story, ‘The Silver Mirror,’ from August 1908. You can read the short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Silver_Mirror And read the show notes here: https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2021/10/19-silver-mirror-1908.html   Next time on the Doings of Doyle… We head...

This time we travel from Baker Street to Brook Street in the company of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson in 'The Adventure of the Resident Patient' (1893), one of the later Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1893).  You can read the short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Adventure_of_the_Resident_Patient   Or listen to an audio narration by Greg Wagland here: https://ww...

This episode, we enjoy a slice of Anglo-Indian gothic with Conan Doyle’s early short story Uncle Jeremy’s Household (1887), a tale with connections to a Doyle family mystery and a certain resident of Baker Street. You can read the short story here:  https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Uncle_Jeremy%27s_Household Or listen to an audio narration by Greg Wagland here:  https://www.youtu...

Hello and welcome to episode 16. This episode, Paul and I are delighted to welcome to the podcast journalist and author Shrabani Basu to talk about Conan Doyle, George Edalji and her new book The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer (Bloomsbury, 2021). In 1903, the quiet village of Great Wyrley near Birmingham is shocked by a spate of horrific horse maiming. Suspicion improbably falls on George Edalji, a...

Episode 15 - We finally bring Brigadier Gerard to the podcast, with a discussion of two of his early exploits, 'How the Brigadier Held the King' and 'How the King Held the Brigadier' (1895).  You can read the stories here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=How_the_Brigadier_Held_the_King; https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=How_the_King_Held_the_Brigadier    The epi...

Episode 14 - This time we trek through the caverns of the Peak District in search of a  prehistoric monster in Conan Doyle's 1910 short story 'The Terror of Blue John Gap.' A little gem of a tale, it harks back to Conan Doyle's early gothic fiction while being a precursor to The Lost World (1912). You can read the novel here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Terror_of_Blue_Jo...

The Refugees: A Tale of Two Continents,’Conan Doyle's fourth historical novel, was first published by Harper's Monthly Magazine in the first half of 1893. It explores the events surrounding Louis XIV's Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and how this impacts on a small group of Huguenots who are sent, as Conan Doyle put it, “flying like leaves before a hurricane.” You can read the novel here...

This episode, we are delighted to welcome to the podcast Clifford S. Goldfarb, author of The Great Shadow (1997), to talk about Conan Doyle and Napoleon. As we mentioned in Episode 10 , Conan Doyle had a life-long fascination with the Napoleonic era which began at his mother's knee, with tales of family members at Waterloo, and found its release in some of his finest historical works. We talk to C...

‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,’ the third story in the collection His Last Bow, was first published by The Strand Magazine in 1910. A tale of death and diablerie in Cornwall, it harks back to some of Conan Doyle’s earlier works... You can read the short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Adventure_of_the_Devil%27s_Foot The episode can be heard here: http://doin...

Welcome to Episode 10. This time, we travel back to the 1890s to discuss Conan Doyle's short story 'A Straggler of '15' and its stage play version which came to be known simply as 'Waterloo' (first performed 1894). Plus we cover a cast of luminaries of the Victorian stage, including Henry Irving, Bram Stoker and George Bernard Shaw.   You can read the story here and the play here . You can read th...

Today, we join Otto Von Spee of Heidelberg for 'An Exciting Christmas Eve,' as he is duped into giving a lecture on dynamite... You can read the story here . You can read the show notes here . Acknowledgements Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books:  www.belangerbooks.com Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons:  By Attribution 3.0 License.  http...

Ahoy mateys! All aboard the Happy Delivery for a voyage to hell and back with Conan Doyle's unscrupulous pirate villain, the damnable Sharkey. You can read the stories here . You can read the show notes here . Acknowledgements Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books:  www.belangerbooks.com Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons:  By Attribution 3...

In this first interview show, we talk to Mark Albertstat, co-editor of Canadian Holmes, the journal of Sherlockian society The Bootmakers of Toronto, about Conan Doyle and his fascination with sport. The episode can be heard here: http://doingsofdoyle.podbean.com/ . The show notes can be read here . Acknowledgements Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books: www.belangerbooks.com . Music credit: Sneak...

We enter dark waters this episode with The Case of Lady Sannox, Conan Doyle's Gothic masterpiece, written in 1893. A sinister incident leads to a beautiful socialite withdrawing from polite society and a celebrated surgeon losing his mind...   You can read the story here . You can read the show notes here . Acknowledgements Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books:  www.belangerbooks.com Music credit...

It's episode five and this time we're looking at The Story of the Man with the Watches and The Story of the Lost Special, two of Conan Doyle's Round the Fire stories written in 1898, and widely considered apocrypha of the Sherlock Holmes canon. To read the stories, click here and here . You can read the show notes here . Acknowledgements Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books: www.belangerbooks.com...

This month we're talking about Danger! Being the Log of Captain John Sirius (1914), Conan Doyle's prophetic tale of submarine warfare published during the outbreak of the First World War. To read the story, click here . For show notes, visit the website .   Acknowledgements Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons:  By Attribution 3.0 License.  h...

It's time for another episode. This month we talk about Doyle's classic ghost story, The Captain of the Pole-star (1883). To read the story, click here . For show notes, visit the website . Acknowledgements Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons:  By Attribution 3.0 License.  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/