“I AM AN OMNIVOROUS READER” Book reviews by MICHAEL COX, MATTHEW J ELLIOTT and ROGER JOHNSON Melancholia in Music. The Posthumous Motets of views on these final shows possess more insight than those Orlandus Lassus by Sherlock Holmes . Edited and of the average viewer. annotated by Michael Procter. Edition Michael Procter . In addition to the behind-the-scenes production 2012. 42pp. €8.50 plus postage, also available as a information, Mr Cox is startlingly honest about any printable pdf file €3.00. disputes, but always presenting both sides of the argument, Of all Holmes’s monographs, his study of the music of and without animosity (except, perhaps, when it comes to Lassus is the most controversial. Guy Warrack doubted its his clashes with that bane of creativity, the accountants). very existence, and many commentators have jeered at the There is no doubt of his enthusiasm for Holmes and his title as tautologous on the grounds that all motets are knowledge of the Canon, and the many scholarly works polyphonic. Worse still, Watson appears to describe the devoted to it, to which he refers from time-to-time. motets as mediaeval when they actually belong to the late Photographs of Brett as Holmes are legion, but the book Renaissance. Here at last is a specialist in the sacred music contains a good many which I had never seen before. of that period who takes a more positive view. While Those who view the Brett episodes as flawless may be consulting a complete edition of the Lassus motets in the surprised to find the author expressing certain regrets — Bavarian State Library in Munich, Michael Procter found some mild (the clarity of a line of dialogue in The Priory some pencilled notes apparently left there by a previous School ), some considerable (the disappointing Hound of reader. The notes, entitled Melancholia in Music , make up the Baskervilles ). In many cases, it’s fair to say that the main text of this booklet. perhaps he is being more critical than the rest of us because Mr Procter is in no doubt that the “previous reader” was of the nature of his rôle. And one can only wonder how Holmes and that the title he chose for his monograph goes certain productions would have turned out had he remained a long way to explain why Lassus fascinated him so. The in charge. Oxford Companion to Music says of Lassus that “through It’s too bad that the author is now retired from over-exercise of his intellectual faculties he latterly fell into television, for in his new introduction he presents a settled melancholy”, a condition with which Holmes tantalizing indications of how he might approach the would have had much sympathy. Mr Procter translates the stories today, as well as acknowledging the success of the mainly Biblical texts of the later motets and relates them to recent BBC series Sherlock and the hit film starring Robert the Holmes canon. He also makes an elegant connection Downey Jr and Jude Law (modestly, he does not point out between the depression suffered by both Holmes and that he gave the young Law one of his earliest screen roles Lassus with the bi-polar disorder which afflicted Jeremy in Shoscombe Old Place ). Brett. A Study in Celluloid is the record of Jeremy Brett’s The booklet is beautifully produced and, if the Holmes, from the boyish, infective enthusiasm of the descriptions of the motets whet your appetite for the music, series’ early years to the star’s tragic demise. I can you will be glad to know that Michael Procter has recorded recommend no finer book on the subject, for there is no these works with the Hofkapelle Ensemble on the finer book. Christophorus label (CHR 77255). MJE MC Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders by Gyles A Study in Celluloid by Michael Cox. Gasogene Press . Brandreth. John Murray . 2011. xxi+325pp. £19.99 2011. xvi+222pp. $28.95. The fifth of the Oscar Wilde Murder Mysteries opens in Since 1984, the Granada Television series starring 1892 at Bad Homburg, where Arthur Conan Doyle is Jeremy Brett as Holmes has rarely been off the air. It seems taking a few days’ break to catch up with his, and his that the programmes will enjoy as long a life on our screens fictional detective’s, correspondence. A chance meeting as the Rathbone and Bruce films. This reprint of Michael with Wilde and the discovery of three unexpected objects Cox’s book is extremely welcome, and an invaluable among the letters and packages addressed to Sherlock addition to the bookshelf of any Holmesian enthusiast. No- Holmes lead the two to Rome. The objects are a lock of one is better qualified to chart the history of the series than hair, a severed hand and a severed finger, but the bodies Mr Cox, who raised the notion of a lavish, faithful they came from must have been long dead — so what do adaptation of the Canon in the first place, and then served they signify? In Rome, the two must tread very carefully. as producer or executive producer on all except the three They may have been summoned by one of the Pope’s feature-length episodes based on the short stories and the chaplains... by the new Anglican chaplain in Rome... by six hour-long episodes that made up The Memoirs . Having someone at the British Embassy... or even by the played such an important role in the earlier productions, his remarkable Swedish doctor, Axel Munthe. Oscar encounters an old enemy and Arthur meets an old Sherlock Holmes on the Air by M J Elliott. MX schoolfellow, but intrigue and dissimulation abound, Publishing . 2012. 340pp. £14.99/$22.95/€16.99 murder is committed in the heart of the Holy See, and Holmes first appeared on radio in 1931, and audio another murder waits to be discovered. Conan Doyle acts dramas far outnumber television plays or films. The as Wilde’s assistant, and it’s he who tells the tale, many Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on BBC Radio 4 years later, in the knowledge, which we share, that has finished, but an American series of the same name, destruction would soon come upon his friend. Gyles created by Jim French, began syndication in 1998 and Brandreth’s writing is, as always, completely assured. Both thrives today. Matthew Elliott contributed his first script in portraits have the authentic touch, and Wilde’s 2003 and is now one of the most prolific and intelligent conversation is pure gold. The subsidiary characters are writers in the field. If you’ve ever listened to a radio play splendidly drawn, as is the setting; the mystery baffles, and and asked yourself, “How did they do that?” — or even, its solution dazzles. Mr Brandreth’s suggestion that Oscar “Why did they do that?” — you’ll love this satisfyingly Wilde was the inspiration for Mycroft Holmes is, I think, chunky volume. Here are eight of Mr Elliott’s best scripts original and decidedly convincing. for The Further Adventures , plus “A Study in Scarlet” and “The Empty House” from The Classic Adventures of An Entirely New Country: Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes , the parallel series of dramatisations from Undershaw and the Resurrection of Sherlock Holmes the Canon, which has been his sole domain since he began by Alistair Duncan. MX Publishing . 2011. 309pp. £12.99/ it in 2005. Check the Imagination Theater recordings at $19.95/ €14.99 www.jimfrenchproductions.com , and enjoy the book! Close to Holmes confirmed Alistair Duncan as a truly important writer in our field. In The Norwood Author he As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary illuminated an essential period in the life of Conan Doyle, Prehistory of Virtual Reality by Michael Saler. Oxford when Sherlock Holmes leapt to international fame — and University Press . 2012. x+283pp. £60.00/ $99.00 hbk, his creator killed him. Mr Duncan’s new book throws light £17.99/ $27.95 pbk on the years that followed, when Conan Doyle and his We are not, of course, alone in our acceptance of a family lived in Undershaw, the house he’d had built at fictional creation as real. Moreover, our activities have an Hindhead, the centre of an informal community of writers intellectually respectable pedigree. You knew that and artists, where conditions were favourable for his instinctively, of course, but it’s rather good to have the fact invalid wife Louise. During the Undershaw years he wrote endorsed by an eminent academic. Professor Saler’s book The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Return of Sherlock charts the development of imaginative reality and explores Holmes . He served as a field surgeon in the Boer War and the psychological and social reasons for its success, wrote a full history of the conflict. He adopted the cause of concentrating on the creations of Conan Doyle, H P the wrongly convicted George Edalji. He was knighted. Lovecraft and J R R Tolkien. By exercising what he calls And he fell in love with Jean Leckie, who would become ironic imagination , we can live for a while in a different his second wife. Today, Undershaw is in a sad state, empty world, sharing it with kinsprits, but we never actually and threatened by inappropriate “development”. It’s fitting disconnect ourselves from mundane reality. It’s little that the foreword to this admirable book was written by wonder, really, that so many writers of fantasy and science Mark Gatiss, the Patron of the Undershaw Preservation fiction — Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Neil Gaiman, Trust.