This episode, we answer your questions on many aspects of Arthur Conan Doyle’s life and work. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions to test us!

We couldn't quite get through all of them, so a bonus episode is freely available at our Patreon: www.patreon.com/doingsofdoyle. Simply sign up for a free membership (or, if you like, a paid one!) to get access.

The show notes will be available at https://bit.ly/DOD70sn (for all shownotes, just replace ‘70’ with the episode number in question).

The episode will shortly be posted to our Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Please like and subscribe.

And there’s a special bonus episode for subscribers on Patreon, which you can access at www.patreon.com/doingsofdoyle. You don’t need to be a paid member – there is a free membership – but you will need to be a Patreon subscriber as the bonus will not be posted here or on YouTube.

This episode, Sherlock Holmes contends with a predatory Austrian baron who “collects” women in ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ (1924).

You can read the story here.

The show notes will be available at https://bit.ly/DOD69sn (for all shownotes, just replace ‘69’ with the episode number in question).

The episode will shortly be posted to our Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Please like and subscribe.

Synopsis

It is September 1902. Sherlock Holmes is at the height of his fame and professional standing when he is approached by the noted society fixer, Colonel Sir James Damery, who wishes to employ Holmes’s knowledge, influence and powers of detection to help prevent the impending marriage of the sinister Baron Adelbert Gruner to Miss Violet de Merville. Damery, however, is not the principal but simply an agent acting on behalf of a highly placed client who has his own reasons for wanting to prevent the misalliance. Holmes at first demurs in the face of such muddied waters – to have mystery at both ends of a case is too confusing – but his desire to bring down the Austrian murderer, as he terms Gruner, and to prevent a potentially infamous and tragic society scandal proves too strong and he embarks upon one of the most dangerous cases of his career…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We answer your questions on ACD, his life and times in our very first Q/A episode. Submit your questions by 8 December via BlueSky, Facebook or email [email protected].

And we’ll have a bonus extended edition on the making of the podcast for our patrons. To hear that episode, just sign up now – for free or for a small monthly fee – at www.patreon.com/doingsofdoyle.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This month, Paul and I are delighted to welcome to the podcast Nick Lane, the writer and director of Sherlock Holmes: The Hunt for Moriarty for Blackeyed Theatre.

You can find out more about Blackeyed Theatre here.

You can find the tour dates for Sherlock Holmes: The Hunt for Moriarty here.

The show notes will be available at https://bit.ly/DOD68sn (for all shownotes, just replace ‘68’ with the episode number in question).

The episode will shortly be posted to our Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Please like and subscribe.

And follow us on BlueSky as @doingsofdoyle.com

About Nick Lane

Nick started his career as an actor, before he turned to writing and directing. From 2006-2014 he was the Associate Director and Literary Manager of Hull Truck Theatre. Since then he has struck up a long association with Blackeyed Theatre, beginning with Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde in 2016, and going on to adapt other gothic classics including Frankenstein, Jane Eyre and Dracula. He is also an accomplished children’s playwright, with credits including A Christmas Carol, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and the excellently titled When Santa Got Stuck in the Fridge. He has adapted The Sign of the Four and The Valley of Fear and his latest is The Hunt for Moriarty which is touring in the UK right now.

Sherlock Holmes: The Hunt for Moriarty

“When you have one of the first brains of Europe up against you, and all the powers of darkness at his back, there are infinite possibilities”

London, 1900. As the British Empire wages war in the name of a Queen whose health is failing, a series of mysterious events reveals a crack in the high corridors of power. A crack that threatens to destabilise monarchy, government and Empire. And at its centre, controlling the flow of information and influence, a shadowy figure plans a final deadly move.

Drawn into the game and unsure who to trust, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves confronting figures from their past in a desperate race against time, aware that the most powerful person in the world could be in the pocket of one of the most corrupt. But just how much is Holmes willing to sacrifice as he faces 'checkmate'?

A thrilling adventure based on the work of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes: The Hunt for Moriarty is a world premiere combining powerful performances, a haunting soundscape and innovative design for an exhilarating theatrical experience.

Recommended for age 11+

Running time: Approx 140 minutes (plus interval)

(Source: Blackeyed Theatre website)

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We stay in Sherlockian mode with ‘The Adventure of the Illustrious Client’ (1924). You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This episode, we look at one of Conan Doyle’s last short stories, ‘The End of Devil Hawker’ (1930) which he completed shortly before his death.

You can read the story here.

The show notes will be available at https://bit.ly/DOD67sn (for all shownotes, just replace ‘67’ with the episode number in question).

The episode will shortly be posted to our Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Please like and subscribe.

Synopsis

It seems like just another night at Tom Cribb’s London establishment, the Union Arms at the corner of Panton Street, in the first decade of the nineteenth century. The bar is crowded with aristocratic men about town, members of the boxing fraternity and all their assorted followers, hangers-on and hearty rowdies. Cribb himself, still nominally the champion of all England, is there, as is the nascent young poet Lord Byron. Amidst the uproar and chaff, the sinister figure of Sir John Hawker - ‘Devil Hawker’ – holds quiet converse with Sir Charles Trevor over a debt of three thousand pounds. They decide to settle the issue by the turn of a card, a transaction that is witnessed surreptitiously by the sharp bookmaker Billy Jakes, who notices a slight of hand and makes a decision that will cost both him and Hawker dearly…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We are joined by Nick Lane, author of several Sherlock Holmes plays for Blackeyed Theatre, to talk about their new production Sherlock Holmes: The Hunt for Moriarty.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This month, we join a young doctor struggling to recruit patients for his medical practice in ‘Crabbe’s Practice’ from 1884, a story that Conan Doyle rewrote in its entirety in 1922. 

You can read the two versions of the story here.

Or listen to an audiobook version of the 1922 version here.

The episode will appear on our YouTube page. Please like and subscribe.

You can follow us @doingsofdoyle on BlueSky.

Synopsis

When they were fellow medical students at Edinburgh University, Robert Hudson had foreseen a successful and rewarding career for the eccentric but brilliant John Waterhouse Crabbe. His prophecy appears to have been fulfilled when Crabbe invites Hudson to stay at his impressive and well-appointed residence-cum-practice at Bridport. All, however, is not as it seems: Crabbe is the area’s least regarded doctor, despite his local family connections, and he is desperate need of a plan to attract patients and stave off bankruptcy. Hudson provides an answer: he will play the role of a well-heeled gentleman who is suddenly taken ill on Crabbe’s doorstep and then cured within. Crabbe then further dramatises the plot to involve Hudson’s miraculous recovery from a staged drowning. What could possibly go wrong? 

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We look at one of the last stories penned by Conan Doyle, his Regency short story ‘The End of Devil Hawker' (1930). You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ 

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This episode, we welcome to the podcast, James Machin, to talk about the new edition of The Stark Munro Letters (1895) he has edited for Edinburgh University Press.

About James Machin

James is a writer, researcher, and editor, whose recent books include the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle's version of The Stark Munro Letters (2024) and The Strange Stories of John Buchan for British Library Publishing (2025). He edited Faunus, the journal of The Friends of Arthur Machen, for over ten years, and has taught at Birkbeck (University of London), the Royal College of Art, and the University of Bedfordshire. He has recently commenced work on the Edinburgh Edition of Round the Fire Stories.

The Stark Munro Letters (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)

The first new edition of The Stark Munro Letters since the early 1980s

This is the first scholarly edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s epistolary novel, originally serialised in the Idler, 1894–95, and long out of print. With its first-hand testimony of the life of a doctor at the outset of his career in the late nineteenth century, The Stark Munro Letters will appeal to anyone with an interest in medical history. It is based on his experiences during the eight years he spent as a General Practitioner, before becoming a professional author in 1890. By some way the most autobiographical of Conan Doyle’s novels—written at the height of Holmes’s popularity—it is also the most personal in terms of presenting his worldview during his formative years, including ruminations on moral philosophy, religion, science, and evolutionary theory. Moreover, it is entertaining and incredibly vivid—a contemporary critic described the mercurial Cullingworth as ‘one of the finest characters Dr. Doyle has yet drawn’.

Source: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-stark-munro-letters.html

Bibliography

The Strange Stories of John Buchan (British Library, 2025)

British Weird: Selected Short Fiction 1893 – 1937 (Handheld Classics, 2020)

Faunus: The Decorative Imagination of Arthur Machen (Strange Attractor Press, 2019)

Of Mud and Flame: A Penda's Fen Sourcebook (MIT Press, 2019)

Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)

The Cosy Room and Other Stories (Tartarus Press, 2017)

Also mentioned

Margie Deck (ed), Sherlock Holmes Into The Fire (Belanger Books, 2025) https://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Into-Fire-Margie-ebook/dp/B0FJK3H29X

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We continue with Conan Doyle’s medical fiction with a related comic tale, ‘Crabbe’s Practice’ (1884). You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This episode, we travel to Wiltshire where an Indian army surgeon is being hounded by a very unwelcome visitor, in ‘The Story of the Brown Hand’ from 1898.

Read the show notes at https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2025/06/64-story-of-brown-hand-1898.html 

You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Story_of_the_Brown_Hand

Or listen to an audiobook version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-tK9m42tKY

The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon, where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle

And follow us on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/doingsofdoyle.com). We don’t do Twitter no more.

Synopsis

Following his retirement to an estate on the edge of Salisbury Plain after 40 years’ service in India, Sir Dominic Holden has invited his nephew Dr Hardacre to stay for a weekend. Hardacre assumes that this is simply a family courtesy, as he is only sixth in line of inheritance to his uncle’s fortune. He finds an hospitable enough household but one wrapped in an intense gloom, whose source he cannot fathom. Until, that is, Sir Dominic shows great interest in Hardacre’s ghost-hunting exploits with the Psychical Research Society…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We will be joined by a mystery interview guest…

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

Hello and welcome to Episode 63. This episode we travel to the very north of mainland Scotland where one man’s solitude is interrupted by two mysterious castaways, in ‘The Man from Archangel’ from 1885.

You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Man_from_Archangel

Or listen to a Librivox reading here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts2yXxclU-c

The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon, where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle

And follow us on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/doingsofdoyle.com). We don’t do Twitter no more.

Synopsis

Having come into an unexpected inheritance, the morose and misanthropic John McVittie is able to give up his unrewarding legal practice in the English Midlands and retire to a remote coastal estate in Caithness in eastern Scotland. Here he pursues his esoteric scientific and philosophic interests, with only his aged housekeeper for company. But his quiet existence is disrupted when a Russian schooner is wrecked in a storm and McVittie rescues a young woman from the doomed ship. Apparently, however, she is not the only survivor as shortly afterwards McVittie discovers that his lonely house is under observation from a mysterious bearded stranger…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We discuss ACD’s unconventional ghost story, ‘The Story of the Brown Hand’ (1898), from his Round the Fire Stories.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

This episode, we welcome to the podcast journalist and author Andrew Finkel to talk about his debut novel The Adventure of the Second Wife (2024), a multi-layered mystery in which an avid Sherlockian investigate a missing Sherlock Holmes story…

About Andrew Finkel

Based for many years in Istanbul, Andrew Finkel has corresponded for international media including The Times, The Economist, TIME, CNN and for the Latitude section of The New York Times. He is also a contributing editor and restaurant critic for Cornucopia Magazine. His articles, editorials and broadcast commentaries have appeared in an equal variety of media that includes The Washington Post, The Guardian, Observer, Financial Times, The Art Newspaper, The Spectator and the BBC. His experiences of working in the Turkish language press, in newsrooms, as a columnist and on television, prompted him some ten years ago to co-found Platform24 (P24) a human rights NGO that supports independent journalism and free expression. Among its projects is the popular Kıraathane, the Istanbul Literature House. He is the author of scholarly articles on press capture and media integrity as well as the Oxford University Press handbook, Turkey, What Everyone Needs to Know. His recently published debut novel The Adventure of the Second Wife revolves around the well-documented obsession which Abdülhamid II, the last great Ottoman Sultan, had for the stories of Sherlock Holmes.

The Adventure of the Second Wife (Even Keel Press, 2024)

Strange that Abdülhamid II, the last great Ottoman Sultan, would have Sherlock Holmes stories read to him before he went to sleep. Even stranger is that his obsession helped change the course of history.

The explanation lies in the mystery of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dying words, that the one Sherlock adventure still to intrigue him was that of ‘The Second Wife’. For no such story exists… Or does it?

The Adventure of the Second Wife is the debut novel of renowned journalist Andrew Finkel – a clever, compelling mystery about a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast who with the help of a brilliant Turkish professor, tries to solve the enigma of Arthur Conan Doyle’s dying words only to upend his life in the process.

Purchase from Cornucopia Press here.

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We head back into Gothic territory with ‘The Man from Archangel’ (1885), claimed to be one of Conan Doyle’s favourite stories. You can read the story here.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

YouTube video created by @headlinerapp.

Hello and welcome to Episode 61. Today, we return to Baker Street – or should that be Montague Street? – for another memoir of Sherlock Holmes, ‘The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual’ (1893).

Read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_the_Musgrave_Ritual

The episode will be uploaded to our YouTube channel soon, where you can listen with closed captions. In the meantime, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle

And follow us on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/doingsofdoyle.com). We don’t do Twitter no more.

Synopsis

Whilst tidying his papers in the Baker Street flat, Sherlock Holmes unearths some relics of one of his earliest cases. His client, an old university associate called Reginald Musgrave, hires the nascent detective to investigate the recent disappearances of Hurlstone’s butler and one of the housemaids. It is quite clear, however, that this is no elopement, and central to the mystery is the old family catechism known as the Musgrave Ritual…

Next time on Doings of Doyle...

We hope to be joined by journalist and author Andrew Finkel to discuss his novel The Adventure of the Second Wife…

Support the podcast

Please help us reach new listeners by leaving a rating or view on the podcast platform of your choice. And if you want to sponsor the podcast, please check out our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/doingsofdoyle

Acknowledgements

Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books (www.belangerbooks.com), and our supporters on Patreon and Paypal.

Image credits: Thanks to Alexis Barquin at The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia for permission to reproduce these images. Please support the encyclopaedia at www.arthur-conan-doyle.com.

Music credit: Sneaky Snitch Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.