Hello and welcome to Episode 58. Today, we are delighted to welcome to the podcast Phil Cheadle and Edward Bennett, the director and star respectively of ‘Selecting a Ghost’, a stage adaptation of the Conan Doyle short story which was performed in Norwood, South London, in November 2024.

Listen to our episode about ‘Selecting a Ghost’ here: https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2023/12/46-selecting-ghost-ghosts-of.html

Read the Conan Doyle short story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Selecting_a_Ghost

Listen to the podcast here:

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 @doingsofdoyle.com on BlueSky.

Philip Cheadle

Phil trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) and has an extensive range of theatre, television, and film credits. His notable stage roles include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (West End), Mrs. Affleck (National Theatre), Henry IV Part I & Part II, and Bedlam (Shakespeare’s Globe), as well as The Changeling (Cheek by Jowl), Reasons to Stay Alive and Far from the Madding Crowd (ETT), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Sheffield Crucible), and Breaking the Code (Royal Exchange). On television, Phil has appeared in Harlots, Dark Angel, Crimson Fields, New Worlds, and Silent Witness. His film work includes 1917, John Carter, and the upcoming independent film Shalbourne, in which he plays the title role.

In addition to his acting career, Phil is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Two Lines Productions. He recently adapted and directed Arthur Conan Doyle's short story Selecting a Ghost as an immersive, site-specific production for Stanley Arts’ Day of the Dead festival.

Website: https://www.twolinesproductions.com/

IMDB for Phil Cheadle.

Edward Bennett

Ed’s diverse and extensive theatre work has seen him perform with some of the country’s leading companies and directors, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, Theatre Royal Bath and Chichester Festival Theatre. On the small screen, Edward stars most recently in Joan for ITV and in Series 3 of Bridgerton for Netflix. You can also watch him in Series 1 and 2 of Sky drama Cobra as Peter Mot, Max Owen in Sky Atlantic’s Save Me Too, Industry for the BBC, Pennyworth for Warner Bros, Poldark for the BBC and Series 2 of ITV’s Victoria.

Ed’s feature film work includes The Laureate directed by Jonathan Cape, Napoleon directed by Ridley Scott and as T E Lawrence in Benediction directed by Terence Davies. 

IMDB for Edward Bennett.

Photograph credit

Photographs by Cecilia Costello Photography.

Next time

We rejoin the intrepid Challenger expedition (not that one) as they journey further into The Lost World.

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/.

Hello and welcome to Episode 57. Today, we begin our long-awaited journey into The Lost World, Conan Doyle’s celebrated adventure novel which introduced Professor George Edward Challenger to the reading public.

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

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 @doingsofdoyle.com on BlueSky.

Synopsis

Edward Dunn Malone is a lowly young journalist at the Daily Gazette whose heart’s desire is to win the hand of the beautiful but exacting Gladys Hungerton. She, however, finds Malone lacking in ambition and the requisite spirit of manly competitiveness. She will only bow before another Burton or Stanley, and Malone must venture into the world to discover and conquer before she will consider his approaches. Luckily, his editor, McArdle, gives him the ideal opportunity by introducing him to the irascible, combative and press-hating Professor George Challenger who claims to have found evidence of the continued existence of prehistoric life in South America. Upon first approaching Challenger, Malone is thrown down the professor’s stairs. Then, in a surprising turn of events, he is given the opportunity to join a new expedition to the Amazon to prove – or refute – Challenger’s outlandish assertions…

Next time

We hope to be joined by an interview guest before we return to The Lost World in the new year.

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/.

Hello and welcome to Episode 56. Today, we journey to Conan Doyle’s hometown of Edinburgh where a young man falls foul of a mysterious, mesmeric beauty in ‘John Barrington Cowles’ (1884).

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

You can read the show notes here: https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2024/10/56-john-barrington-cowles-1884.html

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

Synopsis

At Edinburgh University in 1879, a friendship is formed between two medical students, Robert Armitage and John Barrington Cowles. Beyond his scientific pursuits and achievements, Cowles is also interested in art and, at an exhibition at the Scottish Academy, his attention is drawn towards a beautiful woman named Kate Northcott. She, however, is already promised in marriage to a law student named Reeves, although not for long. Her fiancé dies in strange circumstances and she and Cowles are soon engaged. But, as Armitage discovers, she is a woman with a veiled and sinister past which matches her forceful and mysteriously magnetic personality. What is her secret and how can her hold over his friend be broken?

Next time

We embark on our exploration of the Conan Doyle classic The Lost World (1912), taking the story to the point where our intrepid crew travel to South America. You can read it here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Lost_World

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/.

Hello and welcome to episode 55. This time, we look at a story that was for a long time not included in the works of Conan Doyle - 1884’s ‘The Blood-Stone Tragedy: A Druidical Story.’

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

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

Synopsis

Whilst travelling in the English Midlands, the narrator hears a strange tale from a fellow traveller whose wife, in their pre-marital days, underwent a terrifying experience during a family holiday in North Wales. Frustrated by the domestic restrictions imposed upon her while the men of the party enjoy climbing expeditions, the intrepid Miss Madison decides to indulge in some local exploration on her own. She eventually becomes lost amongst the mountains and the valleys and is close to despair when she discovers a primitive hut and its odd inhabitant, a wild and bearded figure dressed in a white robe. But her relief at finding a potential guide soon turns to unease as her new acquaintance begins to talk of strange gods and human sacrifice…

Next time

‘John Barrington Cowles’ (1884) – published two months after ‘The Blood-Stone Tragedy’ in Cassell’s and far better! – is our story next month. You can read it here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/John_Barrington_Cowles

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

We would like to thank Michael Halewood of Halewood and Sons of Preston for his help on this episode: https://www.pbfa.org/members/halewood-sons; https://www.abebooks.co.uk/halewood-sons-aba-ilab-1867-preston/277945/sf

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/.

Hello and welcome to Episode 54. This time, we step into the world of international politics and diplomatic secrets in the Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ from December 1904.

Read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia – The Adventure of the Second Stain.

Listen to an audiobook reading here: Magpie Audio – The Adventure of the Second Stain.

Read the show notes here: Episode 54 Show Notes.

Check out the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s Scrapbook on The Second Stain

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

Synopsis

On an Autumn morning, in an unspecified year, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson’s Baker Street rooms are graced by a visit from the Prime Minister, Lord Bellinger, and the Secretary for European Affairs, the Right Honourable Trelawney Hope. It transpires that a document of great moment – an intemperate letter written by an incautious foreign potentate – has gone missing from Hope’s dispatch box. It must be traced and returned if disastrous consequences are to be avoided. Holmes is rapidly on the scent and believes that one of only three conspiratorial agents – Eduardo Lucas, La Rothiere and Hugo Oberstein – could be involved. The investigative waters, however, are very soon muddied by an unexpected intervention from Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope and the brutal murder of Eduardo Lucas at his Westminster home – a case which falls on Inspector Lestrade, who calls Holmes’ attention to a curious discrepancy and a misplaced rug…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We look at Conan Doyle’s druidical mystery, ‘The Blood-Stone Tragedy’, published in Cassell’s Saturday Journal in 1884, which was, for a long time, lost to modern readers. You can read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia – The Blood-Stone Tragedy.

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/.

Hello and welcome to Episode 53. Today, we discuss ‘The Coming of the Huns,’ one of Conan Doyle’s Tales of Long Ago, written and published in 1910.

You can read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia – The Coming of the Huns.

Or listen to an audiobook reading here: The Coming of the Huns – Magpie Audio.

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

Synopsis

Weary of the infighting between Christian sects in Fourth Century Constantinople, the Trinitarian Simon Melas heads northwards, beyond the Dneister, to live a secluded life of contemplation. Yet even in the wilderness he cannot find complete solitude. In a neighbouring cave he encounters an established hermit, Paul of Nicopolis. Their discourse however proves short-lived as Paul is a follower of the rival Arian philosophy.

One evening, two years into his retreat, Simon’s peace is disturbed by the fleeting appearance of an oddly conformed stranger. The next morning, the plain beneath his refuge is covered by a vast multitude of horsemen heading steadily westwards…

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We return to Baker Street for ‘The Adventure of the Second Stain’ (1904). You can read the story here: ACD Encyclopaedia – The Adventure of the Second Stain.

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/.

This episode, we welcome to the podcast Professor Roger Luckhurst to talk about his new edition of Round the Red Lamp (1894) for the Edinburgh University Press, and plenty of Gothic too.

About Roger Luckhurst

Roger Luckhurst is the Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth-Century Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of ten monographs and has edited many works of classic nineteenth century Gothic, including key works by Rider Haggard, Henry James, Stevenson, Stoker and Conan Doyle. Listeners to the Doings of Doyle podcast will have heard us make reference to his Science Fiction: A Literary History (2017) The Mummy’s Curse (2012) and his excellent book Gothic: An Illustrated History which came out in 2021.

He can be found on X as @TheProfRog. Visit Roger’s page at Birkbeck, University of London here.

Round the Red Lamp (Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle, 2024)

An often overlooked collection in Arthur Conan Doyle’s career, these tales actually track the vital moment in his life when he decided to shift careers from provincial medic to celebrated London author

• Detailed introduction, notes and scholarly apparatus

This is a scholarly edition of Arthur Conan Doyle’s controversial collection of medical tales, first published in 1894 in the first flush of his fame. Conan Doyle had trained in medicine at Edinburgh University in the 1870s, and then spent eight years as a General Practitioner in Southsea, before deciding to become a professional author in 1890. The stories he collected in Round the Red Lamp are gathered from his medical training and incidents in his life as a provincial GP. Some of the stories are daring – dealing explicitly with child birth, sexually transmitted diseases and malpractice. Some are sentimental or comic vignettes. Some are Gothic horrors. On publication the shades of dark and light bewildered some of his readers and the medical realism outraged others. Round the Red Lamp is a vital collection in understanding Conan Doyle’s shift of profession from medic to author. (Source: Edinburgh university Press website)

Purchase from the publisher here.

Other works by Roger Luckhurst

Gothic: an illustrated history (London, Thames and Hudson, 2021).

‘Arthur Conan Doyle and medical London: reading the topography of Round the Red Lamp’, Victoriographies: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Writing, Vol 11 (3), 2021.

The Ghost Stories of M. R. James (London, British Library Press, 2018).

The Cambridge Companion to Dracula (Cambridge University Press, 2017)

Science Fiction: A Literary History (London, British Library Press, 2017)

The Mummy's Curse: the True History of a Dark Fantasy (Oxford University Press, 2012)

Late Victorian Gothic Tales (Oxford World's Classics, 2009)

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We take a look at ‘The Coming of the Huns’ (1910), one of Conan Doyle’s Tales of Long Ago. 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 vide created by @headlinerapp.

This episode, we discuss one of Conan Doyle’s little-known post-war stories, ‘The Nightmare Room’ from 1921.

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

Listen to an audiobook reading by Greg Wagland here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFZwsEE8ua8

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

Synopsis

The air of an ordinary if luxuriant and curiously incomplete living room hangs heavy with an atmosphere of sinister expectation. Its occupants, Lucille and Archie Mason, have reached a dangerous impasse in their society marriage. She is a famous dancer who gave up her art and career for the sake of love; he, a young and successful man of business. But there is also a mutual friend, a soldier named Jack Campbell. A source of poison, perhaps? But who then is the fourth figure watching from the shadows, watching and controlling…

Next time on Doings of Doyle…

We are joined by Roger Luckhurst, editor of the new Edinburgh Edition of Round the Red Lamp (1924), to delve into medical gothic...

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/.

Welcome to Episode 50! This month, we look at a deeply personal work that Conan Doyle suppressed for almost thirty years before reissuing in heavily redacted form, ‘The Surgeon of Gaster Fell’ from 1890.

You can the original 1890 version here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Surgeon_of_Gaster_Fell

Or listen to a Librivox recording of the 1918 version here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PouWLBMO0E (starts at 3:27:50).

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

Synopsis

Following a life of adventure, James Upperton, whilst still only in his late thirties, has decided to retire to a quiet and secluded corner of North West Yorkshire where he intends to pursue a course of abstruse philosophical studies. His plans and his peace are however disarranged by the arrival of a mysterious young woman and the disturbing presence near his woodland retreat of a disparate and strange male duo, the younger of whom introduces himself as the Surgeon of Gaster Fell…

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We jump forward to 1921 to enter ‘The Nightmare Room’…

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/.

Hello and welcome to Episode 49. This month, we look at a classic Conan Doyle short story, one the author felt was “gloomy but of [his] best” - ‘The Pot of Caviare’ from 1908.

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

Or listen to an audio recording by Greg Wagland here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yah89KYMwr8

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

Synopsis

During the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, the small European garrison of Ichau is barely holding out against a besieging Boxer army. A relief force is expected but its progress is uncertain. Hope and fears both run high, and the defenders begin to weigh up their options: relief, death or capture by a merciless foe.

Next time on Doings of Doyle

We reach out fiftieth episode (good heavens) and spend it in the company of ‘The Surgeon of Gaster Fell,’ which first appeared in Chambers’ Journal in 1890, and which Conan Doyle sought to suppress in later life…

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/.