Doings of Doyle - The Arthur Conan Doyle Podcast

John Barrington Cowles (1884)

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/.

The Blood-Stone Tragedy: A Druidical Story (1884)

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/.

The Adventure of the Second Stain (1904)

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/.

The Coming of the Huns (1910)

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/.

Round the Red Lamp (1894), with Roger Luckhurst

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
Appendixes that collect extra medical tales, Conan Doyle’s early contributions to the medical press and the two one-act plays that he produced from two of the stories, including one of his greatest successes for the stage, Waterloo
Introduction provides the medical context to help understand its place in Conan Doyle’s career
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.

The Nightmare Room (1921)

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/.

The Surgeon of Gaster Fell (1890)

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/.

The Pot of Caviare (1908)

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/.

The Great Shadow (1892)

This episode, we travel to the Scottish borders at the end of the Napoleonic Wars for Conan Doyle’s 1892 novella The Great Shadow.
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Great_Shadow
Listen to the podcast below or at the Podcaster of your choice.
Read the show notes here.
The episode will be released on our YouTube channel and available for viewing with closed captions in a day or two. Subscribe to the channel here: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle
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Next time on Doings of Doyle…
We talk to Glen and Cathy Miranker about their forthcoming facsimile edition of Conan Doyle’s notes for his 1910 speech ‘The Romance of Medicine.’
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/
 

ACD 2023 - The Year in Review

This episode, we break from our usual format to take a look at the last twelve months in the Doylean universe and make some recommendations of adaptations, events, and publications you may have missed.
Apologies to anyone we have left out. So much happened last year, it was hard to keep track! If you know of something we have overlooked, please give it a mention in the comments.
You can read the shownotes at www.doingsofdoyle.com 
The episode will be released on our YouTube channel in the next few hours, with closed captions shortly after.
And if you are enjoying the podcast, please leave a rating or review on your podcaster of choice, or sponsor us on PayPal or Patreon. Thank you!
Next time on Doings of Doyle
We step back two hundred years to the Scottish borders and the Battle of Waterloo in The Great Shadow (1892). You can read the story at the wonderful Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia.
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/