Doings of Doyle - The Arthur Conan Doyle Podcast
A podcast celebrating the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Professor Challenger, Brigadier Gerard and Sherlock Holmes.
Podcast Description
A podcast celebrating the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Professor Challenger, Brigadier Gerard and Sherlock Holmes.
Episodes

Jan 31, 2024
ACD 2023 - The Year in Review
Jan 31, 2024
Jan 31, 2024
55 min
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/

Dec 24, 2023
Dec 24, 2023
53 min
This episode, we return to a different incarnation of Goresthorpe Grange in ‘Selecting A Ghost’ from December 1883.
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Selecting_a_Ghost
And read the show notes here: https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2023/12/46-selecting-ghost-ghosts-of.html.
Listen to the podcast on your podcaster of choice.
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!
Synopsis
After making his fortune in the grocery business, Argentine D’Odd has developed a raft of social pretension and acquired property and ancestry to match. He now lives in a moated Mediaeval castle, with his own coat of arms and a carefully chosen gallery of instant ancestor portraits. All his new and venerable home lacks is a resident ghost, and now his wife’s resourceful cousin, Jack Brocket, has met a man in a pub who can remedy that defect…
Next time on Doings of Doyle
2023 was an eventful year for Conan Doyle scholarship. We take a look at some of the highlights and look forward to 2024.
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/

Nov 30, 2023
The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe (c.1877)
Nov 30, 2023
Nov 30, 2023
57 min
This episode, we discuss what is believed to be the first story Conan Doyle submitted to a publisher, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe’ (c.1877).
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Haunted_Grange_of_Goresthorpe
This episode will also be released on our Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Closed captions will be available two days after the video is uploaded.
Synopsis
Following a particularly atrocious multiple murder in the mid-eighteenth century, Goresthorpe Grange in Norfolk has stood empty and uninhabited for a century, especially given the additional stories of vengeful ghosts who can drive the inquisitive over the brink of insanity. Yet Tom Holton, a friend of the estate’s young heir, has his own theories about the supernatural and wishes to test them by spending a night in the haunted grange. At first his friend demurs, but is soon caught up in Tom’s enthusiasm and together the two young men submit themselves to a terrifying ordeal…
Become a Patron
Visit our website to find out how to sponsor the podcast via Paypal or Patreon.
Next time on Doings of Doyle…
We return to a different Goresthorpe Grange in ‘Selecting a Ghost: The Ghosts of Goresthorpe Grange’ (1883), Conan Doyle’s pastiche of the genre. You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Selecting_a_Ghost
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/

Nov 15, 2023
Nov 15, 2023
45 min
This episode, we welcome to the podcast author, journalist, and biographer Andrew Lycett to talk about his latest book, The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes, released in October 2023.
The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes (2023)
Questing was Sherlock Holmes’s business. He famously adopted the latest forensic techniques, channelled the Victorian passion for enquiry, kept abreast of the key scientific breakthroughs of his age, and conducted his investigations in an enigmatic and stylised manner. And the brains behind it all was, of course, the great Arthur Conan Doyle.
In this deep dive into the contemporary world of Holmes and Conan Doyle, biographer Andrew Lycett explores all that encompasses the world of the great detective – tracing the infamous character’s own interests, personality and mythologised biography alongside that of his creator’s.
From the Victorian crazes for detection and séance, to contemporary developments in science and psychology, Lycett weaves together everything that inspired Conan Doyle in creating the world’s most famous detective and one of fiction's most enduring, enigmatic and recognisable characters.
Purchase from the publisher here.
Next time on Doings of Doyle
We take a look at one of Conan Doyle’s earliest works, ‘The Haunted Grange of Goresthorpe (c.1877), which was unpublished in his day and finally printed in 2000. You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Haunted_Grange_of_Goresthorpe
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.

Oct 29, 2023
The Adventure of the Empty House (1903)
Oct 29, 2023
Oct 29, 2023
1hr 7 min
This episode, we return to Baker Street at the same time as Sherlock Holmes. It’s ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ from September 1903.
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_the_Empty_House
An audiobook version read by Greg Wagland can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Hj_bi9Qto
Listen here or at our Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Closed captions will be available two days after the video is uploaded.
Next time on Doings of Doyle…
We are joined by Andrew Lycett, author of the excellent biography Conan Doyle – The Man who Created Sherlock Holmes (2007), to discuss his latest book The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes (2023), which is available from all good bookshops now.
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/

Sep 27, 2023
Something of Themselves, with Sarah LeFanu
Sep 27, 2023
Sep 27, 2023
53 min
This episode, we welcome to the podcast biographer Sarah LeFanu whose wonderful book Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War was released in 2020.
About Sarah LeFanu
Sarah lives near Bristol in North Somerset and is a biographer whose subjects include the English writer and traveller Rose Macaulay; Samora Machel, the liberation leader and first president of Mozambique; and Marjorie Blandy, one of the early women who qualified as a doctor and who went to France in 1914 with the Women’s Hospital Corps.
More recently, Sarah added Conan Doyle to her growing list of subjects when he featured as one of three writers in Sarah’s group biography, Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War, which was published in 2020 and the following year shortlisted for the prestigious Elizabeth Longford Prize for historical biography.
She has recently completed an account of her research and writing of that book, which will be published in October this year - Talking to the Dead: Travels of a Biographer.
https://sarahlefanu.wordpress.com/
Something of Themselves: Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War (Hurst Publishing, 2020)
In early 1900, the paths of three British writers—Rudyard Kipling, Mary Kingsley and Arthur Conan Doyle—crossed in South Africa, during what has become known as Britain’s last imperial war. Each of the three had pressing personal reasons to leave England behind, but they were also motivated by notions of duty, service, patriotism and, in Kipling’s case, jingoism.
Sarah LeFanu compellingly opens an unexplored chapter of these writers’ lives, at a turning point for Britain and its imperial ambitions. Was the South African War, as Kipling claimed, a dress rehearsal for the Armageddon of World War One? Or did it instead foreshadow the anti-colonial guerrilla wars of the later twentieth century?
Weaving a rich and varied narrative, LeFanu charts the writers’ paths in the theatre of war, and explores how this crucial period shaped their cultural legacies, their shifting reputations, and their influence on colonial policy. (Source).
You can buy the book here.
Next time on Doings of Doyle
Our return to Baker Street coincides with that of Sherlock Holmes in ‘The Adventure of the Empty House’ (1903). You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Adventure_of_the_Empty_House
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.

Aug 27, 2023
Lot No. 249 (1892)
Aug 27, 2023
Aug 27, 2023
1hr 4 min
This episode, we get wrapped up in Conan Doyle’s Mummytastic horror classic, ‘Lot No 249’ (1892).
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/Lot_No._249
An audiobook version read by Greg Wagland can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5A89sKeMGM
Read the show notes here: https://bit.ly/DOD41sn
You can listen to the episode on your podcaster of choice or via our Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Closed captions will be available two days after the video is uploaded.
Next time on Doings of Doyle…
We are joined by Sarah LeFanu to discuss her book Something of Themselves – Kipling, Kingsley, Conan Doyle and the Anglo-Boer War (2019).
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/

Jul 28, 2023
The Brigadier in England (1903)
Jul 28, 2023
Jul 28, 2023
42 min
This episode, we return to Brigadier Etienne Gerard of the Hussars of the Conflans shortly after his escape from Dartmoor Prison for more mishaps and misadventures in ‘The Brigadier in England’ (1903).
You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Brigadier_in_England
Read the show notes.
Listen to the episode here:
Or at our Youtube channel, www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Closed captions will be available two days after the video is uploaded.
Next time on Doings of Doyle…
Ancient Egypt meets Victorian England in the Mummy-tastic ‘Lot No. 249’ (1892). 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/

Jun 30, 2023
Jun 30, 2023
56 min
This episode, we welcome to the podcast Jonathan Cranfield, Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University, in the United Kingdom, and editor of Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes for the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle.
You can find the book here: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes.html
And read more about the Edinburgh Works project here: https://edinburgh-conan-doyle.org/
The shownotes can be found here: https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2023/06/39-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes-with.html
A closed-caption version of the episode will appear two days after the episode date at our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle
Become a Patron
If you are enjoying the podcast and want to become a patron, please visit our Patreon page or donate via PayPal on the link at www.doingsofdoyle.com (link top right).
Acknowledgements
Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books: www.belangerbooks.com, and to our patrons 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/
Next time on Doings of Doyle
We join Etienne Gerard as he encounters inscrutable British ways in 'The Brigadier in England' (1903). You can read the story here: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Brigadier_in_England

May 28, 2023
Strange Studies from Life (1901)
May 28, 2023
May 28, 2023
57 min
This episode, we explore Conan Doyle's life-long fascination with true crime through his 'Strange Studies from Life', dramatic retellings of nineteenth century murder trials, published in the Strand in 1901.
You can read the stories here:
https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Holocaust_of_Manor_Place
https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Love_Affair_of_George_Vincent_Parker
https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php/The_Debatable_Case_of_Mrs._Emsley
And read the show notes here: https://www.doingsofdoyle.com/2023/05/38-strange-studies-from-life-1901.html
A closed-caption version of the episode will appear two days after the episode date at our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@doingsofdoyle. Please like and subscribe!
Next time on Doings of Doyle
We are joined by Jonathan Cranfield from Liverpool John Moores University, who has edited the new Edinburgh Edition of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. You can find out more here: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes.html
Become a Patron
If you are enjoying the podcast and want to become a patron, please visit our Patreon page or donate via PayPal on the link at www.doingsofdoyle.com (link top right).
Acknowledgements
Thanks to our sponsor, Belanger Books: www.belangerbooks.com, and to our patrons 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/
Doings of Doyle on YouTube
We now have a YouTube channel where you can listen to all episodes with closed captions subtitling:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSy23ujzPCKpttfaUwceFfA







