Alistair Duncan's Blog, page 55

Guest Post: The Island of Uffa

“The Five Orange Pips” gives some of those tantalizing untold tales that Watson loved to tease his readers with: “the adventure of the Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendicant Society, who held a luxurious club in the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of the facts connected with the loss of the British barque Sophy Anderson, of the singular adventures of the Grice Patersons in the island of Uffa, and finally of the Camberwell poisoning case.” The location of the island of Uffahas long puzzled Sherlockian scholars because it exists in no atlas. They were looking in the wrong place. They needed to check Temple Bar.  
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Guest bloggers

Following my good old moan about the lack of response to my request for guest submissions, I now have the possibility of two.

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Unsympathetic “victims”

As devotees will know,  Sherlock Holmes was more than ready to be his own judge and jury when it suited him. When he chooses to act in this capacity we are encouraged to accept that he is right and that he is helping good people by doing so.

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Langdale Pike - Two characters blended together?

The Adventure of the Three-Gables seems to me to be an adventure that tends to come in for criticism. This either concerns the plot or the depiction of the boxer Steve Dixie. I won’t dwell on the latter as plenty of people have trampled that particular piece of ground and the poor opinion that some people have of the plot is, I think, unfair. 
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I shall struggle on

Not that long ago I put out a request for blog submissions. Much to my disappointment I only got one tentative reply.

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I must be quite mad

I've been "enjoying" a few days leave from work (paid - fortunately). I say "enjoying" because there has not been much R'n'R. Instead I've been building bookshelves, mounting pictures, scrubbing mud off walls and other domestic chores. Some of these chores (such as bookshelf construction) are rare, others less so.

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The Hound Returns...

My article The Hound of the Daffodils has made its second appearance.

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Book preservation

Following on from my blog post on what to collect (see here) I thought I would move on to look at book preservation - albeit in an amateur way.

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Why are you all fighting? Oh I see, "Elementary" series two has begun has it?

Okay I admit that it’s starting to get frustrating.

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Latest addition to the collection and the "science" behind it

I feel that, if you are a collector of all things Sherlock Holmes (or of Victoriana in general), there are some things that you should have. I generally confine my collecting to printed material but there are a few objects that I simply had to have.Read more »