It’s hard to avoid it. Sherlock fever is everywhere, and all across the Internet, American viewers are feverishly keeping up with the Third Season of BBC One’s hit television show, Sherlock. In case you’ve been immune to the virus since 2010, the gist of Sherlock is that it is a thoroughly modern take on Sir Arthur [...]
Sherlock Holmes was born (in all probability) on January 6th, 1854—160 years ago today. In answering how this date was discovered out of the secret of Mr. Holmes’ past, the temptation may arise to proclaim, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Regard, however, for the Canon—the sixty public records of Mr. Holmes’ remarkable career—repudiates common errors. Nowhere [...]
A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days, but which flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is what Chesterton called the ‘good bad book’: that is, the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have [...]