On This Day In History Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator Of Sherlock Holmes, Was Born

As History.com notes, on this day in 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the iconic fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, was born.

You can read about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-is-born?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0522-05222017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=187277472&kx_EmailCampaignID=12766&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0522-05222017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Note: My favorite Sherlock Holmes actor, Jeremy Brett, appears as Holmes in the above photo.

On This Day In History Mary Shelly's Frankenstein Was Published

As History.com notes, on this day in 1818 Mary Shelly's Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus was published.

You can read about the event via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/frankenstein-published?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0311-03112017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=158850056&kx_EmailCampaignID=10374&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0311-03112017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa 

On This Day In History British Author Charles Dickens Was Born

As Biography.com notes, today is the birthday of Charles Dickens.

British novelist Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. Over the course of his writing career, he wrote the beloved classic novels Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. On June 9, 1870, Dickens died of a stroke in Kent, England, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-dickens-9274087 

Charles Dickens covered crime in many of his novels, including Bleak House and Oliver Twist. 

You can also read Terrie Farley Moran's piece on Dickens the crime writer at criminalelement.com via the below link:

http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/08/charles-dickens-crime-writer

On This Day In History Author Joseph Conrad Was Born

As History.com note, on this day in 1857 Joseph Conrad, the author of Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent and other classic novels, was born.

You can read about Joseph Conrad and his life and work via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/joseph-conrads-birthday?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1203-12032016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=117634110&kx_EmailCampaignID=8481&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1203-12032016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa%20&os_ehash=44@experian:de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

On This Day In History Robert Louis Stevenson, Author Of 'Kidnapped,' "The Master of Ballantrae," "Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" And Other Classic Novels, Was Born

As History.com notes, on this in 1850 Robert Louis Stevenson was born.

You can read about Robert Louis Stevenson's life and works via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/robert-louis-stevenson-is-born?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1113-11132016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=109065135&kx_EmailCampaignID=8005&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1113-11132016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

And to learn more about the author you can visit http://robert-louis-stevenson.org/ 

On This Day In History Bram Stoker, Author Of 'Dracula,' Was Born

As History.com notes, on this day in 1847 Bram Stoker (seen in the below photo), author of Dracula, was born.

Bram Stoker's Count Dracula is one of the most terrifying and evil villains to appear in literature and on stage and film. (I love Bela Lugosi's film version of Dracula (see above photo).

You can read about Bram Stoker via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dracula-creator-bram-stoker-born?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1108-11082016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=106774293&kx_EmailCampaignID=7971&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1108-11082016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

 

On This Day In History Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Was Published

As History.com notes, on this day in 1892 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 

You can read about Doyle and Sherlock Holmes via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-published?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1031-10312016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=103988729&kx_EmailCampaignID=7826&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1031-10312016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Note: The top photo is of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the bottom photo is of actor Jeremy Brett, who offered, in my view, the best portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

Happy Birthday To The Late, Great British Novelist Evelyn Waugh

As Biography.com notes, today is the birthday of one of my favorite writers, the late, great Evelyn Waugh, author of Brideshead Revisited, the Sword of Honour trilogy, and my favorite novel about journalism, Scoop. 

He was born on this day in 1903 and died in 1966.

You can read about his life and work via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/evelyn-waugh-9525520

In an interview with the online publication The Daily Beast (which takes the name from Waugh's novel Scoop), the conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke explained why he was calling his Daily Beast column Up To a Point.

The most famous book among all foreign correspondents is Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. The newspaper in Scoop is, of course, The Daily Beast, which is owned by the moronic Lord Copper and run by the obsequious Mr. Salter. 

There’s a brief passage which I think all reporters know. “Whenever Lord Copper was right, Mr. Salter would say, ‘Definitely, Lord Copper,’ and whenever Lord Copper was wrong, Mr. Salter would say, ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’” Then follows a little snatch of dialogue where Lord Copper says, “Hong Kong—belongs to us, doesn’t it?” “Definitely, Lord Copper.” “Yokohama—capital of Japan, isn’t it?” “Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

Great stuff.

I discovered Waugh in my early 20′s in the mid-1970s when I was stationed on a Navy tugboat at the U.S. nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. 

I was an aspiring writer at the time and I planned to major in journalism when I left the Navy, so I purchased a Penguin paperback of his brilliant satire of journalism, Scoop. I thought it was a great satirical novel, and I’ve reread it again and again over the years.

I later discovered that much of Scoop was based on Waugh's true experiences as a newspaper correspondent in Ethiopia. That made the novel even more funny and powerful to me.

I went on to read Waugh's other satirical novels, such as Black Mischief and Decline and Fall, as well as his great World War II Sword of Honour trilogy: Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender. 

I also read his classic novel, Brideshead Revisited, the rest of his novels, his diary and several books about him.

A decade later, my wife and I enjoyed watching the weekly television installments of Brideshead Revisited on PBS.

By all accounts and his own admission, Waugh was not a pleasant man, but he was a brilliant writer. And he was funny.

He even satirized himself in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. 

Waugh told a great story of how he had to endure sitting next to a man on a long train ride who was reading one of his satirical novels. Waugh said he was compelled to watch the man turn each page as he read, not laughing or smiling, even for an instant.

Had Waugh sat next to me on a train while I was reading one of his novels, he would have seen me smiling and even laughing out loud.

If you have not read Waugh, I suggest you start with Scoop and then read all of his works.

Political Correctness? Elementary, My Dear Watson: Is Celebrated Sherlock Holmes Actor Jeremy Brett Too White For An English Heritage Blue Plaque?

For the older generations who grew up with actor Basil Rathbone portraying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective character, he is the one and only Sherlock Holmes. I suppose I understand that sentiment, as I feel that way about Sean Connery and Ian Fleming's character James Bond.

But I and many other TV viewers thought the late Jeremy Brett was the definitive Sherlock Holmes.

But according to Chris Hasting at the British newspaper the Daily Mail, Jeremy Brett was not honored with an English Heritage blue plaque on the house where he once lived simply because he was a white actor.

You can read the Daily Mail piece via the below link:      

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3739495/Is-celebrated-Sherlock-Holmes-actor-white-blue-plaque-Fears-political-correctness-robbed-state-commemoration.html

You can watch the episodes of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=einpc7psJB0&list=PLzovi87vDfzJGGoYv7u4FDQpoYduhoMf_

The Enduring Relevance Of Eric Ambler's Spy Novels

I read Eric Ambler's spy novels when I was a teenager in the 1960s and I've reread the classic thrillers again and again over the years.

So I was pleased to have come across John Gray's piece in the BBC magazine on Eric Ambler (seen in the above photo) and his spy novels.  

The author is Eric Ambler, whose 1930s novels created a new type of thriller. Born in 1909 into a family of music hall entertainers who ran a puppet show, Ambler seems to have become a writer almost by chance. A scholarship boy who trained as an engineer, he toured as a comedian before becoming an advertising copywriter. Along the way he tried his hand at writing avant-garde plays, without much success, then between 1935 and 1940 produced the six novels that changed the thriller forever.

The protagonists of Ambler's novels aren't the hearty public school patriots who stride through the pages of John Buchan. Nor are they the hard-bitten, weary professionals who feature in Somerset Maugham's stories of the agent Ashenden, which were based on Maugham's own experience working for British intelligence in World War One and Russia around the time of the Bolshevik revolution. Ambler's heroes are ordinary people - often unemployed engineers, freelance journalists or jobbing writers - who, while struggling to make a living, stumble into a danger zone whose existence they hardly suspected. The world they discover is one their middle-class morality hasn't prepared them to deal with.

Ambler's villains aren't devilish figures. They're doing no more than apply profit-and-loss accounting to the business of overthrowing governments. Bribery, blackmail and murder are simply take-over techniques applied in the context of politics. The heroes try to hang on to some shreds of decency, but soon find that the imperatives of survival take precedence over those of morality. For the hapless engineers and writers as much as for the ruthless con-men and killers, ethics has become redundant.

In Ambler's masterpiece The Mask of Dimitrios, published in 1939, an English writer of detective stories, Charles Latimer, reflects on the career of a master criminal he believed had been murdered. Investigating the criminal's past in order to gather material for a new book, the writer discovers that Dimitrios Makropoulos - "the drug pedlar, the pimp, the thief, the spy, the white slaver, the bully, the financier" is alive and prospering:

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33972802

Happy Birthday To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Creator Of Sherlock Holmes

As History.com notes, on this day in 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, was born.

You can read about the late, great author via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-is-born?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-0522-05222016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=48575723&kx_EmailCampaignID=4793&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-0522-05222016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

An Ignorant Time

Evelyn Waugh is one of my favorite writers. Brideshead Revisited and his Men At Arms WWII trilogy are brilliant novels, and as a writer, my personal favorite is Scoop, a grand satirical novel about journalists.  

So it pains me when otherwise intelligent people tell me that they've not read Waugh and/or never heard of him.

Perhaps even worst, Time magazine called Waugh one of the most-read female writers.

Stefan Kanfer at the City Journal offers his response to this outrage.

Last week, newspaper city rooms were alive with the sound of schadenfreude, and Twitterers tweeted about the latest display of ignorance in Time. To watchers of newspapers and newsmagazines, the incident came as no surprise. During the still-young millennium, ad dollars have fled from traditional periodicals to television and the Internet. Result: Shrinking readership, diminished staffs, and outsourced research. In Time’s case, the publication relied on a data-compiling site, the Open Syllabus Project, for a list of the most-read female writers in college classes. Number 97 was Evelyn Waugh. The trouble is, Waugh was a male.

As a former Time reader, for one, and as a former Time writer and editor, for two, I can testify that my colleagues and I were quite familiar with the great comic novelist. We knew no writer sharper or funnier than Evelyn Waugh when he satirized upper-class excess in Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, and Black Mischief. The demolition job on the press in Scoop, a dazzling take on Italy’s 1936 war on Abyssinia as seen by a group of mendacious British newsmen, has never been equaled. I wouldn’t hire a writer who hadn’t read Scoop; it remains the manual on the malpractice of journalism across the pond and in the colonies.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.city-journal.org/2016/eon0229sk.html 

The Prose Factory: What Is Literary Culture, What Is Taste And What Author's Books Will Still Be In Print In 25 Years?

Nicolas Shakespeare reviews DJ Taylor's The Prose Factory for the Telegraph.

Few things are more perishable than literary fame. I was fishing once on an otherwise deserted beach in Tasmania, and a white-bearded man approached, striking up a conversation. He asked my name, and was unable to conceal his excitement when I told him. “No, it’s not possible. You can’t by any chance be related to…” – and out it came – “… the family who make the fishing reels?”

I reflected on his question last month, during a party in London to celebrate my publishers’ 25th anniversary. Gathered together were a hundred or so of our most glittering literary fish. The speech of honour was given by a celebrity chef who had flown in from an “exhausting” American tour. A second speech, by one of England’s foremost novelists, absent with flu, was read out by his editor, who mispronounced Jorge Luis Borges as Borgia (like Cesare). Looking on were familiar literary types. The bestsellers who felt they should be more seriously reviewed. The seriously reviewed authors who felt they should be selling more books. And, outstripping everyone in sales and reviews, Norway’s answer to Proust, Karl Ove Knausgaard, who fainted and had to be taken outside. How many of these names, I wondered, would still be in print in 25 years? Not even the cookery writer, suggests D J Taylor’s entertaining if sobering history.

The Prose Factory is a survey of English literary life since the First World War. At its heart, claims Taylor, are two inquiries: what is literary culture, and what is taste? The looseness of his theme allows him to stray where he wants, at one point meandering into the field of popular lyrics, and discerning the improbable influence of Nancy Mitford’s The Sun King behind the Beatles’ song Here Comes the Sun.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/which-of-todays-novelists-will-stand-the-test-of-time/

Happy Birthday To The Late, Great Author Joseph Conrad

As History.com note, Joseph Conrad, the author of Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim and The Secret Agent, was born on this day in 1857.

You can read about Conrad's life via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/joseph-conrads-birthday

On This Day In History: The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Was Published

As History.com notes, on this day in history The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1887.

On this day, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is published. The book was the first collection of Holmes stories, which Conan Doyle had been publishing in magazines since 1887.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-published?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2015-1031-10312015&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=1044593&kx_EmailCampaignID=715&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2015-1031-10312015&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

John le Carré: As Slippery As His Characters?

The British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on John le Carre and the new biography of the spy novelist.

John le Carré is one of the great English mysteries, like Stonehenge or the Princes in the Tower. "I'm a liar," he says. "Born to lying, bred to it, trained to it by an industry that lies for a living, practised in it as a novelist."

One of the reasons that Adam Sisman's new biography has been so eagerly awaited is that it promised, with its subject's help, to unpick the contradictions and obfuscations in le Carré's own accounts of his life.

Le Carré may be ready to tell the truth. He turned 84 on Monday, and like many people in old age seems to have been visited by a new compulsion to set the record straight. When I interviewed him a couple of years ago and thanked him at the end for answering my questions so fully, he replied: "Yes, I didn't mean to."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link: 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/john-le-carre-biographer-interview/ 

Bram Stoker: 10 Facts About the Dracula Author

Martin Chilton at the British newspaper the Telegraph looks back at the author of Dracula, Bram Stoker.

Bram Stoker's vampire novel Dracula, which paved the way for vampire lore in popular culture, was published today in 1897. Here are 10 facts about the former Daily Telegraph journalist.

1. Bram Stoker wrote 12 novels, including Dracula and The Jewel of Seven Stars, and also published collections of short stories. Dracula was originally titled The Undead. As Dracula says: “My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side.” To date, more than 1000 novels and 200 films have been made about the vampire Dracula.    

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9215182/Bram-Stoker-10-facts-about-Dracula-author.html

Where James Bond Was Born: London's Most Literary House

Christopher Middletown at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on Carlyle Mansions, London's most literary house.

Carlyle Mansions is known locally as The Writers’ Block, and this handsome, red-brick building has a long and distinguished list of literary luminaries who have lived there. Everyone from Ian Fleming (No 24) to T S Eliot (No  19), from Henry James (No 21) to Somerset Maugham (No 27).
 

Practically every well-known late 19th-century or early 20th-century author has been here – apart from the man after whom the flats are named.
 

For by the time the final cornerstone was completed, in 1886, the historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle had been dead for five years. 

... As property historian Melanie Backe-Hansen notes: “Many of the famous creators lived here when they were unknown and didn’t have a penny.”

Or at least they weren’t yet the famous names they went on to become. Fleming (below) is said to have begun writing Casino Royale, in 1952, to distract himself from his forthcoming wedding. The manuscript was typed out by two women, one of whom was his red-haired secretary, said to be the model for Miss Moneypenny.

Arguably, some of the finest works in the English language were created at Carlyle Mansions: it was here that T S Eliot (below) wrote his play The Cocktail Party, and Henry James wrote The Portrait of a Lady.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/periodproperty/11258881/Where-James-Bond-was-born-Londons-most-literary-house.html 

Happy Birthday To British Novelist Evelyn Waugh

Happy birthday to the late British novelist Evelyn Waugh.

In an interview with the online publication The Daily Beast (which takes the name from Waugh's novel Scoop), the conservative humorist P.J. O'Rourke explained why he was calling his Daily Beast column Up To a Point.

The most famous book among all foreign correspondents is Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop. The newspaper in Scoop is, of course, The Daily Beast, which is owned by the moronic Lord Copper and run by the obsequious Mr. Salter. There’s a brief passage which I think all reporters know. “Whenever Lord Copper was right, Mr. Salter would say, ‘Definitely, Lord Copper,’ and whenever Lord Copper was wrong, Mr. Salter would way, ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’” Then follows a little snatch of dialogue where Lord Copper says, “Hong Kong—belongs to us, doesn’t it?” “Definitely, Lord Copper.” “Yokohama—capital of Japan, isn’t it?” “Up to a point, Lord Copper.”

Great stuff.

I discovered Waugh in my early 20′s in the mid-1970s when I was stationed on a Navy tugboat at the U.S. nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland.

I was an aspiring writer at the time and I planned to major in journalism when I left the Navy, so I purchased a Penguin paperback of his brilliant satire of journalism, Scoop. I thought it was a great satirical novel, and I’ve reread it again and again over the years.

I later discovered that much of Scoop was based on Waugh's true experiences as a newspaper correspondent in Ethiopia. That made the novel even more funny and powerful to me.

I went on to read Waugh's other satirical novels, such as Black Mischief and Decline and Fall, as well as his great World War II Sword of Honour trilogy: Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender. I also read his classic novel, Brideshead Revisited, the rest of his novels, his diary and several books about him.

A decade later, my wife and I enjoyed watching the weekly television installments of Brideshead Revisited on PBS.

By all accounts and his own admission, Waugh was not a pleasant man, but he was a brilliant writer. And he was funny.

He even satirized himself in The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. 

Waugh told a great story of how he had to endure sitting next to a man on a long train ride who was reading one of his satirical novels. Waugh said he was compelled to watch the man turn each page as he read, not laughing or smiling, even for an instant.

Had Waugh sat next to me on a train while I was reading one of his novels, he would have seen me smiling and even laughing out loud.

If you have not read Waugh, I suggest you start with Scoop and then read all of his works.

Happy Birthday To Crime Writer Charles Dickens

As Biography.com notes, today is the birthday of Charles Dickens.

British novelist Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Portsmouth, England. Over the course of his writing career, he wrote the beloved classic novels Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. On June 9, 1870, Dickens died of a stroke in Kent, England, leaving his final novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video via the below link:

http://www.biography.com/people/charles-dickens-9274087 

Charles Dickens covered crime in many of his novels, including Bleak House and Oliver Twist.

You can also read Terrie Farley Moran's piece on Dickens the crime writer at criminalelement.com via the below link:

http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2011/08/charles-dickens-crime-writer