stuck in 2017

Podcast going *in depth* on the Jeremy Brett / Edward Hardwicke stage play!!! 🎉

They've cleaned up the audio you may have heard before (on YouTube )

They describe the visuals that have been lost to time from crew interviews

They've included snippets of the crew telling backstage stories!

It was practically like being there!!

I know because I was lucky enough to actually see the play.

Part II is just commentary and is linked from this one

UPDATE: @ninasnakie asked if this was AI. I'm not sure if that means the whole play, but the the short answer is that if it was faked, it would have had better sound.

The Big Damn List Of Stuff They Said You Didn't Know

Five free eBooks on the colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine

Pluto Books Free Palestine Reading List 30-50% off

LGBT Activist Scott Long's Google Drive of Palestine Freedom Struggle Resources

(includes some of the reading material recced below)

The Cambridge UCU and Pal Society Resources List

List of Academic and Literary Books Compiled by Dr. Kiran Grewal

Academic Books (many available in Goldsmiths library)

Rosemary Sayigh (2007) The Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, Bloomsbury

Ilan Pappé (2002)(ed) The Israel/Palestine Question, Routledge

(2006) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, OneWorld Publications

(2011) The Forgotten Palestinians: A History of the Palestinians in Israel, Yale University Press

(2015) The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge, Verso Books

(2017) The Biggest Prison on earth: A history of the Occupied territories, OneWorld Publications

(2022) A History of Modern Palestine, Cambridge University Press

Rashid Khalidi (2020) The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, MacMillan

Andrew Ross (2019) Stone Men: the Palestinians who Built Israel, Verso Books

Ariella Azoulay and Adi Ophir (2012) The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine, Stanford University Press.

Ariella Azoulay (2011) From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation, 1947-1950, Pluto Press

Jeff Halper (2010) An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Pluto Press

(2015) War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification

(2021) Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine: Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State, Pluto Press

Anthony Loewenstein (2023) The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel exports the Technology of Occupation around the World (CURRENTLY FREE TO DOWNLOAD ON VERSO)

Noura Erakat (2019) Justice for some: law and the question of Palestine, Stanford University Press

Neve Gordon (2008) Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press

Joseph Massad (2006) The persistence of the Palestinian question: essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, Routledge Edward Said (1979) The Question of Palestine, Random House

Memoirs, Novels & Poetry:

Voices from Gaza - Insaniyyat (The Society of Palestinian Anthropologists)

Letters From Gaza • Protean Magazine

Raja Shehadeh (2008) Palestinian Walks: forays into a Vanishing Landscape, Profile Books

Ghada Karmi (2009) In Search of Fatima: A Palestinian Story, Verso Books

Fatma Kassem (2011) Palestinian Women: Narratives, histories and gendered memory, Bloombsbury

Mourid Barghouti (2005) I saw Ramallah, Bloomsbury

Izzeldin Abuelaish (2011) I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity, Bloomsbury

Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke (eds)(2015) Palestine Speaks: Narrative of Life under Occupation, Verso Books

The Works of Mahmoud Darwish

Human Rights Reports & Documents

Information on current International Court of Justice case on ‘Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem’

UN Commission of Inquiry Report 2022

UN Special Rapporteur Report on Apartheid 2022

Amnesty International Report on Apartheid 2022

Human Rights Watch Report on Apartheid 2021

Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ 2009 (‘The Goldstone Report’)

Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, International Court of Justice, 9 July 2004

Films

Lemon Tree (2008)

Where Should The Birds Fly (2013)

Naila and the Uprising (2017)

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

Omar (2013)

Paradise Now (2005)

5 Broken Cameras (2011)

The Gatekeepers (2012)

Foxtrot (2017)

Gaza Mon Amour (2020)

The Viewing Booth (2020)

Innocence (2022) - Innocence (2022) | IDFA Archive

The Village Under the Forest (2013)

Palestine Film Institute's films on Gaza

Abby Martin - Gaza Fights For Freedom (2019) | Full Documentary | Directed by Abby Martin

Dan Cohen - Gaza Fights Back | MintPress News Original Documentary

‘The Promise’, directed by Peter Kosminsky (2010) (4 part miniseries on the creation of Israel)

Sources:

https://www.972mag.com/

https://jewishcurrents.org/

Jadaliyya ‘Gaza in Context’ Series

Jadaliyya “War on Palestine” podcast - The War on Palestine Podcast: Episode 1

Border Chronicle, Interview with Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper

NGOs

B’Tselem

Breaking the Silence

Al Haq

Palestinian Feminist Collective

Yesh Din

DAWN

Amnesty International

Human Rights Watch

Gisha

Forensic Architecture

Instagram Accounts

gazangirl

mohammedelkurd

khaledbeydoun

motaz_azaiza

wizard_bisan1

etafrum

sara_mardini963

Twitter(X) Accounts

@PalStudies - Institute for Palestine Studies

@medicalaidpal

@middleeastmatters

@KenRoth - former executive director of Human Rights Watch

@YairWallach - Reader in Israel Studies at SOAS

@ PhilipProudfoot - researcher on development, humanitarianism and Arab states

@btselem - Israeli human rights documentation centre

@MairavZ - Senior Israel-Palestine Analyst at Crisis Group

@rohantalbot - Director of Advocacy and Campaigns at MedicalAidPal

@sarahleah1 - Executive Director of DAWN (democracy and human rights in MENA)

@alhaq_org - Palestinian human rights organisation

@FranceskAlbs - UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories

@Yesh_Din - Israeli human rights organisation

@sfardm - Michael Sfard, Israeli Human Rights Lawyer

@EphstainItay - Israeli international humanitarian lawyer

@saribashi - Program director for Human Rights Watch (Israeli living in Palestine)

@Gisha_Access - Israeli NGO

@_ZachFoster - Historian

Share widely!

(if any links are broken let me know. Or pull up the current post to check whether it's fixed.)

From River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

Doyle came to hate Holmes and killed him off in print only to be forced to revive him upon public demand. In documentary series “Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle” (3 x 60′), historian Lucy Worsley investigates the love-hate relationship in a parallel biography of Holmes and the man who created him.

Hi anon! This is a great question; the short answer is no I don't keep such a list because I'd like to see everything eventually and haven't yet. But can I make such a list? I can try.

Since your follow-up ask mentioned that you’re watching from a tjlc/BBC Sherlock perspective, I’ve added explanations for why many of these adaptations made the cut. Personally, I love the earlier black and white films; if this is less your glass of tea, the first ones to cut out are Barrymore and Wontner.

Oh! Edited to add: there are so many Sherlock Holmes adaptations I haven’t seen, and I’m aware that I’m dramatically under-representing those not performed in English. Please feel free to recommend your favourites if you don’t see them here.

ACTION!

Hi anon! The current bible is Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis (2018). If you’re extra keen, The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde was published in 2000.

I haven’t done a lot of general reading on queerness in 19th century England, but these are on my bookshelf (by author):

Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day (Peter Ackroyd)

London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885–1914 (Matt Cook)

On Queer Street: A Social History of British Homosexuality, 1895-1995 (Hugh David)

Sexual Heretics: Male Homosexuality in English Literature from 1850 to 1900 (Brian Reade)

Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century (Graham Robb)

I know I have a few others, but unfortunately half of my books are stacked in another room while I paint, so I’m going by memory + google. The Ackroyd is sort of harshly entertaining, but not particularly useful for research. Definitely hit up your university library, though - they may have other good things and can always borrow books from other libraries for you if they don’t have what you want on the shelves.

Re. your follow-up question on “transsexuality and androgyny”, I have no resources for this, but maybe some of my followers can offer something?

A re-examination of the show within the context of fatalism, the Ghost Driver, and Secret Twins.

Preview:

In order to know what our Storyteller has gotten up to and what it means, we have to look back at all the many examples of the Car and Driver metaphor throughout the show. You likely already have an interpretation for a lot of these examples. However, in many if not all, there exist double readings — secret twins. Let us begin with an honorable mention: The Gay Pilot, the gift that keeps on giving.

John: You haven’t eaten today? For God’s sake, you need to eat. Sherlock: No, you need to eat. I need to think. The brain’s what counts. Everything else is transport. John: You might consider refueling. … John: So, you don’t…do…anything. Sherlock: Everything else is transport.

The body is transport. We also learn throughout the show that food is sex, refueling the body like you refuel your car to keep it running. Similar to Julian English in Appointment in Samarra, one’s sexuality is one’s vitality.

There are cars that pass like ghosts, unseen, unremembered. There are people we trust, always, when we’re alone, when we’re lost, when we’re drunk. We never see their faces, but every day we disappear into their cars and let the trap close around us. I give you the perfect murder weapon of the modern age: the invisible car.

Read the rest on Medium

This is a collection of words by Arthur Conan Doyle in different works about the events surrounding his move to Portsmouth, where he lived from 1882 to 1890, struggling to build a medical practice following his betrayal by George Turnavine Budd.

By the way, an extraordinary card arrived from Cullingworth during my absence. “You are my man,” said he; “mind that I am to have you when I want you.” There was no date and no address, but the postmark was Bradfield in the north of England. Does it mean nothing? Or may it mean everything? We must wait and see. 

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters (1895)

Doyle and Budd were friends at the University of Edinburgh; in 1882, Budd  convinced Doyle to join his thriving practice in Plymouth, where they worked together for just six weeks, until suspicion, driven by critical letters by Mary Doyle (Arthur’s mother), drove them apart. Although their time together was short, these events influenced Doyle greatly; Budd was an important partial inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger, and many other Doyle characters. Their relationship was the subject of Doyle’s 1895 novel The Stark Munro Letters [x] [x].

It occurs to me that many of the deductions Sherlock makes about Faith in The Lying Detective resemble events from this period of Doyle’s life.

Presumably you downsized when you … when you left your job … and maybe when you ended your relationship. There wasn’t anything physical going on, was there? Quite some time, in fact. (The Lying Detective)

In a book written some years afterwards called The Stark Munro Letters, I drew in very close detail the events of the next few years, and there the curious reader will find them more clearly and fully set out than would be to scale in these pages. […] the whole history of my association with the man [George Turnavine Budd] whom I called Cullingworth, his extraordinary character, our parting and the way in which I was left to what seemed certain ruin, were all as depicted.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (November 1923)

There are two [letters], the fifth and the ninth, from which some excisions are necessary; but in the main I hope that they may be reproduced as they stand.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters (1895)

He was a man born for trouble and adventure, unconventional in his designs and formidable in his powers of execution—a man of action with a big but incalculable brain guiding the action. […] For some reason he took a fancy to me, and appeared to attach an undue importance to my advice. […]

People flocked into the town from 20 and 30 miles round, and not only his waiting-rooms, but his stairs and his passages, were crammed. His behaviour to them was extraordinary. He roared and shouted, scolded them, joked them, pushed them about, and pursued them sometimes into the street, or addressed them collectively from the landing. A morning with him when the practice was in full blast was as funny as any pantomime and I was exhausted with laughter. […]

— Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (November 1923)

That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done. (A Study in Pink)

Doyle unmoored, under the cut. 

This is a collection of words by Arthur Conan Doyle in different works about the events surrounding his move to Portsmouth, where he lived from 1882 to 1890, struggling to build a medical practice following his betrayal by George Turnavine Budd.

By the way, an extraordinary card arrived from Cullingworth during my absence. “You are my man,” said he; “mind that I am to have you when I want you.” There was no date and no address, but the postmark was Bradfield in the north of England. Does it mean nothing? Or may it mean everything? We must wait and see. 

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters (1895)

Doyle and Budd were friends at the University of Edinburgh; in 1882, Budd  convinced Doyle to join his thriving practice in Plymouth, where they worked together for just six weeks, until suspicion, driven by critical letters by Mary Doyle (Arthur’s mother), drove them apart. Although their time together was short, these events influenced Doyle greatly; Budd was an important partial inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger, and many other Doyle characters. Their relationship was the subject of Doyle’s 1895 novel The Stark Munro Letters [x] [x].

It occurs to me that many of the deductions Sherlock makes about Faith in The Lying Detective resemble events from this period of Doyle’s life.

Presumably you downsized when you … when you left your job … and maybe when you ended your relationship. There wasn’t anything physical going on, was there? Quite some time, in fact. (The Lying Detective)

In a book written some years afterwards called The Stark Munro Letters, I drew in very close detail the events of the next few years, and there the curious reader will find them more clearly and fully set out than would be to scale in these pages. […] the whole history of my association with the man [George Turnavine Budd] whom I called Cullingworth, his extraordinary character, our parting and the way in which I was left to what seemed certain ruin, were all as depicted.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (November 1923)

There are two [letters], the fifth and the ninth, from which some excisions are necessary; but in the main I hope that they may be reproduced as they stand.

— Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters (1895)

He was a man born for trouble and adventure, unconventional in his designs and formidable in his powers of execution—a man of action with a big but incalculable brain guiding the action. […] For some reason he took a fancy to me, and appeared to attach an undue importance to my advice. […]

People flocked into the town from 20 and 30 miles round, and not only his waiting-rooms, but his stairs and his passages, were crammed. His behaviour to them was extraordinary. He roared and shouted, scolded them, joked them, pushed them about, and pursued them sometimes into the street, or addressed them collectively from the landing. A morning with him when the practice was in full blast was as funny as any pantomime and I was exhausted with laughter. […]

— Arthur Conan Doyle, Memories and Adventures (November 1923)

That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever done. (A Study in Pink)

Doyle unmoored, under the cut. 

Seeing gifs of Stoll Pictures 1921 silent film adaptation of The Devil’s Foot  reminded me that the entire film is available on YouTube, for anybody who’s interested! It’s only 27 minutes long, and despite the poor picture quality, it is in my opinion worth watching. Eille Norwood as Holmes is rather grim for my tastes, but he has a striking presence, and Hubert Willis’s Watson is generally sidelined but is not played as a fool, which counts for something. Besides, this is the earliest adaptation of The Devil’s Foot, featuring a nearly century-old Holmes and Watson strolling together through the country, and at least one solid scene of them functioning as partners on the job.

– analysing John’s blog post ”The Aluminium Crutch”

Two different characters in the show – Harry, the equerry from Buckingham Palace in ASiB, and Dr. Frankland, the murderer in THoB - acknowledge this case on John’s blog as particularly interesting. 

But – surprisingly perhaps – this crime case is never shown or even mentioned by Sherlock or John in the actual show. So why not have a closer look on The Aluminium Crutch here instead? Surely this must have been analysed in metas before, but since I don’t know of any at the moment (forgive me if I’ve missed something!), I’ll give it a try.

The crime case takes place in a theatre where Sherlock watches the play “Terror by Night”. Since John isn’t present (he’s on a date), Sherlock describes the whole case to him on his voice mail, which John then transcribes verbatim to his blog. So this time we have Sherlock’s own account of the case directly in the blog post.

Case summary: There’s a murder committed on stage. The actor Matthew Michael, playing Detective Sidney Paget who in the play is investigating the murder of Lady Margaret Chaplette, gets hit with an aluminium crutch – supposed to be a rubber props - and dies. The actor William Howells, playing Albert Chaplette, the lady’s son and also murderer, is the one who hits Michael with the crutch. 

Since Sherlock’s voice mail account might be a bit complicated to follow, I’ve made a little table to structure it up:

Sherlock narrows down the possible suspects to – surprise – Matthew Michael himself! He had substituted the rubber aluminium crutch for a real one, hoping to get the misbehaving and drunk actor Howells to be fired for breaking his arm or something similar, but his plan backfired and he received a fatal blow to the head. So the point of this is that the victim actually caused his own death.

Some ‘features of interest’:

http://writemeastoryofsolitude.tumblr.com/post/87437809571/the-mystery-of-the-aluminium-crutch-or-how

Still, it’s wonderful to have a fresh take on it, without having been influenced by that one. Especially since S4, theatricality has taken on greater significance than it had in s3 hiatus.

(EDIT TO ADD: i think what you suggest looks like a crutch in the overhead shot of the theater in ASIB, is actually the visible metal parts of the gurney carrying the black body bag with the victim in that crime scene.)

The connection back to the Rathbone film is a good catch too! I agree, they can be a real chore to watch, just remember it’s For Science! I have sat through most? of them, they are on youtube, and what makes them bearable is having a notebook open for jotting down all the intertext. Leaving “Rathbone place” seems like an excellent plan, i do rather like that image from TFP, and there are not many images from TFP i can say that about! :D

Terror by Night was mainly based on three canon stories: The Disappearance of Lady Carfax, The Sign of Four, and The Empty House. The origin of the name Carfax is a Latin word for a place where four roads meet; subtextually, it has a lot in common with The Sign of Four, which is probably why the Universal team mashed them up in Terror by Night. Likewise, The Empty House and The Sign of Four are mashed up in Sherlock’s The Empty Hearse. The later Rathbone films (much like Granada Holmes episodes) come closer to “getting it right” when they overlap canon stories that have similar themes. BBC Sherlock is the ultimate manifestation of this.

Tragically, the closer any adaptation gets to doing what Doyle did, the more their audiences cry, “Unfaithful!” It’s a paradox.

So, yes, Joe Lidster & Co. called the case Terror by Night—but is that because they’ve taken plot points from Terror by Night, or because both Sherlock and Terror by Night use similar canon plot points? It’s another “common ancestor” problem.

My take is that Sherlock is Mofftiss' attempt to transform the subtext of the canon stories into text. This means that rather than telling any specific Doyle story directly, they're trying to tell an underlying story that appears in that canon story in a way that makes it look like a new invention to any casual viewer, but is actually true to Doyle's intention in the original story.

As a consequence, where Doyle creates a side character who is a mirror to either Holmes or Watson, Mofftiss will either eliminate (or duplicate) the middleman by giving their traits/story to directly to Sherlock or John in Sherlock. They actually do this both in subtext and in text.

So, for example, subtextual violence by a John mirror toward a Sherlock mirror in the canon (let's use Culverton Smith as a Watson mirror in The Dying Detective because it's an unusually clear example) becomes textual violence by John toward Sherlock in The Lying Detective. Mofftiss were unusually obvious with this one; Doyle literally has Watson's first observations of Culverton Smith occur through a mirror. Smith turns the full power of his medical knowledge against Sherlock Holmes just as Holmes is telling Watson that he doesn't think he's a good doctor. Smith shakes Holmes roughly as he lies in his sick bed, while Watson hides. It's very easy to see the roots of The Lying Detective in this story.

In my view, there isn't really a way to convince canon readers who aren't interested in this kind of reading, and I'm not interested in doing that. Doyle was predominantly a horror writer, and he appears to have had a lot of hangups that he expressed in his fiction (I don't just mean his relationship with sexuality, but that's part of it). It shouldn't be surprising that the subtext of these stories takes some dark turns. There is absolutely nothing wrong with reading the canon for the witty banter and the derring-do! Holmes and Watson can just be crime-solving husbands if you want, and the cases can just be the cases. But it's clear to me that Doyle hid stories within his stories, and now that I've seen that, I want to uncover as much of it as I can because I find it fascinating and fun to work out.

Hi anon,

Of course it's devastating to lose Una Stubbs as Mrs Hudson, and it's much harder for those involved in the show, who knew her personally, than it is for us.

In the Sherlock universe, I think the most obvious way to deal with the loss of Mrs Hudson as a character would be to cast a new actress as Mrs Turner, and have her appear as the 221B landlady without explanation. This would mirror Doyle's occasional use of Mrs Turner instead of Mrs Hudson.

The 221B landlady is unnamed when she first appears in A Study in Scarlet (1887), and then named Mrs Hudson in the next novel, The Sign of Four (1890). Despite this, she is named Mrs Turner throughout the first short story, A Scandal in Bohemia (1891). Much later, Mrs Turner is lined out in an early draft of The Empty House (1903), and replaced by Mrs Hudson:

Interestingly, there are varied theories about how long Mrs Hudson remained at 221B. Many Sherlockians believe that the old woman named Martha in His Last Bow (1917), described by Sherlock Holmes as "the only servant I have left", is actually Mrs Hudson, even though her last name is not given, and bringing Mrs Hudson along for undercover work at the German spy Von Bork's house seems a bit presumptuous. In Sherlock, this story is largely incorporated into His Last Vow (hardly surprising, given the title), and several of Von Bork's traits are incorporated into Magnussen's character. In the ACD Sherlock Holmes universe, this would place Mrs Hudson at the latest point in the timeline, dated at 1914 (it will be the last story in Letters From Watson).

However, the mention of a "new cook" in the Case-Book story Thor Bridge (1922), which Sherlock also borrows from in His Last Vow, as well as in S4, has led some Sherlockians to speculate that Mrs Hudson is no longer at 221B by that point.

"There is little to share, but we may discuss it when you have consumed the two hard-boiled eggs with which our new cook has favoured us. Their condition may not be unconnected with the copy of the Family Herald which I observed yesterday upon the hall-table. Even so trivial a matter as cooking an egg demands an attention which is conscious of the passage of time, and incompatible with the love romance in that excellent periodical." (Holmes to Watson in Thor Bridge)

In Sherlock, the role of Jane, the inattentive maid in The Abominable Bride, appears to be borrowed partly from Watson's maid Mary Jane, who cuts his boots while scraping mud off them in A Scandal in Bohemia, and the new cook who can't boil an egg in Thor Bridge.

The thing is, in the ACD Sherlock Holmes universe, Mrs Hudson is the cook; this is not in dispute. So, the reference to a "new cook" suggests to some that Mrs Hudson may have passed away sometime before Thor Bridge, which would mean that Martha cannot be Mrs Hudson if you take the dates seriously.

Thank you, guys. I didn't know that Moffat said that in January! Now I feel much better 😄