Sat 24 Feb 2018
Book Noted: IAN DICKERSON, Editor – Sherlock Holmes: The Lost Radio Scripts.
Posted by Steve under Books Noted , Old Time Radio[4] Comments
I’ve asked Ian Dickerson, the editor of the following book to tell us more about it. Once again he’s most graciously agreed:
IAN DICKERSON, Editor – Sherlock Holmes: The Lost Radio Scripts, by Leslie Charteris & Denis Green. Purview Press, softcover, November 2017.
I find the effect of television on the young quite interesting. Bear with me, this isn’t as off-topic as you think…
I was nine years old when I first watched Return of the Saint. I think it’s fair to say that show corrupted me and changed my life. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just the show that did that, but the books by Leslie Charteris as well. I spent years making sure I collected every possible Saint adventure, joined The Saint Club and was privileged to know Leslie and Audrey Charteris. I’ve also written a number of books about the Saint and Leslie Charteris and yes, there’s more to come.
I wasn’t much older when, thanks to the BBC, I watched The Falcon on TV and I’ve written a book about that character as well (more here: https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=53840 )
Around the same time I discovered The Falcon, the BBC were kind enough to show many of the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes films. Now that wasn’t my introduction to Holmes and Watson for I’d already read the works of Conan Doyle, but for many, many years after to me Rathbone and Bruce were Holmes and Watson.
Then one day, whilst having a post-prandial coffee with a certain Mr Charteris, worlds collided for he mentioned that he wrote some Sherlock Holmes scripts with his friend Denis Green.. Over the course of our subsequent lunches (in a pre-internet age) he graciously answered my questions about them but since it was almost fifty years ago that he worked on the, his memory was not replete with the details I wanted.
As the internet matured I managed to find out more details about the shows but no recordings or scripts from them.
After Leslie died I got to know Audrey fairly well and we talked at length about many things. Occasionally she dropped hints that she thought some of Leslie’s Holmes scripts had survived and might be in their Dublin flat, but that was as far as I could get.
After Audrey died in 2014 Leslie’s family asked me to go through their flat in Dublin. There indeed I found a stack of Leslie’s Sherlock Holmes scripts alongside many other gems. I was, needless to say, rather delighted. More so when his family gave me permission to get them into print.
So thanks to television, here’s the first volume of a missing chapter in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson…
February 25th, 2018 at 12:45 am
Bravo. the show has some fine scriptwriters from Boucher to Charteris and it’s good to see the Charteris adventures finally in print.
February 25th, 2018 at 10:58 am
Books like this are hard for me to resist. (So why should I?)
I also like the hint at the end that this is volume one. More, please!
February 27th, 2018 at 5:37 pm
I made a small contribution to this collection and the one to come. Ian sent me copies of the scripts which I read carefully and commented on them. Each was supposed to have been based on an incident in one of the canonical stories and my task was to see how accurate was the connection. In some cases there may have been a scene or line of dialogue from the original story, in others it was not that clear. It was a pleasant assignment.
The scripts include the original conversations between Dr. Watson and the announcer as well as the commercials. Ian’s introduction is a capsule history of Holmes and Watson on radio.
February 27th, 2018 at 10:36 pm
Ian and Randy
Nicely done!