11. The Hound of the Baskervilles: Mystery, Folklore, and Sherlock Holmes

Summary

The Book Club — Episode 11: The Hound of the Baskervilles: Mystery, Folklore, and Sherlock Holmes

Hosts: Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Syrett
Date: April 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores The Hound of the Baskervilles, arguably the most famous Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Dominic and Tabitha delve into the story’s plot, discuss its enduring appeal, track its gothic and folkloric roots, and paint a vivid portrait of Conan Doyle himself. They examine what makes the story both a classic detective mystery and a quintessential Victorian gothic tale, focusing on the dynamic friendship of Holmes and Watson, the supernatural themes, and layers of English folklore that haunt the moors of Devon.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Enduring Appeal and Plot of The Hound of the Baskervilles

• The Reading: The episode opens with a dramatic reading from the climactic encounter with the Hound, setting the gothic, chilling tone ([01:25]).
• Plot Overview:
  • Holmes and Watson are approached by Dr. Mortimer, who fears there’s more behind Sir Charles Baskerville’s death on the moors than meets the eye.
  • The legend: The Baskervilles are said to be cursed by a supernatural hellhound, a story originating with Hugo Baskerville’s crimes generations earlier.
  • Sir Henry Baskerville arrives from North America to inherit the estate, only to be dogged (pun intended) by mysterious events—a stolen boot, threatening notes ([08:22]).
  • Watson (and eventually Holmes, in disguise) investigates a cast of suspicious characters on the moor: the Barrymores, the escaped convict, the naturalist Stapleton and his enigmatic “sister,” Beryl, and the entangled Mrs. Laura Lyons ([13:16]).
  • The supernatural dog is ultimately revealed to be a mortal, albeit monstrous, dog made terrifying by mundane means (phosphorus) ([57:30]).

Notable Quotes

• “Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.” — Reading, [01:32]
• “It’s the combination...the coziness of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson...but also, as you say, the supernatural, sort of horrific mystery of the hound on the moors. I mean, that’s something that really sticks in your mind.” — Dominic, [04:07]

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2. The Holmes–Watson Dynamic & Literary Friendship

• The familiar interplay: Watson as narrator and foil, Holmes the condescending but brilliant detective ([06:37]).
• Watson’s role is central, especially as Holmes is absent for much of the narrative, allowing Watson’s perspective and bravery to shine ([15:23]).
• Significance: This dynamic is described as the “beating heart” of the book and is cited as one of its lasting appeals ([26:39]).
• Quote: “It was worth a wound, it was worth many wounds to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask...For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain.” — Dr. Watson (quoted by Tabitha), [26:16]

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3. Arthur Conan Doyle: Life, Character, and Inspirations

• Background: Born in Edinburgh, 1859, Irish Catholic roots, austere schooling, studied medicine ([17:12]).
• Adventures: Doctor on a Greenland whaler, ship’s surgeon in West Africa, keen sportsman (goalkeeper, cricketer, etc.), as well as social activist ([19:34]).
• Writing Genesis: Holmes modeled on Dr. Joseph Bell, a master of deduction at Edinburgh. The first Holmes story is A Study in Scarlet ([22:55]).
• Spiritual & Supernatural Interests: Doyle’s lifelong fascination with spiritualism, fairies, and the supernatural colors his fiction, especially in The Hound of the Baskervilles ([34:08]).
• Quote: “He is a man of great enthusiasms. He’s irrepressible. He’s got a real zest for life.” — Dominic, [19:34]

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4. The Book in Historical and Literary Context

• Return of Holmes: After killing off Holmes in "The Final Problem" (1893), Doyle revived him following relentless popular demand—The Hound is set before Holmes’s “death,” allowing the character’s return ([29:32]).
• Serial Sensation: Serialization in The Strand Magazine (1901–02) saw record sales, Holmes’s revival cemented by public demand ([41:28]).

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5. Gothic, Folklore, and Mythology — The Supernatural on the Moors

• Folklore Roots: The idea of a menacing black dog draws on British and Welsh folklore (Black Shuck, Barghest, Moddey Dhoo, etc.) ([59:34]); these motifs contribute to the atmosphere of dread.
• Atmospheric Writing: The moor, abandoned prehistoric dwellings, and Baskerville Hall all draw on gothic traditions and evoke a primal, ancient setting ([50:08]).
• Holmes vs. Superstition: Holmes’s rationalism is set against an environment suffused with gothic horror, prompting both character and reader to doubt logic ([52:59]).
• Quote: “The beauty of it is that Holmes is the incarnation of science and rationalism...but he’s now confronted with something that is, as you said, beyond the ken of man.” — Dominic, [53:36]

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6. Themes of Male Friendship, Adventure, and Gender

• Male Friendship: The Holmes–Watson bond is celebrated as rare and deeply satisfying—“a portrait of male friendship, rather like in Master and Commander...in a very uncomplicated way, just great friends” ([68:44]).
• Women in the Book: Discussion of Conan Doyle’s treatment of female characters, noting the greater brutality compared to later detective fiction by women for women ([64:54]).
• Comparison to Other Detectives: Holmes’s stories are seen as more adventure than whodunit, focusing on character and mood rather than the intricacies of puzzle-plotting à la Agatha Christie ([67:12]).

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7. Critical Legacy and Adaptations

• Critical Takes: The hosts discuss “good bad books” (Orwell’s term)—The Hound of the Baskervilles is not deep literature, but it’s “tremendous entertainment” and a paragon of the “good, bad book” ([70:50]).
• Rankings: Le Monde ranked Hound as the 44th best book of the 20th century, ahead of The Great Gatsby and The Lord of the Rings ([03:15]).
• Onscreen Holmes: Short debate about favorite screen Holmes (Jeremy Brett and Benedict Cumberbatch vie for top spot, but the Goalhanger podcast’s own “Sherlock & Co” is plugged as the ultimate adaptation) ([73:33]).
• Quote: “If you could write something as good as The Hound of the Baskervilles, you’re laughing. It’s really, really good.” — Dominic, [71:49]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Holmes is unbelievably condescending, isn’t he?” — Dominic, [06:37]
• “So the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day. That’s how I feel about kettle crisps, actually.” — Tabitha (on Doyle’s weariness of Holmes), [30:39]
• “Footprints. Footprints. A man or a woman’s? … Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.” — Tabitha, dramatic reading, [08:22]
• “We’re not the Book Club, not the Kennel Club—but there’s a lot of stuff about dogs.” — Dominic, [16:41]
• “He loves all this...he’s an enthusiast for spiritualism, seances, he believes in fairies…” — Dominic (on Conan Doyle), [21:32]
• “It is the Watson–Holmes dynamic...which is what the books capture.” — Dominic, [68:44]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:25] — Dramatic reading: the hound’s terrifying appearance
• [03:15] — Discussion of Hound’s cultural ranking and personal nostalgia
• [04:45] — Spoiler-free plot summary
• [08:22] — Reading: Dr. Mortimer’s revelation of the monstrous canine
• [17:12] — Arthur Conan Doyle’s life and career
• [24:12] — Dr. Joseph Bell as the real-life model for Holmes
• [29:32] — Doyle “kills off” Holmes: public reaction and Doyle’s literary aspirations
• [34:08] — Folklore roots: the black dog legend
• [41:28] — Sensational reception of Strand serialization
• [50:08] — Baskerville Hall and the moor: gothic settings
• [57:30] — The hound: supernatural or not?
• [59:34] — Tabitha’s deep dive into black dog folklore
• [64:54] — Gender, violence, and the treatment of women
• [67:12] — Holmes as adventure, friendship at its core
• [70:50] — “Good bad books,” final ratings, and closing reflections
• [73:33] — Best Holmes on screen

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Final Ratings

• Tabitha: 9/10 fiendish hellhounds — “A massive page-turner...genuinely chilling...A very good marriage of genuinely frightening and primal with comedic Sherlock Holmes quirkiness.”
• Dominic: 8/10 — “Not great literature, but tremendous entertainment...Holmes and Watson are one of the great double acts in all literature.”

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Conclusion

The hosts make an airtight case for The Hound of the Baskervilles as a compulsively readable blend of myth, mystery, and Victorian nightmare—rooted as much in the warmth of Holmes and Watson’s friendship as in the swirling Devonshire fog. The novel remains essential reading, not because it is the most intricate of detective puzzles, but because it evokes an atmosphere at once cozy and terrifying, bringing to life both the rational clarity of the modern age and the untamed wildness of enduring English legend.

Next up: Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses—will it also prove a “good bad book”?

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Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

Hist.

[A]

Cried Holmes. And I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol.

[B]

Look out. It's coming.

[A]

I was at Holmes's elbow and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant, Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downwards upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound. It was an enormous coal black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth. Its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare. Its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog. So, hello, everybody. What a tremendous reading. And don't I have to say, under great pressure, as the savage face was staring at me from my screen.

[B]

So, the savage face of Sherlock Holmes.

[A]

Exactly. Of Sherlock Holmes, yeah. So that was the Hound of the Baskervilles. It's one of the most celebrated scenes in all popular literature at the moment, that Holmes and Watson confront the eponymous Hound of the Baskervill, written of course by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first serialized in the strand magazine in 1901 and 1902, and then was published as a novel. And Tabby, it's by far the best known Sherlock Holmes story, isn't it? Arguably the most famous of all detective stories.

[B]

I mean, I definitely say so. Le Monde ranked it as the 44th best book of the century.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And that's two places ahead of Great Gatsby. The Great Gatsby and 14 ahead of the Lord of the Rings. Shocking, tragic.

[A]

I think we both like the Hand of the Basketballs, but we like the Lord of the Rings more, don't we?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's a win. Win, really, in my book.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I first read it when I was about nine and I remember it very well. Cause it was on a family holiday. And I remember being totally enthralled by it, but also very genuinely, very frightened by it. I remember I had to have a nightlight on because I was really spooked out. I know, but. And then this time, God, I found it such a joy to reread. I would hope that my tube would carry on so that I didn't have to stop and get off and stop reading. It's such a page turner.

[A]

Yeah. No, it's a great book. I think it's a wonderful book. I don't think anyone listening to this will be surprised by us saying this, because it's a book that people feel very fondly about. I think it's the combination. I know we've talked about this. The combination of the coziness of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the familiarity of the formula, the fact that we're in safe hands with them, but also, as you say, the supernatural, sort of horrific mystery of the hound on the moors. I mean, that's something that really sticks in your mind.

[B]

There's more action in this than actually Wuthering Heights.

[A]

There is, yeah.

[B]

Much, much more.

[A]

So for people who haven't read the Hound of the Baskervilles and are sort of puzzled why we're so enthusiastic about it, we'll give a bit of the plot, won't we? But we won't give the end away. We are going to be incredibly disciplined in this podcast and not talk about the villain too much.

[B]

We will not be re the identity of the murderer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So no spoilers for those who will be reading in the future. So we open far from these kind of creepy moors. We open in a reassuringly familiar scene. And that is 221B Baker street of course, as always, where the great Victorian detective Sherlock Holmes is in conversation with his loyal friend, Flatmate, chronicler, helpmate, Dr. Watson. And so, I mean, everyone has heard of Sherlock Holmes, everyone knows about Sherlock Holmes, but he is the most brilliant detective of his age. He's a genius, he's eccentric and he has a kind of endearingly selective knowledge. So he knows everything about the different types of tobacco ash, but he doesn't know, didn't know, for instance, that planets revolve around the sun, stuff like that, which I think so. Such a clever little detail. And then Dr. Watson is the guy who narrates the story. And Dr. Watson was a former British army surgeon injured during the Afghan wars, who goes to live with Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street. And the two friends are in conversation at breakfast. Holmes is putting Watson through this kind of slightly patronizing test to see if he's kind of assimilated what Holmes calls his methods. And Watson is trying to analyze the character of a mysterious doctor who's called earlier that day purely by studying his walking stick. And he does this pretty well, but, you know, not even nearly well enough to please Holmes, who then kind of blows him out the water with his own takes or conclusions.

[A]

Holmes is unbelievably condescending, isn't he?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Watson is a bit embarrassed, isn't he? Because Holmes has made a fool of him. But that's basically set the tone perfectly. It's reminded us of the dynamic between them because as we shall discuss, there has been a bit of a hiatus in the Sherlock Holmes canon. So this is the return of Sherlock Holmes after a long absence.

[B]

And it is just classic Sherlock Holmes, like, it's everything you expect, like the condescension, the way that Sherlock Holmes like, picks extraordinary details out that no one else humanly would be able to. There's even a violin. It's just fantastic.

[A]

So that has set the scene very nicely for the arrival of the, of this guy, this anxious visitor who has come to consult the one man in London, the, the top consulting detective not just in Britain, but in the world who can solve this most serious and extraordinary. And this is, he turns out to be a doctor and he's from Dartmoor and he is Dr. Mortimer. And Dr. Mortimer has come to see Holmes because his friends, Charles Baskerville, has been found dead on the grounds of his estate, Baskerville hall, on the sort of fog wreathed moors of Devon. And Dr. Mortimer says, you know, in the newspapers it was reported as just, he died of Natural causes. But something, I think something weird has been going on. My friend was running away from his house towards the moors, which seems weird. And on his face was an expression of perfect fear. And around him there were these footprints. And this is one of the most famous passages in the book. Tabby, since you're the great dramatic performer, would you like to read this excellent passage?

[B]

So it's this. It's so good. It's so good. And she's literal. Chills. Footprints. Footprints. A man or a woman's? Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered. Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound.

[A]

A gigantic hound. Wow. So the, the guy who wrote the French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles, great novelist, he said that the title of the next chapter, which is the problem, must be the least read chapter title in all literature because bas people are so desperate to skip on to find out what happens next, they ignore the heading at the top and they move straight onto the text. And you are. I mean, when you see that the footprints of a gigantic hound, you are hooked because it's the perfect. It's one of the things about the Sherlock Holmes stories. There's always this element of the weird and the kind of a possibility of the supernatural or something utterly inexplicable. That's the hook that draws you in. Even at this moment, you know, the cogs are turning in Holmes's mind and he's probably figured it all out, but of course we haven't.

[B]

So then after this, Mortimer gives him this manuscript and we learn about the curse of the Baskervilles. And this is a legend surrounding the family in question of Sir Charles Baskerville, in which an ancestor, Hugo Baskerville, was murdered by a gigantic hellhound who kind of came for him after Sir Hugo himself committed kind of a terrible crime against a young maiden. And the curse is said to have dogged the dogs. Thank you. Yeah. Do you notice that?

[A]

Yeah, that's it.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm here for a reason. Said to have haunted every Baskerville ever since, with several members of the family dying under strange circumstances. And Sir Charles lived in fear of this. He was terrified of them all. And then we are introduced to his nephew and heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, who in a very, very classic Sherlock Holmes way, has traveled from America to take up his fortune and his estate. And he's. I find him quite an amusing character. He's both sturd, sturdy man with a pugnacious face, but alert, brave and practical. And there's this really funny moment when he and Watson have to rush out to confront a terrifying murderer living wild on the moors, and he's armed with nothing more than a riding crop.

[A]

But that's because he's a. He's a hardy sort of stalwart soul who's been in North America, hasn't he's been in the US and in Canada.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And so he's another, as you said, he's a very familiar figure in the sort of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle world of the sort of the guy who's gone out to the British Empire or to, you know, similar parts and has been outdoors. He's got a ruddy face, he's a kind of man's man. He's young and he's vigorous and all of this kind of thing.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. But because of this, because he's young and vigorous, he is determined to live in the hall, despite the warnings, despite the curse, despite the fact that Holmes himself fears for his safety. But then, while still in London, mysterious things start happening. He sent this warning with words cut out from yesterday's times, with only the word more written in ink. And it's, as you value your life or your reason, keep away from the more. And then his boot mysteriously disappears from his hotel. And you love this detail, don't you? This is the best part for you.

[A]

But again, that's the kind of really weird, bizarre detail that sticks in your mind, is that when you first read this as a child. So I read this when I was, I don't know, 10 or 11 or something. And that is sort of a sort of abridged kids version. And it really stuck in my mind that his boot had been stolen. You know, who would steal one boot now? We find out the reason later on. Of course, this is the kind of detail that Sherlock Holmes loves. Yes, because he's able to now, you know, create the sort of put the puzzle together with the missing boot and the words cut out of the times and the mysterious hellhound and the curse and all of this kind of thing. But interestingly, at this point, Watson says, well, I'm gonna go off to Dartmoor with Sir Henry to find out what's going on. But Sherlock Holmes doesn't go because there's a big blackmail case in London and he has to stay behind and deal with that. So Holmes, our hero, is taken out of the narrative, isn't he?

[B]

Yeah. It's left to Watson to help Sir Henry and kind of solve the case. And report back to Holmes everything that he witnesses. But they arrive now at the moor and the house. And this is really when we get into this kind of gothic, creepy, supernatural part of the book. Cause it's a really gloomy, desolate place. Anyway, while there, they encounter a cast of characters who all kind of turn out to be suspects to some degree or another. So there's the hall's servants, the Barrymores. It turns out that Mrs. Barrymore's brother is this terrifying convict that's been on the loose, and he's hiding on the moor, and the Barrymores are kind of of, you know, protecting him.

[A]

Do you know what you're not mentioning about the Barrymores?

[B]

Wait, let me guess.

[A]

I know you know, and you're not saying it just to be difficult. I've played Frank Barrymore in our sister podcast, Sherlock and Co. Yeah, it was a great performance. I'm the underkeeper.

[B]

I was so hoping this wouldn't come up.

[A]

Well, it has.

[B]

Yeah. Okay, so that's the least interesting thing about the Barrymores. Thank you, Dominic. But it's really interesting because this murderer being on the loose is kind of a red herring because we're kind of, at some point or another, kind of encouraged to think of him as maybe a suspect, as maybe like a force of danger, but actually not so, or. Or perhaps so. Anyway, then there's this naturalist, Jack Stapleton, and his appearance is oddly familiar, but he has. And he's obsessed with catching butterflies in Annette. And he has a beautiful sister, Beryl, with whom Sir Henry quickly becomes infatuated. And Stapleton, her brother, is furious about this disproportionately, really. And Watson kind of dislikes him from the first. And there's a lot of stuff about people's features in this. The way your face looks, the way your skull is shaped, whatever, says a lot about who you are. And then Stapleton's sister, the one that Sir Henry is kind of infatuated with, is secretly warning Sir Henry and Watson to get back to the safety of London. You know, there's danger here. And then there's another character, Mrs. Laura Lyons. She's a woman abandoned by her husband, but she's also entangled in some way with the dead Sir Charles and this Stapleton. We don't know why.

[A]

So they're there with this strange sort of cast of characters. There's all kinds of strange howling on the moors. Eerie kind of nighttime howls.

[B]

It's genuinely creepy, the howling.

[A]

I think it is creepy completely. Watson is reporting back all the time, his clues to homes in London. And then they find there's another man, there's a strange man on the moors. And they spot him, don't they? Or there's reports of him in the

[B]

distance, in the moonlight, his silhouette, this

[A]

sort of long, lean figure. Amazingly, tabby this turns out to be. Now I bet you didn't guess this when you first read it. It's Sherlock Holmes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Of all people.

[B]

Extraordinary. So he's been here all along, solving the case under our very noses. And Paul Watson, who's been kind of writing and, you know, large portions of the book are Watson's kind of journal. And Watson, who's been sending him these long painstaking letters with every detail of the case turns out like never even needed them. Holmes had it in hand all along. Poor Watson.

[A]

This is like me doing my own notes for these episodes. And then it turns out you've actually been doing them all along.

[B]

I know, I know. It's always so sad.

[A]

So Holmes says to Watson, you know, I know what's going on here. It's murder, Watson. Refined, cold blooded, deliberate murder. And then they hear the hound one night, they hear the terrifying howl, they hear a man screaming. Even Holmes, the great man of iron, you know, with his kind of iron

[B]

will and rational mind.

[A]

Yeah. He's shaken to his very soul. And they then stumble across the body of the latest victim. Well, if you want to find out who the victim is, the truth behind the hound, all of this kind of thing, we will come to this, won't we? We'll be exploring the story behind the Hound of the Baskervilles. We will. And that, and particularly there's going to be a lot of stuff. And we're not the, with a book club, not the kennel club, but there's a lot of stuff about dogs. You've done a lot of dog based canine research, Tabby.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. We're hoping to get sponsorship from Crafts at some point. No dead dogs, actually. No, actually there are dead dogs in this. I take that back in time. It wouldn't be the book club without dead dogs.

[A]

Without dead dogs, exactly. So let's talk a little bit about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So put this into some context because obviously it's a product of the late Victorian Edwardian period. It's, it's a wonderful kind of period piece and a great window into the anxieties of the age and whatnot. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself, one of the great celebrities of the day. He is a tremendous, tremendous character, isn't he.

[B]

He absolutely is. He's got a very striking face. He looks just as you would hope the man who wrote Sherlock Holmes would look. But he was born in Edinburgh in 1859 to an Irish Catholic background. His father is a civil servant turned artist, suffered from alcoholism and mental illness and they live in some pretty grim tenement flats. But then the young Arthur's uncle sends him to a Jesuit prep school and then onto Stonyhurst in Lancashire and he finds school very austere and harsh, very like Emily Bronte complains that the curriculum is kind of pre modern. It's all kind of rhetoric, the classics, geometry, all of that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then at some point in his teens, he goes and spends a year in Austria to perfect his German. And then from 1876 to 1881 he studies medicine at Edinburgh. But he also. This is when he also starts writing his short stories. And tellingly, his first, which is published in 1879, is the mystery of Sasassa Valley. And this is. So this is very kind of foreshadowing what will later come. It's an adventure story about a diamond hunt in South Africa and the valley is haunted by this frightful fiend and people who see its glowing eyes are blighted by the malignant power of this creature, which obviously anticipates the hellish hound of the Baskervilles. And he then, after this, Arthur Conan Doyle, he has a very adventurous life. He becomes a doctor on a Greenland whaler, which is a fascinating detail, I think. Then a ship surgeon on a voyage to West Africa, so very master and commander. He graduates as advanced Doctor of Medicine 1885, with a dissertation on neurosyphilis.

[A]

Yeah, neurosyphilis.

[B]

Interesting, valuable information that. And then he sets up a practice in Plymouth and then Portsmouth, but is neither are very successful. He spends a lot of his time writing fiction, goes to Vienna for a bit, study, you know, eyes. I don't know how to say the word. But he's an eye surgeon.

[A]

Ophthalmology.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Again, not very successful and, you know, charmingly spends most of his time ice skating with his wife Louisa. So I approve of that anyway, then back to London, tries to set up a practice. Again, total failure, no patience. And I know, Dominic, that you're a very big fan of Arthur Conan Doyle and I can see why. So just give us a portrait of the man, the character, a bit more so.

[A]

I mean, he's not a terribly successful surgeon, it's absolutely true, but he's a really, really endearing character, I think. Arthur Conan Doyle. He's a man of great enthusiasms. He's irrepressible. He's got a real zest for life. So, among other things, he was a goalkeeper, he played.

[B]

He's a goalsman.

[A]

He's a Goldsman, as you would call it. Yeah, Like Albert Camus. It's great to have the Goldsman back on the show.

[B]

Great to have Goldsman's back on the show. Yeah.

[A]

Goldsman's surely. Goals, men. Anyway, we're getting. Yeah, this is.

[B]

We're lost.

[A]

We're lost. He's a Goldman. He's a cricketer for the mcc. He founded his own rifle club. He was a keen amateur boxer. He loved playing golf. He was a judge, I discovered from doing some improv, important research in the Bodleian Library. He was a judge at the world's first bodybuilding competition. So he's all in for that. He'll do anything, basically. He's always available.

[B]

He literally is a jack of all trades, master of none.

[A]

He is. So you mentioned him going ice skating with Louisa, his wife. So she was called Tui was her nickname. She. They had two children, she got tb and by the time he writes the Hand of the Baskervilles, I think she's already quite seriously ill. And he has become infatuated with a younger woman called Jean Leckie. It's not clear whether they had an affair or whether he just completely and utterly fell in love with this Gene Leckie, but he's basically in this love triangle, possibly a kind of platonic love triangle, but he's in it nonetheless. He's also very interested in his politics. So he stood twice a parliament as a liberal unionist. So these were liberals who were keener on the Empire, more kind of hard line on foreign policy issues than. Than mainstream liberals, and they ended up in coalition with the Conservatives. He lost both times, but he's very into his kind of social activism. So one example of this is he lends his voice to the campaign against the atrocities in the Belgian Congo.

[B]

Very admirable. Good man.

[A]

Another one, actually. So people always laugh at Conan Doyle because part of being such a massive enthusiast, he's an enthusiast for spiritualism, for seances. He believes in fair is.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

You know, there's all the stuff. We'll come on to this. His interest in the supernatural, because it's a really important part of the hand of the Baskervilles, but he's also really passionately devoted to the underdog and to justice. So I. There's a brilliant Book by Julian Barnes called Arthur and George. It's such a good novel and it's the story of how Arthur Conan Doyle crossed paths with this guy who was a lawyer called George Adelg just outside Wolverhampton. Actually he was framed for all these attacks on horses, I think it was called Wily Outrages, basically ended up in prison and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle lent his voice to try to free him. And it's a really, really moving story and it's a good example of the sort of humanity and decency that I think is part of the Arthur Conan door story. Definitely when everybody laughs at him about the fairies, which we'll come to, I think they're being a bit harsh anyway, we're getting a bit of ahead of ourselves because obviously all of his fame is based on one character, revel, and that is Sherlock Holmes. And he started writing Sherlock Holmes in 1886. He sent a story to this company called Wardloch and Company who did a Christmas annual every year and the story was called A Study in Scarlet.

[B]

Of course. So famous.

[A]

And this is Watson, he's come home to London, he's been wounded in the Second Afghan War, he's somewhere to live. And a friend says, there's a bloke in 22 1B Baker street who's looking for a flatmate, this enthusiast in some branches of science. And Watson goes to meet him and this bloke is very tall, he's very lean, he's got a sort of hawk like nose, he's got sharp, piercing eyes, he's got a general air of kind of alertness and decision. And this is Sherlock Holmes, who it turns out is actually modeled on one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's former tutors.

[B]

I love this guy. This is so funny. So he's, yeah, he's inspired by Conan Doyle's former Edinburgh tutor at Edinburgh and this guy called Joseph Bell, who is a pioneer of forensic science. And Arthur Conan Doyle said of Bell, he would sit in his receiving room and diagnose people as they came in, before they even opened their mouths. He would tell them their symptoms and even give them details of their past life and hardly ever would he make a mistake. I mean, if someone's going to tell you details about your past life, it's not like you can be like, actually that's wrong, I was the Duchess of York or whatever. But still, I mean, that is very, very Sherlock Holmes, isn't it?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, I guess it's. Well, a doctor does that. I mean, that's part of, I guess A doctor's, you know, how many GPs would say they can actually read things about people when they're describing their symptoms or whatever.

[B]

They definitely don't go into past lives though. Gps, in my experience. But anyway, he. And then Arthur Conan Doyle actually said to Belle in a letter, it is most certainly to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes around the center of deduction and inference and observation, which I've heard you inculcate. I have tried to build up a man. Yeah, yeah, lovely. Really good. But then there's also, you know, the other main character of the great Sherlock Holmes duo, and that's Dr. Watson. He's another great creation. He's curious. I mean, there's something of Arthur Conan Doyle in him. I think maybe he's curious, he's honest, he's warm hearted, he's very brave. And I was very struck by his humanity because Sherlock Holmes isn't always very human. I think, you know, he's sort of too genius, except perhaps in his kind of fondness for Watson. And through Watson, you know, we have a more human reaction. He reacts to scary or dangerous scenarios in the way that a normal person would, you know, rather than Sherlock Holmes himself.

[A]

Yeah, he speaks for the audience, doesn't he?

[B]

I guess he speaks for the audience. Except in this story when Sherlock Holmes is genuinely rattled. And so through him we experience the mystery as a normal person would. And his loyalty to Holmes is so touching and so unwavering, no matter how many times he's told kind of you've got it wrong or you haven't put the method to proper use. And he admits time and time again that he's no match for Holmes's intellect. But nevertheless, he's brave and capable under pressure. And the thing is that Sherlock Holmes himself is very, very fond of Watson. You know, theirs is one of the great literary friendships. And there's this lovely moment when Watson is almost killed by a bullet. And Holmes is very relieved. This is Watson. It was worth a wound, it was worth many wounds to know the depth of loyalty and love which lay behind that cold mask. The clear hard eyes were dimmed for a moment and the firm lips were shaking. For the one and only time I caught a glimpse of a great heart as well as of a great brain. All my years of humble but single minded service culminated in that moment of revelation.

[A]

Oh, Tabby, if someone shot you, that's how I'd react.

[B]

What? No, I'm Holmes in this scenario.

[A]

Yeah, of course, I've mistaken myself. Yeah, I forgot that I'm actually the Junior partner, get back in your box. Yeah, okay.

[B]

Yes, it is. It is a motive, as you know, the firmest and most loving goal. Hanger presenter dynamics.

[A]

Right.

[B]

So you can see why this, you know, this friendship is kind of the beating heart of the book and I think a massive attraction for a lot of readers. Anyway, so turns out that Sherlock Holmes is a massive hit, huge success. So Wardlock asked for much more. And then the Sign of the Four is published in February 1890. That's another hit. And it seems that Arthur Conan Doyle has kind of perfected his famous formula for these books.

[A]

He absolutely has, because he then goes to the Strand Magazine and he takes Holmes with him and he publishes, I think, 23 more Sherlock Holmes stories. And you mentioned a formula. I mean, there is a formula. They open at 22 1B Baker Street. Sherlock Holmes is usually, you know, he's injecting himself with cocaine or playing the violin or behaving madly because he's a bit bored. A visitor arrives. Holmes does all his rigmarole with the kind of bizarre details. There is a weird story and the weirdness is often the point of the story. It's not just a sort of generic whodunit story. There's some mad thing like with orange pips or a blue carbuncle, a missing goose or any of these kinds of weird things. And there's often, it turns out, a connection to the British Empire to say to things that have gone on abroad. You have that in the Sign of the Four. You have that in the Hound of the Baskerville's, with the idea of the guy returning from North America to claim his inheritance. Holmes will think for a while. He'll play the violin, stare at the window. Then he and Watson will rush off somewhere by cab or by train. Holmes will often arrange some deranged trap or put on a kind of incredibly baroque disguise. You know, disguise himself as a washerwoman or something. And then the villain is revealed and Holmes explains all to a bewildered Watson and everybody loves it and everybody goes home happy, except for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, because he writes these stories, they're very successful and he gets quite bored of it. And he actually says of Holmes, I must save my mind for better things, even if it means I must bury my pocketbook with him. In other words, I'm being very well paid. But actually, I would much rather write the sort of stuff that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wants to write, which are basically historical novels about the Napoleonic wars and stuff. So in December 1893, he publishes the final short Story, the final problem, and this is this, you know, absolutely titanic confrontation with Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of crime, at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. And it ends with Watson looking down into the waters. Holmes has disappeared in this cauldron of swirling water and seething foam. And there, says Watson, will lie for all time the most dangerous criminal and the foremost champion of the law of their generation, a man whom I shall ever regard as the best and the wisest man whom I have ever known.

[B]

Oh, you're crying.

[A]

It's so sad.

[B]

Tabby Watson is sobbing into his microphone.

[A]

Exactly. Because Holmes is dead. Or is he?

[B]

Or is he?

[A]

This is the twist.

[B]

Whether he's dead or not. There certainly is a long hiatus from the Sherlock Holmes novels as Arthur Conan Doyle throws himself into writing what he calls his real books. And these are so. This is actually very like a. A Milne, the guy that became very famous for Winnie the Pooh, but always considered it kind of beneath him and. And his real talent in his other works. But so the. The real books, you know, that Arthur Conan Doyle believes are kind of his Magnus opuses. These are historical novels set in the Hundred Years War, the Napoleonic wars, et cetera. I think they sound excellent. Have you read any?

[A]

I've read some of them. I think they're all right, but they're not as good as Sherlock Holmes. I mean, this is the reality. There were some people listening to this who say, what about the White Company? Isn't that wonderful? Or whatever. They're nice period pieces, but the Holmes formula is what you come back for.

[B]

Yeah. And, you know, for that very reason, the public is constantly pestering him to bring homes back. And at first he says no. He said, I have had such an overdose of him that I feel towards him as I do towards pate de foie gras, of which I once ate too much. So the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day. That's how I feel about kettle crisps, actually.

[A]

Really?

[B]

I mean, you. You would. You would get this about foie gras or something like that, or like.

[A]

No, Pringles. The green Pringles, Yeah.

[B]

You always eat those on planes, actually, don't you?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But then two years later, he allows there to be an American stage adaptation, but says as long as there's no love business, so, you know, strictly kind of English values.

[A]

Yeah. That'll be a big contrast to the book we're doing next week. Debbie.

[B]

I was gonna say that's a far cry from Sarah J. Maas as a court of thorns and roses. Or is it? And then in December 1900, he does an interview with Titbits and says he has never regretted the course I took in killing Sherlock. That does not say, however, that because he is dead, I should not write about him again if I wanted to, for there is no limit to the number of papers he left behind.

[A]

Oh, and then this.

[B]

This sets the stage for the Hound of the Baskervilles.

[A]

Yeah. So we can date precisely when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came up with the idea for the Hound of the Baskervilles. He is in North Norfolk. It's great to have North Norfolk back on the show. The Alan Partridge's hunting ground. So he's gone to North Norfolk with his mate Bertie Fletcher Robinson, who's a young journalist, and they've gone golfing in Cromer and he's feeling very low. Conan. Door. He can't sleep. He's. He went to the Boer War as a kind of war correspondent and he got a fever. He then lost his campaign to become a Liberal Unionist MP in Edinburgh. He was blown away in the sort of khaki election, as it was called, during the Boer War. And then he took part in Queen Victoria's funeral procession.

[B]

God, it's also Victorian, isn't it?

[A]

Yeah, it is. He's been a bit. It's a sign of his celebrity that he's doing all these things.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he was in Queen Victoria's funeral procession. He started having these very melancholy reflections about the state of the nation and all this kind of thing. Also, his soul is, and I quote, wrenched in two because he's torn between Tui, his wife, who's bedridden with tb, and this woman, Gene Leckie, that he's fallen in love with. So it's all going on for him mentally. And on Sunday 28th April, they can't play golf, him and this bloke, Fletcher Robinson, because it's so windy. And so they sit around at the hotel kind of having tea and whatnot and fetter. Robinson tells him a story of a black dog that haunts the countryside. And we shall come, because I know you've done an absurd amount of research into. Into folkloric dogs.

[B]

Yeah. I can't get enough of folklore.

[A]

So we. Conan Door loves this story about the dog haunting the countryside. He actually writes to his mother a few days later and says, you know, I've had. I've actually had a brilliant time. I've slept soundly at last. All goes well in every way. Fletcher Robinson and I are going to do a small book together, the Hound of the Baskervilles, A real creeper. And then he writes to the editor of the Strand magazine as well, uses the same expression. I've had the idea of a real creeper for the Strand. He says, it'll be at least 40,000 words. You'd love it. It'll really suit you. It's going to be called the Hound of the Baskervilles. And he says, I'll co write it with Fletter Robinson. I'll do all the, the writing and it'll be kind of in my style. But Fletcher Robinson, the ideas and the color and the, the point about the ideas and the color takes us to, well, what's at the heart of this story, which is this idea of the supernatural and of the kind of the dog from the realms of folklore. So you love all this, don't you, Tabby? Because you love. Bizarrely. I would never have had you down as a folklore enthusiast, but here we are.

[B]

I absolutely love it. Yeah, I can't get enough. My, my, my flat is listed with kind of books of mythical beasts and stuff like that. But we'll probably get into this in the second half. But it's kind of. It's rooted in this long tradition of English folklore. These kind of hellhounds that kind of roam the countryside and, and, and there's this idea that it may have derived in kind of a real story featuring an ancient English family, but that itself is kind of a mythology. But Conan Doyle loves this whole idea because he's, as we've said, he's a huge enthusiast for the supernatural. He loves stories of curses, spells, ghosts, haunted houses, etc. That's also very Victorian, you know, this period of, you know, fairies and seances. And they kind of tap into that in one of the, I think Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes's. It's all to do with like, you know, wizards and not wizards, like magicians, mystical practices, that kind of thing. And Conan Doyle himself, he's a founding member of various kind of psychical research groups. And then later in life, he's the best known champion of spiritualism, seances, as we've said, mind readings, et cetera. And then in 1922, he kind of famously endorses this whole hoax around the existence of fairies.

[A]

Yeah, the cotting fairies.

[B]

So, yeah, I think there's a film about it, a charming film, actually.

[A]

Yeah. So there's these girls who's basically sent in photos that they've mocked up of fairies in the garden. And everybody laughs at this and says, well, obviously these are completely fake. But poor Conan Doyle, he wants to believe it. He loves all this. And he gives. He basically lends his name to these. These hoaxed photographs, and everybody laughs at him again because, of course, by this point, he's getting on a bit. And so he's kind of a bit of a sort of old war horse. And people like poking fun at him, but it's a sign of this sort of longing within him that he really wants to believe in the power of the supernatural and stuff. So this is why he loves the story. And he. At first, he's not thinking of it as a Sherlock Holmes story, but then he. He starts to sort of ponder it and he says, well, if I'm gonna have this. This hound on the moors, I need a really, really good central character. I need a hero. And he basically says to the editor of the Strand, look, I can do you two options. Option one is it'll just be the Hound of the Baskervilles, a kind of ghost story, and I'll charge you £50 for every thousand words, or I can put Sherlock Holmes in it and I'll charge you a hundred pounds for every thousand words. Which would you prefer? And then he adds, holmes is at a premium in America right now. And the directors of the Strand magazine immediately come back and they say, we'll pay you the hundred pounds per thousand words. And so Sherlock Holmes is back.

[B]

Yeah. And on that extremely exciting note, Dominic, I think we should take a break. And when we come back, we will be explaining how Sherlock Holmes is resurrected. We'll be discussing the book itself in much more detail, and most excitingly of all, we will be definitively solving the dark mystery of the hellish Hound of the Baskervilles itself.

[A]

Oh, exciting.

[B]

Welcome back to the book club. Now, Dominic, before the break, you taunted us with the prospect of. Of Sherlock Holmes's resurrection in the Hound of the Baskervilles. So how is it that he's written back into existence?

[A]

So he's got the idea when he's been on the golfing trip with this guy, what's his name, Fletter Robinson in North Norfolk. And he has come back and he is absolutely enthused because, as we said, Conan Doyle is a man with this tremendous zest for life. And his future wife, Jean Leckie, said he could write a Sherlock Holmes story in a room full of people talking. He could write it in a train. He would just. Once he got stuck in, you know, you couldn't stop him. He's a machine. And so he had that idea in late April 1901. And a month later, he and this guy, Fletcher Robinson, go on a sort of walking tour of Dartmoor to get, you know, local color and stuff. And by that point, he's already written half of the book.

[B]

God, he's faster than you.

[A]

Well, he's as fast. He's turned it around really quickly. They stay near Dartmoor Prison, which gives him the idea for that part of the book, because Dartmoor Prison features in the book. And Conan door. We know he's writing to his mother and he says, you know, I'm exploring the. More over our Sherlock Holmes book. It's a great place, very sad and wild, dotted with dwellings of prehistoric man, strange monoliths and huts, graves. They go to the. The bog. They go to some abandoned stone forts, and they read books about local folklore, which is where they get the idea of resemblances being passed down through the generations. So kind of your. So your face. The face recurs in the portraits of the Baskerville family.

[B]

Yeah. There's this scene where they walk down this gallery and it's. It's almost like. I mean, it's almost like comical. Then it's like these faces repeated down the generations. Very Victorian theme that.

[A]

Yeah. With different wigs. And it is a very Victorian theme. I agree with you. Because a lot of writers in this period, so 1880s, 1890s, 1900s, they are fascinated by ideas of heredity, which is, of course, what gives rise to eugenics later on. So if you look at novelists of this period, 1890s, 1900s, like Emil Zula in France or Thomas Hardy, the idea that traits are passed down through the generations, particularly criminal traits or violence or drunkenness or whatever, that they are inherited.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

These ideas play a big part in the kind of novels, the realist novels of the late 19th and early 20th century. And that's. You can see that, admittedly, in this very cozy, kind of benign way in the Hound of the Baskervilles. And then there's one last element, which, of course is the title. A few days after they finish this trip, they go to Fletcher Robinson's family seat, which is also in Devon. And the coachman to the Fletcher Robinson family is called Harry Baskerville. And later on, Fletcher Robinson gave a copy of the book to his coachman, to Harry Baskerville, with apologies for using their name. Read the dedication. So that's nice.

[B]

Yeah. And also, the first release carries this footnote acknowledging Arthur Conan Doyle's debt to Fletcher Robinson. And then he later expands this in the novel's dedication, which is reprinted in all editions today. So to the publication. So the first nine installments come out in Strand magazine again in August 1901, and runs alongside, interestingly, the first part of H.G. wells's The First man in the Moon. So obviously, you know, the fantastical is kind of very in vogue right now among kind of Victorian audiences.

[A]

Yeah, I love that. The fact, I mean, the fact that you could imagine buying that magazine. You can read the first installment of the first Men in the Moon by H.G. wells and the first installment of the Hound of the Basketball. It gives you a sense of how rich literary culture is at this point. And also, you know, these are people who are commanding enormous sums of money by today's standards for their serializations and short stories and things. It's a literary culture that, you know, dwarfs anything that we have today, I think.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, there'd be the same kind of enthusiasm for the release of those two stories as there would be now for kind of the new big blockbuster.

[A]

Yeah, definitely.

[B]

That's what it was. Yeah. And then. And. And it's obviously a massive hit. There are queues outside the Strand magazine's offices and at bookstores. For the first time in its history, the magazine goes into seven prints and circulation rises to about 300,000 from an average of 180,000. So that's massive. And it's such a huge hit that Holmes's full time return obviously just becomes inevitable. You know us. The US publisher Colliers offers Arthur Conan Doyle a. A staggering sum of $30,000 for eight new stories. And in income terms, that's more than $7 million today. I mean.

[A]

Yeah, colossal amount of money. That's what cues up.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The Adventure of the Empty House, which is the next short story, which is when it turns out that he didn't die at the Reichenbach Falls.

[B]

He was alive all along.

[A]

He was alive all along. Exactly. But the fact that he's returned is down to this one book, the Hound of the Baskervilles, which becomes by far the most celebrated Sherlock Holmes story. In fact, I would say that if you asked 100 people in the street, can you name one Sherlock Holmes story? I'm guessing 90% of them would say the Hound of the Baskervilles and very few would be able to name many more. I think this is by far the most, the best known, even though in some ways it is not typical. Not least because the supernatural element, for example, it's much more pronounced in this than any other.

[B]

Much more Gothic.

[A]

Much more Gothic. But I suppose there are some ways, aren't there? I mean, it starts with the formula. It starts with them in 221B.

[B]

I mean, it's undeniably a very Sherlock Holmes story. There's a lot in it of the traditional formula. So, you know, Ruth Rendell says Conan Doyle often featured in his fiction a protagonist who returned to his homeland after half a lifetime in foreign parts. The exotic country would most usually be America, India, Australia or South Africa, giving him the opportunity to make his main character a prospector for gold or adventure in some local war. So there we have Sir Henry Baskerville. Some protagonists return to exact revenge on the man or woman who all those years before was instrumental in sending them away. A few as blackmailers, others because they have inherited a fortune or a property in England. This is all very Hound of the Baskervilles. It's the classic Arthur Conan Doyle.

[A]

And actually we were talking beforehand, so our executive producer, Tony Pastor was saying. The Hound of the Baskerville, who's a massive Sherlock Holmes fan, was saying to

[B]

us, and actually, I'd really recommend the Sherlock and company rendition of this. It's brilliant.

[A]

Yes, this Gohanger does. Exactly. So Tony was saying to us, oh, the Hound of the Baskervilles is unusual because Sherlock Holmes is absent for so much of the story, which is. I mean, he's true, he is absent, but he's often absent for bits of the short stories as well, so. Bits where Watson will go off on his own and then Holmes pops up later on in disguise, as he does in this. But I mean, Holmes is always in, basically, whenever you meet a homeless person, somebody, an old crone on the streets or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know that three pages later they will cast aside the hat and it will actually be Watt ho Watson. Yeah, exactly. The great detective.

[B]

But then this absence then opens the door for Watson, who actually, rather than Holmes and his presence, it's actually Watson and his kind of very sharp observations and his reports back and forth to Holmes that propel the narrative of Sherlock Holmes. And as you know, Christopher Frayling says Watson is a long way away from the buffoon figure of Hollywood films in this novel. And I totally agree.

[A]

I think there's one thing that a lot of the versions of Holmes get wrong.

[B]

Yeah, he's a comical foil almost, but. Yes, exactly the genius of Holmes.

[A]

But I don't think he is. He's certainly not comical in this book at all.

[B]

No, I think you're brilliant, I think.

[A]

Oh, thanks.

[B]

I don't. I don't think you're a buffoon at all.

[A]

Well, I think you should clip. They should clip that bit and they should just use that, that. Just you saying, I think you're brilliant. I don't think you're a buffoon at all. It's what I've waited all my life to hear, to be honest. So Watson is. I mean, I'm not talking about myself here, by the way. I'm talking about Dr. Watson. He's brave, he's very manly. He's.

[B]

He has a poncho for cashmere sweaters.

[A]

Happy. I'm believable. I couldn't believe that you laughed so scornfully when I said that. That's shocking. But actually Sherlock Holmes. So Watson, in this book, comes out rather well. Holmes makes some demented mistakes because he keeps risking the life of his clients as a sort of trap to lure the hound out, doesn't he?

[B]

He does. He absolutely does. And then he says at one point, because basically they. They think this Sir Henry is kind of done for. He's. He's dead. And he says, I'm more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know. How could I know that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings? And he doesn't actually catch the villain, unusually. The villain escapes arrest and is. Is maybe survives.

[A]

Yeah, we actually never. See, I was saying, you think about that. We, we think that the villain has been killed by the bog.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But the villain's body is never found, and Sherlock Holmes body was never found at the Reichenbach Falls and he came back from the dead.

[B]

Yeah, well, exactly. Someone's gonna resurrect the villain. And the other thing is, in this, which is very unusual for Sherlock Holmes novels, is Holmes himself is genuinely kind of frightened. Like, there's this bit in the book where he says, you know, it's like he's. They hear this howling on the moor and he's genuinely unnerved by it and he says, come on now, Watson, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I'm not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth. You know, he's seeking out reassurance from his sidekick. Nevertheless, he confesses at the end of the story that he's mismanaged the case. He's made mistakes, he's put his client in danger, but he also makes excuses. He blames it on the fog and the hound and the terrifying hound.

[A]

Yeah, but the hound was part of the business from the beginning. Exactly. Holmes at the end says, well, I could never have anticipated that terrifying hound.

[B]

But hold on, that's like blaming a murder on the murderer.

[A]

Precisely. The book's called the Hound of the Baskervilles, mate. I mean, did you not notice?

[B]

But I think this. This weakness in Holmes, otherwise kind of granite, you know, deduction and his, you know, cold, rational mind. I think it's rather endearing. I think it's the strength of the book. And it also shows you just how terrifying these supernatural forces that they are working against are. Or are they supernatural?

[A]

Well, this absolutely brings us perfectly to the dimension of the book that I think explains why, uniquely among Sherlock Holmes stories, it has made such an imprint and then popular imagination. And this is the fact that it is not just a detective story, it's a brilliant gothic story, a supernatural story. The late Victorians, the Edwardians, loved stories of kind of horror and sensation.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, think of Dracula, which we. Which we did in our miniseries back in September.

[A]

Yeah. So we're only a few years after the publication of Dracula. We're only a few years after the publication of things like King Solomon's Mines or she. The kind of H. Rider Haggard stories of the supernatural in Africa. The Victorians love all this kind of thing. And actually that gives it a much darker tinge, I think, than almost all the Sherlock Holmes stories that are set in London, because this feels like Holmes and Watson are going out to confront something much more. More primal and ancient. I suppose they're going back in time, not just in to confront a beast from folklore, but also in a literary sense, because this. They're going back to an older literary form, the kind of gothic novel of the 18th century or something, the haunted house or the sensation novels of the mid Victorian period. The kind of Wilkie Collinses and things.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, definitely, because just think of the curse, you know, that's said to haunt the basketball family. That's classic kind of of late Victorian horror novel. And, you know, this thing of the wild, profane and godless to Hugo Baskerville, set upon by this hound and having his throat ripped out and being slaughtered. And then, you know, those who saw it, one, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen. And the other Twain were but broken men for the rest of their days. Even the writing There it's harkening back to an older time and older form. And then there's Baskerville hall itself, which is straight out of Victorian sensation fiction. It actually reminded me so strongly of the Gothic house of horror in Guillermo del Toro's movie Crimson Peak, which is set in Victorian England and then also, to some extent, Thornfield hall in Jane Eyre.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's. So it's just the typical Gothic mansion that kind of features in, you know, games or cartoons, whatever it may be.

[A]

The classic haunted house. That's exactly what it is.

[B]

Exactly. And so there's this passage. In the fading light, I could see that the center was a heavy blot of a building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy with a patch clipped here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated and pierced with many loopholes. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows. And from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high, angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. I mean, it's like. It's like the. Like the archetype of the haunted house.

[A]

It completely is. I mean, even when they go inside the dining room, a place of shadow and gloom, there's a sense the whole place is deserted, that it's haunted. It feels also like something from an Mr. James ghost story or something, this sort of sepulchral atmosphere and that. So you've got the house and then you've got the More. And actually, as you said, we did Wuthering Heights at the very beginning of this series, and the Wuthering Heights the More is oddly absent for most of the book. Whereas in this book, if you like moors, this is the book for you, because there's a lot of time spent on the More. There's some lovely writing about the More sort of nature writing. And the more the point about the More is, I mean, you really are going back in time. Your car, your. Your. Your. Your modern technology avails you nothing. It is a sort of prehistoric location.

[B]

There are actually these prehistoric dwellings that they talk about all the time.

[A]

Exactly. And whenever they go out there, there are. There are moments like this. A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. There's a huge mottled expanse of green splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor. There's all this sort of stuff, this sort of melancholy, the. This sense that there's, you know, you're taking your life in your hands when you venture out there, because who knows what. There's. There's ghosts, there's creatures, there's weird dogs, there's all sorts of.

[B]

They're constantly warned, like the letter, right from the start when we're in London, saying, you know, if you value your life, stay away from the moor. We know it's a dark, dangerous place. But the irony at the heart of all this is that Holmes doesn't believe in the supernatural. He's kind of the opposite of the supernatural. And I think this is something else that separates it from the classic Sherlock Holmes formula, because Holmes never believes in supernatural explanation. You know, he says at one point, when Watson asks if it might be something, you know, beyond the ken of man, he says, the devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? But this is earlier on in the novel. This is before he's actually been on the moor and heard the hound and encountered it. You get the sense as it goes on that he begins to doubt. You know, that passage that I read when he says to Watson, if that is like that, is the howl of a hound. I. Tell me, tell me that I'm wrong.

[A]

Yeah, no, you're dead right. I think the beauty of it is that Holmes is the incarnation of science and rationalism. I mean, that when Watson first met him, in their very first meeting, when they decided to get a flat together, you know, they met in a laboratory. And yes, Holmes is always fiddling around with his chemistry sets and whatnot, and he, you know, he's never taken in by things. He's not gullible, he's. He's icy cold in his logic and whatnot. And the beauty of it is he's now confronted with something that is, as you said, beyond the ken of man. Kind of. It is. It is kind of wreathed in mystery and all of this. And when he goes out there, he doubts himself.

[B]

He totally does.

[A]

I mean, he. Deep down in part of his mind, he knows who the killer is and he knows what the plan is, but there's a bit of him that is scared nevertheless.

[B]

And I love that he experiences fear. I think in one of the few times that you see Sherlock Holmes rattled.

[A]

Yes, yes, exactly. He is rattled completely. And I think this contrast between the two things, the ancient evil on the one hand. So you mentioned Ruth Randall, a brilliant detective writer in her own right, P.D. james, another one writing at the same time, sort of 1980s. She said that she thought the hand of the Baskervilles what made, what elevated it above other detective stories is that it pits, on the one hand, the ancient evil of the moor against Holmes as sort of modernity and his individualism. And that, I think, gives it so much power because it's. It's not just a sort of. Of formulaic whodunit.

[B]

No. But also that's why the introduction of this convict, this murderer living on the moors is so ingenious, because that would normally be in, like, a traditional detective fiction. He would be the bad guy, he'd be the guy that we're trying to hunt down. But the flesh and blood of him, even though he's a terrifying murderer and he's feral, living on the moors is nothing. Set against the darkness of the moors and the howl of the hound. And, you know, he seems so puny and feeble in his comparison versus, like, the might of this supernatural entity.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, Holmes, in all detective novels, I think the detective represents a kind of security and stability. And so many detective novels, particularly this period, there's a single kind of masterful figure who is restoring order to a world that's been put into disorder. So he's beating off the kind of forces of evil that are threatening civilized, conservative kind of modern England. That's what Sherlock Holmes does, is what Hercule Poirot does later on with Agatha Christie or whatever. But the interesting thing about this, I think, is that the sort of paradox of it is that actually the one person who really does believe in the supernatural is Arthur Conan Doyle.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Sherlock Holmes is saying, well, deep down, Watson, we know there's no such things as. As kind of diabolical dogs, but the one man in England who really does

[B]

believe in diabolical dogs, the only man in England to believe in fairies.

[A]

Yeah, he. Because he does believe in fairies.

[B]

I read that from him.

[A]

Ruth Rendell was so interesting about this. She said, it's as though Conan Doyle, and I quote, was so deeply subsumed into the character for his most famous creation that when writing of him, of Sherlock Holmes, he was unable to do otherwise than believe in what Holmes believed. So even though Arthur Conan, door, deep down, would love to have a supernatural explanation, Holmes would judge him for it. Holmes would think badly of his creation for kind of getting into all of this kind of stuff.

[B]

Absolutely. And, I mean, we said earlier that obviously he was infatuated with this idea of this mythical hound. This brings us to the moment we've all been waiting for, the entire episode, which is the hound itself. So if you remember in our opening reading, we gave you a very vivid and very well read Dominic, description of the hound, you know, when, when Holmes and Watson finally encountered in the flesh, because our knowledge of it for much of the book is just kind of this eerie howling that grows closer and closer and closer to Holmes and Watson. So we learn that it has fire burning out of its mouth, its eyes glow with a smoldering glare. Its muzzles and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. It's massive, it's very dark, it has a savage face. So it's absolutely terrifying.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But Dominic, reveal for us once and for all, is this a supernatural beast, you know, that has rushed straight out of the flames of hell or is it just a very big dog?

[A]

Well, if you haven't read the book, I think you kind of can guess what's coming. So I don't know how much of a spoiler this is.

[B]

Yeah, come on, this is a Sherlock Holmes novel after all.

[A]

It's a Sherlock Holmes story. Exactly. It's just a very big dog. It's a very big dog that's been covered in phosphorus that makes it kind of glow in the dark. So it appears terrifying and unique. What we won't reveal is who has done this because that would spoil it for you.

[B]

Yeah. So we will be keeping the delicious secret of the true murderer a secret for any of you that want to go on and read the book.

[A]

The story behind the Hound is really interesting because obviously it is the hound that sticks in people's minds. So I think there's something about this sort of gigantic, feral, diabolical dog that lodges in your imagination when you first read the story, particularly if you read it when you were younger. So what did you say you were nine or so when you read it?

[B]

Yeah, couldn't sleep.

[A]

So my son read it when he was. He read a sort of very, very, very abridged kind of version for 6 year olds or something and he loved it. I mean, he loved the idea of this kind of demonic dog on the moors and Holmes and Watson, these great pals, kind of running away from it in terror and all this. And critics have really got stuck into what the hound means. So in the 1930s people thought, is the Hound the proletariat? Is it the working classes of Britain that are sort of rising up against S. Charles and Sir Henry Baskerville and their sort of feudal seat and whatnot? Later on people said, is it the id? You know, there's a lot going on in Sir Arthur Conan doors personal life. Does the Hound represent His kind of base primal sexual urges or something. But what the hound obviously is, is a, you know, whether you believe all that, the other explanations or not, the hound is the latest iteration of a long running theme, a long running feature in kind of English folklore, isn't it? Which is this idea of the black dog or the sort of the terrifying ghostly dog that haunts people for generations. And now, Tabby, I'm queuing you up because you love a feral. You love a feral dog and you love folklore.

[B]

I love a feral dog and I love folklore. So this is just. This is the best thing that's ever happened to me in the book club.

[A]

It's tabby Cyrat. Bingo.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, I've loved folklore all my life. And, and as you say, there is this long tradition of black dogs in English and Welsh folklore. That's kind of a technical term. These are dogs which haunt landscapes and they warn of impending disaster, often connected with landowners, families. And remember here that Arthur Conan Doyle loved tales of the supernatural, as we've said. And so these stories of supernatural black dogs and these spectral hounds, they crop up in all, like in, in the folklore of all sort, all different parts of the United Kingdom. So for instance, in Yorkshire you have the barghest. Then in the Isle of Man you have the mode a doux.

[A]

The modi do.

[B]

The modi do. Which is the. Which is. This is. You don't know this?

[A]

I don't know this.

[B]

This is black dog in Manx.

[A]

Okay. How's your Manx? Good.

[B]

Strong. It's strong, yeah. I'll save it for a future episode. But the best known of all these kind of mythical black dogs is Black Shuck or Old Shuck of Norfolk. And he's terrifying. I remember being fascinated by him as a child. And then also I think when I read the Prisoner of Azkaban, the Harry Potter book, the Grimm in that is like a foretelling of death.

[A]

Oh, yeah, that's right, yeah.

[B]

He's reputed to be the size of a calf and was easily recognizable by his saucer sized eyes. Weeping green or red fire.

[A]

And this is black shuck.

[B]

This is black shark. Exactly. The editor of the Strand magazine suggested that it derived from the phantom Boarhound of Hurgast Ridge on the Welsh borders.

[A]

This is the Hound. The hound of the Baskervilles.

[B]

This is the hound of the Baskervilles. Yeah. Which supposedly appeared with clanking chains whenever there was a death in the local Baskerville Vaughan family.

[A]

Wow. They were called the Baskervilles.

[B]

The Baskerville Vaughans. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And there's even this story about how this husband kept the story from his wife for fear that she wouldn't marry him if she knew that their family was haunted by this terrifying hound. Then one of their children falls ill from smallpox and the wife goes upstairs to check on the invalid and only to run down again moments later to say that there's this large black dog lying on her son's bed. Anyway, the husband rushes up to only to discover that the child is dead and that this was a warning all along.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

There's another legend, and this is of Squire Richard Cable of Buckfastly Dartmoor. So Dartmoor again. And who's a supposedly incredibly evil man who murders his wife and sells his soul to the devil. So this is just like the original Hugo Baskerville. And this is from a guide to Devon published in 1907. He died in 1677. He was the last male of his race and died with such an evil reputation that he was placed under a heavy stone and a sort of penthouse was built over that with iron gratings to prevent his coming up and haunting the neighborhood. When he died, the story goes that fiends and black dogs breathing fire raced over Dartmoor howling. And then further black still, you have a black dog that appears as a harbinger of Simon of Athens death. And then obviously you have like Churchill's black dog. It was a way that he like spoke about depression and Samuel Johnson as well. So it's, it's a very well known trope in England and English folklore. But dogs also feature prominently in, in Sherlock Holmes stories more generally. This isn't the only one.

[A]

So both Holmes and Watson are likened to dogs, aren't they? So I mean, Watson is always very dog like. He's always, he's like Holmes's kind of loyal dog. In A Study in Scarlet, Watson likens Holmes to a pure blooded, well trained foxhound as it dashes backwards and forwards through the COVID whining in its eagerness until it comes across the lost scent. And there's also, I mean very famously in the Sign of the Four, there's a dog called Toby. And Toby is a sort of. He's a cross. I can't remember what he is. He's a cross between two dogs and he is a. Has a brilliant nose. Holmes says to Watson, I would rather have Toby's help than that of the whole detective force of London. And so they go all this great chase across London led by Toby. Then very famously, there's the dog that doesn't bark in the nighttime. In Silver Blaze, the, You know, Holmes says famously, you know, the great mystery is that why the dog didn't bark. And that is the key to the whole mystery. But it is the hound that stands out. It must be the most famous dog in popular literature, do you think?

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I'd. I'd definitely say it must be. I can't think of another contender, really. But then there's another interesting detail of the Hound of the Baskervilles that, you know, we. We've spoken about, how it has a much more supernatural, much more gothic element than most of the other books. But also Arthur Conan Doyle's treatment of women in the book, I think is worth discussing because in this book in particular, there's an extraordinary degree of brutality towards the female characters of the book. And it's kind of interesting because Sherlock Holmes men tend to be bigger fans of the books than women, I think, on the whole. And yet women are much bigger consumers of true crime. You know, in podcasts, movies, documentaries, Agatha Christie or. Exactly.

[A]

Writers we've been talking about, P.D. james or whatever, they tend to be bought by women.

[B]

And this highlights how Sherlock Holmes is slightly different from the rest of the genre. It has a much bigger, almost like a baroque scale to it, and it's less believable, it's less conceivable. Whereas, say, Agatha Christie, her plots, they have a smaller scale, they're closer knit and that makes them much darker because the villains at the heart of the story, the devils, they're the devils that, you know, you know, it's those that live with you, it's those that sleep beside you. And there's something so sinister about that. Whereas in Sherlock Holmes, they're often gloriously kind of inconceivable.

[A]

Yeah, I agree completely on the women point. I think it's absolutely true because there's the various characters that we mentioned. Mrs. Barrymore is exploited by her brother, who's a murderer. Is that right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

The relationship between Stapleton and his sister is at the core of the book, isn't it? And she ends up with kind of. I mean, she basically suffers domestic abuse. Yeah.

[B]

She's treated appallingly. She's tied up for a whole night, she has bruises. She has a terrible time, actually.

[A]

And some of Arthur Kennedore's biographers have suggested that. I mean, I don't know whether this is a bit fanciful. You know, he is in this love triangle. He is being torn between these two women, I think It's. It's actually probably. There's no psychological explanation for it. It's just, you know, his. His Ned Wardian man writing for men, and it doesn't. You know, he just sees the women characters as dispensable, I would say, rather than it being sort of the expression of some darkness in his soul.

[B]

And this is also. I mean, you. We said that he was almost writing quite a retro book and that a lot of it is very Gothic. Yeah, it's a very common theme in Gothic literature that these kind of women are treated abominably and kind of abused by their male counterparts in some way or another. So I think it's more that than anything.

[A]

I think you're dead right, though, that men tend to like Sherlock Holmes, historically, have liked Sherlock Holmes probably more than women do. I think that might have changed now with things like Sherlock and Co, or the Benedict Cumberbatch or whatever, the TV version.

[B]

Yeah, I think you might be right, actually.

[A]

But I do think. I mean, part of that is to do with male friendship, I think, but also the difference between Sherlock Holmes and some of those other writers we've talked about is the whodunit element in Sherlock Holmes is never as pronounced as it is in the others.

[B]

No, it's much more obvious.

[A]

Puzzling out how they did it is fun, but you always really know who the killer was. I think in Sherlock Holmes. I think it's Sherlock Holmes feels to me more of an adventure story.

[B]

Yeah, it's the journey, not the. The big reveal.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. It's the characters. I think that's what keep people coming back. It's the characters and the atmosphere. It is the Watson Holmes dynamic. It is a portrait of male friendship, rather like in Master and Commander or something. Quite rare, I would say, in popular literature, to have two male characters who are, in a very uncomplicated way, just great friends. And that's what the books capture.

[B]

I think you're right. I think that's a massive part of its enduring appeal. Cause, I mean, it's still. I mean, it's so famous even today. I mean, Sherlock Holmes figure must be one of the most iconic characters in all of literature. And then I think it's also the fact that it's, as we said, you know, this kind of cozy world, but also how neatly the cases are unraveled. You know, the irresistible satisfaction of an almost infallible hero who always cracks the case, and the kind of secret satisfaction of thinking, oh, well, we got there before Watson. We got there at the same time. As Holmes, because it, it's so obvious right from the start. And I think with the Hound of the Baskervilles in particular, its, you know, popularity and its fame, I think a huge part of that is kind of the gloomy atmosphere of the moors and sort of the prospect of hellfire and supernatural devils wound up interwoven with this kind of safe, homely, familiar Victorian world. It's the contrast of those two things.

[A]

It is, it's the modernity on the one hand of Victorian Britain with his two friends, who in their different ways represent Britain's kind of self image. So you've got the eccentric individual, the brilliant genius on the one hand and then you've got the, the Afghan war veteran, solid, dependable, decent on the other. So they're both kind of middle class archetypes, I suppose. So you've got them on the one hand and on the other hand you have this kind of brooding evil. And it's satisfying for us to have that explained and tamed and kind of domesticated. And then they can go home and Sherlock Holmes can smoke his pipe and they can, he can play his violin very badly and Watson will write it all up and they'll, you know, their

[B]

friendship will endure and take shed loads of homely cocaine.

[A]

Exactly. Yes, exactly. Right, so let's get to our. On that, on that note, let's get to our final takes. So we're going to mark it in what, tabby?

[B]

I'm gonna say fiendish hellhounds out of 10. It's a bit more predictable this week, but gotta be done.

[A]

Yeah, we had dead dogs out of 10 in Wuthering Heights and now we're back on the dogs.

[B]

I know, but at least in these ones, the Hale hounds are kind of triumphant they're not being beaten to a pulp by the Bronte sisters.

[A]

Okay, so fiendish hellhounds out of 10. Go for it. You can go first.

[B]

Okay, I'll go first. You know what, I'm going very, very high this week. I'm going to give it a nine. So I just thought it was just so enjoyable. It's just such a good read. I long to sit down and read. Was a massive page turner. It also had some cases. Really excellent writing. You know, the moors and the swamps, the very good marriage of what is genuinely frightening and primal with this always slight comedic injection of Sherlock Holmes quirkiness and eccentricity. It's genuinely chilling. Any book that brings to life the Victorian world so powerfully, I'm always pretty sold on. So, yeah, big Fan. What about you?

[A]

I'm going to give it eight. Wow.

[B]

I'm higher than you. I didn't expect that.

[A]

I have to say, I'm not taking Marks off for any particular reason. I think it's George Orwell who had this idea about there being good, bad books. So in other words, a book that maybe is not great literature, but it's just brilliant.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think the Hound of the Baskervilles fits that, ticks that box perfectly. It's not, you know, it's not Jane Austen, it's not Vladimir Nabokov, it's not Proust or something. It's not pretending to be.

[B]

It's not going to change your life.

[A]

No. It's not a book that you nominate as a book that's shaped the way you think or anything like that. It is just tremendous, tremendous entertainment. So actually, the eight. The eight is harsh. I'm giving it eight as this kind of literary production, but as entertainment, it is undoubtedly a 10. Because Holmes and Watson are not one of, you know, they're one of the great double acts in all literature for. For a reason. They're beautifully observed. The writing is. Is excellent. I mean, Arthur Conan Doyle definitely can write. There's no question about that. It's easy to laugh at him because of the fairies and because he thought that his greatest creations were these slightly dated kind of hundred years war epics or whatever that no one reads anymore. But this is. I mean, if you could write something as good as the Hand of the Baskervilles, you're laughing. It's. It's really, really good.

[B]

Oh, you'd be chuffed. And I think, you know, that's a good point. The good, bad books. And this is most definitely not a snobby podcast, like, I think books that are just a really brilliant read, even if they're not kind of literary masterpieces, I think they should. They should have their day in the sun. And that brings us neatly onto next week's book, which, you know, arguably. Is it a good bad book or just.

[A]

Or a bad, bad book or a good, good book?

[B]

Exactly. Is it a literary masterpiece? And that is, at long last, the book everyone's been waiting for, Sarah de Massa's A Court of Thorns and Roses, the book that taught Dominic Sambrook how to love.

[A]

Oh, my God, Tabby, I can't believe you've got that. Yeah. So this is our first venture, possibly last, let's hope last, into the world of Romantasy, which we'll be doing next week. And then after that we will be back. Well, we'll be doing something very handy, the basketballs. Like we'll be doing Wilkie Collins's the Woman in White. So Victorian sensation fiction, another ghost story by Toni Morrison. After that, one of my very favorite people, Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway from the 1920s. Then the hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, and the Code of the Worcesters by P.G. wodehouse. So lots to look forward to. And, Tabby, you never asked me who my favorite screen Sherlock Holmes was.

[B]

Oh, Dominic, I'm so sorry. Well, okay. Well, this is actually an interesting detail. You know that according to the Guinness World Book of Records, Sherlock Holmes holds the record for the most adaptations in film and TV.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Above any other literary figure with over 250 appearances. So in light of that.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Who is your favorite on screen? Sherlock Holmes.

[A]

I think there's two that stand out for me. One is Jeremy Brett, who did the Granada versions in the 1980s and 1990s.

[B]

Yeah, that was before my time.

[A]

They are definitive, Tabby. I can't believe you haven't seen them. It's shocking. King. The other one, of course, is Will Ferrell. So Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly. And it just makes me. I know it got not zero stars, all the newspapers, but just to see it kind of makes me smirk. And I know it will annoy Homesians on people who really love Sherlock Holmes, so I thought I'd throw in that detail. Who's your favorite? Obviously it's going to be somebody terrible. Tabby.

[B]

I know. I actually, I can already anticipate a. Just a barrage of backlash. I'm gonna have to say Benedict Cumberbatch in Sherlock.

[A]

Ah, you've absolutely.

[B]

I thought he captured the eccentricity, the genius.

[A]

That's terrible from you, because the best version, just to re. Just to. No, just to reiterate, the best modern version of Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock and Co, the Goal Hanger podcast, is it not?

[B]

Yes. Agreed. Agreed.

[A]

And not least because you will see people, other Goal Hanger presenters, pop up in it.

[B]

All right, quick, get cut. And we're done.

[A]

Okay, bye, everybody. Bye.

[B]

Bye.

[A]

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[B]

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