The Rest Is Entertainment - Introducing: The Book Club

Episode Date: May 5, 2026

Is The Hound of the Baskervilles the Greatest Mystery Ever Written? What is the true story that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle's best-seller? Why have there been so many portrayals of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in media beyond the novels? Is this the greatest Sherlock story ever told?Find 'The Book Club' wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, it is Richard and Marina, and we have a very special guest today, don't we, Richard? We do indeed. We are joined by, I don't know if you know the podcast, the rest is history. I heard of it. Yeah. Dom Sandbrook from that show. Oh. You know him.

Yeah. The one who isn't married to Zendaya. Yeah. He has a new podcast. I absolutely love this podcast, by the way. Hello, Dominic. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard.

Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's a big fan of the show. It's a big treat to finally come on. Well, I'm very excited to talk about. The Hound of the Baskervilles, which is one of your ones coming up, I believe. Is that right? Yeah, it is. So a bit of background. Tabi and I worked on The Restis History for a long time, and we used to bicker about books a great deal. So we did a few bonus episodes for the Restis History Club, and you'll probably remember the scenes of people sobbing with joy in the streets, huge crowds,

assembling, just how much people enjoyed those episodes. So we then decided to roll it out, as its own show, which we've been doing for a few weeks. And the Howder the Basketavils was always quite high on the list of books that we would do because I know Joey, your producer, was slacking off the Hand of the Basketwills in the email chain beforehand. I mean, he's a liability. Well, it was an incorrect opinion, I believe. Joey's a great man, but he's not flawless.

No, none of us is perfect, Richard. And Joey let himself down with that. Because I think the Hand of the Basketball's is great. I think it's the most popular Sherlock Holmes story for a very good. reason because it's the blend of the supernatural and the rational. And I think that's the tension at the heart of it that people always really enjoy. Why did he not call your podcast bookbicker? Bookbicker. Yeah. I think the alliteration would be annoying, wouldn't it? Well, listen, I've been in the business a long time, but it's fine. I think it's a Ron Seal title,

the book club, no? Isn't that the technical term? It does what it says on the Tim. You know what it's about? It's people talking about books. That's all it is. But that you do with the hand of the basketball as well, if I can do a link like that. Oh, that's good. And I'll tell you, didn't he develop it slightly with like a newspaper man? Someone from the Daily Express at the time. Because it's so like those stories. You know, every summer there's a story that there's a panther on the Dartmoor or whatever, whatever it is like that.

And I'm always like, oh my God, this story is so ridiculous. Anyway, let me have a quick look at it. And about halfway down, I'm like, no, actually, no, because it, no, it could, it could really, there could really be one. And actually, I think that's what the, isn't it? But it's always a cat next to a tree, but the tree is smaller. than you think it is. Yeah, yeah, the beast of Bodmin. Yeah, but you think you'll like that.

But then after a while, you start thinking, well, I don't know, maybe there's something in this. And I always feel that when I've read The Hound of the Baskerville's, that you start thinking, okay, of course there's not some hellhound, at least, other thing. And after a while you're thinking, actually, maybe there is. I don't know. That's it.

So you're dead right. Now, before I came on the show, I mentioned to you, to your horror, that this was like coming on North Norfolk Digital. And actually, it was born in North Norfolk. So, Alan Partridge's hinterland for those people who don't know. So Arthur Conan Doyle, he'd killed off Sherlock Covers in 1893, and then in 1901, he's on holiday this political called Fletcher Robinson, who as you say is a journalist. And they went on a golfing holiday, I think at Cromer. And basically, it's pouring with rain, or it's too windy, so they sit inside.

They've got nothing to do. And Fletcher Robinson says, oh, would you like to hear a story about a big black dog or a moor? And he tells Conan Doyle this story. Now, Richard, as a man who makes a considerable round of money from writing books, you'll enjoy this. element of the story. Is the art for me more than that, Don, but go on. Of course it is. I realize that, but there must be a tiny part of you that enjoys the royalties. Anyway, Conan Doyle listens to this story and he says, oh, that's brilliant. And he writes to the Strand magazine, he says, which has had always published Sherlock Holmes. And he says to the strand magazine,

look, you know, I'd like to write you this story about a black dog on a moor. I can do it for X amount of money and it's a lot of money. He says, or I could charge you double, but I could put Sherlock Holmes in it. That's good. They had to go and ask the directors of the magazine for permission to basically break their, you know, break their budgetary guidelines or whatever to give Conan Doyle all this cash. And then he sold it to America. And of course they said, yeah, brilliant. If you've got Sherlock Holmes and we'll pay loads. So is it a sort of prequel?

Because it's before without, I've done if I'm allowed to do Charlotte Home spoilers. It does seem this stage that people being pretty about Sherlock Holmes spoilers is a bit ridiculous. But it's after he's died in the final problem and before he comes back. Exactly. Is this a prequel? At the moment of this story, it's a prequel. And you're sort of saying he's still dead, but this is something that happened earlier in his life before he decides to... Exactly, because the beauty of having Dr. Watson tell the stories, you know, retrospectively, is that if Conan Doyle wanted, he could put in loads of old stories about Sherlock Holmes, couldn't he? So that's the way it works. He does this. It's a tremendous success. And then Conan Doyle thinks, maybe I could bring Sherlock Holmes back. Hence, you get the empty house and then the return of Sherlock Holmes. and all of this kind of thing.

So, yeah, it's a great, it's a great moment in franchise revival. Yeah. Yeah. This is almost multiverse. Yeah. Before he thinks, actually anything can be anything. We'll just do whatever we like to, you know, bring the old gang back. Exactly.

But it is because he's been so enormously successful with Holmes, hadn't it? And you can absolutely understand why there comes a point where you think I have to kill him because I am more than this. If you're Arthur Conan Doyle, you think I am not Sherlock Holmes. I am a real man and I have real talents and I can write real stories. And Holmes has become bigger than he is. So you absolutely see why you would kill someone like that. Completely.

But then you have a few more years of maturity and mortgage paying, I guess. And you do think, do you know what, maybe it's great that I created someone who's bigger than me. You know, maybe this is the greatest thing I've ever done and ever will do. And you bring him back. That's like Leonard Nimoy's two autobiographies, the first of which is called I am not Spock. and the second of which is called I am Spock. It turns that I was Spock all along. This is a very camp story though, isn't it?

That's what I like about it. It's a gothic sort of camp. It's been done quite comedically. I mean, didn't Peter Cook and Dudley Moore do one? They did. Yeah, I think, well, I suppose the essential bromance is quite camp, isn't it? The two blokes living together bickering over, like, Holmes has got a chemical experiment that goes wrong and he's playing his terrible violin and stuff.

There's something. I mean, obviously, online, you know, you can fall into down a massive rabbit hole of the sort of Holmes and Watson fan fiction. Oh, it's huge. The longer the evening draws on, the darker and more disturbing that fan fiction becomes. Holmes-O eroticism. Yeah, well, there's a lot of that stuff. And of course, Goalhanger has its own Holmes and Watson fan fiction, because it does the Sherlock and Coe podcast. Oh, God, I thought you were going to say that people are writing slash fiction about Rory and Alistair.

And I was like, I so need to. I so need to read it. Okay, sorry. Wow. I'm actually, the minute we're finishing with this, going to go and see if Samhahn has done that. The Gohanger Multiverse fan fiction, Shirley Marina, with Micah Richards and Rory Stewart.

That's what people want to see. As a writer, particularly as a writer of serials, what is my setup? And when you've got something like the Thursday Murder Club, I've got four people who are very, very different to each other. I've got four different voices, and I know everywhere I can go, I can take whatever story you want to give me,

and I know that I have an engine that will take me wherever I want to go. The envy I have for Conan Doyle here is exactly what you're saying, which is he's got this unbelievable sort of omnipotent hero in the middle of this book, who would become absolutely unbearable, actually, if you're just writing a story from his perspective. And then he's got this slightly more taciturn, junior kind of colleague who writes down all the stories. And that's the genius of it.

Because any time Conan Doyle, as you say, when Fletcher Robinson, And by the way, I love people from Victorian era with two surnames as their name. When he says, oh, there's this beast and, you know, it's on the more. He immediately, he can start writing the first Watson chapter. He's got the voice. He knows exactly what that is. And he's got the juxtaposition between the two people. Any story can fit into that format.

I'm very envious of that. That's such a lovely thing to have as a writer. But you know the interesting thing, though, is that the, way that it always works, and it works this way in the hand of the Baskervilles. Watson tells the story, but Holmes is off stage for the vast majority of the book. So he's, it's exactly as you say, Richard, he's too potent. He's too omniscient and too insightful and too powerful a character. So you basically, to have any narrative tension, Holmes has to be in some mad disguise as a farmhand

or something and shove to the margins, because otherwise he'll solve the case too early. So that's, and it reminds me a little bit, we did another, thing we did on the book club was the code of the Worcesters. Yeah. P.G. Woodhouse. And in that as well, it's the same thing that Jeeves, they have to find a way, PG Woodhouse has to find a way to get Jeeves, who's the kind of Sherlock Holmes and the sort of parallel, to get him off stage, to have him distracted by something so that

adventure can continue and then bring him on two chapters before the end to solve the whole thing. And that's exactly what happens in the hand of the basketballs. So much fiction is done. So much TV fiction, or particularly comedy, you think, yeah, even though the bosses are completely absurd. We won't set it amongst the book-clock. It's got to be the middle management level and that's why it works so well. And there's

an economic reason why Sherlock Holmes endures and is so enormous. And that's of course because he's out of copyright. Yeah. Which means that anyone can make any version of any Sherlock Holmes story that they wish. That is why there's so many movies so many TV series. You and I could do a Sherlock

adaptation if we chose to. But unfortunately we're not as talented as Guy Ritchie. Which one would be Holmes and which would be what? And that's the question that's hung over the rest of entertainment from the beginning, no? Oh, I think you know the answer to that. I'm so sub-Watson. Oh, and Marina is homes. I, no. No, no, I think might. You're respectively Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. Yes, there you go. Yeah, I'm Mrs. Hudson. You're absolutely right. You spotted that. I've got to say, I would love a Deer Stalker, though, and, you know, the cape and stuff like that. So I think,

costume-wise, I would have to nab that particular one. Okay, listen, I'm very comfortable with that. All right. So without further or two, we're going to play you a clip from our episode of the book club on The Hand of the Baskervilles, and we hope you enjoy it. 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. Yeah. I think it's the combination. I know we've talked about this, the combination of the cozeness 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. There's more, more action in this than actually Wuthering Heights. There is. Yeah. Much, much more. 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, weren'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. We will not be revealing the identity of the murderer. So, no spoilers for those who will be reading it 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, so 221B Baker Street. And the two friends are in conversation at breakfast.

Holmes is putting Watson through this kind of slightly patronising test to see if he's kind of assimilated what Holmes calls his methods. And Watson is trying to analyse 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 not even nearly well enough to please Holmes, who then kind of blows him out the water with his own takes or conclusions. Holmes is unbelievably condescending, isn't he? Yeah.

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. 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 than no one else humanly

would be able to. There's even a violin. It's just fantastic. 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 top consulting detective, not. not just in Britain, but in the world, who can solve this most serious and extraordinary problem. 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 homes because his friends, Sir Charles Baskerville, has been found dead on the grounds of his estate, Baskerville Hall, on the sort of fog-reath-mores of Devon. and Dr. Mortimer says, you know, in the newspapers it was reported as just he died of natural causes.

But 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? So it's this. It's so good.

It's so good. It'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 gigantic hound. Wow. So the guy who wrote the French Lieutenant's woman, John Foles, 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 basically, people are so desperate to skip on to find out what happens next, they ignore the heading at the top and they move straight on to 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 story, is 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' might and he's probably figured it all out.

Yeah. But of course we haven't. 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. Yeah. Do you notice that? Yeah. That's it.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm here for a reason. It's 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 Charlotte 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 a 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. But that's because 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? 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 man's man. He's young and he's vigorous and all of this kind of thing. 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 he's. homes himself fears for 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 a life or your reason, keep away from the mall. And then his boot mysteriously disappears from his hotel. And you love this detail, don't you? This is the best part for you. But again, that's the kind of really weird, bizarre detail that sticks in your mind.

So 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 it's sort of, I sort of abridged kids version. And it really stuck in my mind that his boot had been stolen. 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 or this kind of thing. But interestingly, at this point, Watson says, well, I'm going to 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?

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. this is really when we get into this kind of gothic, creepy, supernatural part of the book. Because 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 Barrymore's. 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 Barramores are kind of, you know, protecting him. Do you know what? You're not mentioning about the Barrymore's. Wait, let me guess. 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.

I was so hoping this wouldn't come up. Well, it has. Yeah. Okay, so that's the least interesting thing about the Barrymore's. Thank you, Dominic. But it's really interesting because the issue. 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 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 the net. And he has a beautiful sister, Beryl, with whom Sir Henry quickly becomes infatuated. And Stapleton, her brother, is, is furious.

curious 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. Yeah. It 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 abanded by her husband, but she's also entangled in some way with the dead Sir Charles and this Stapleton. We don't know why. 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. It's genuinely creepy the howling, 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 distance. In the moonlight, his silhouette. This 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. Yeah. Of all people. 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 disdeme. of the case. Turns out, like, never even needed them. Holmes had it in hand all along. Poor Watson. This is like me doing my own notes for these episodes. And then it turns out you've actually been doing them all along.

I know. I know. It's always so sad. 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 will. And rational mind. 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. And particularly, there's going to be a lot of stuff.

We're not the 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, Tavvy. Yeah, exactly. We're hoping to get sponsorship from crafts at some point. Well, I hope you enjoyed that clip from our episode on The Hound of the Baskervilles. And if you want to hear more and why wouldn't you, please search for the book club wherever you get your podcasts.