Interesting Interview: Roger Johnson

Oh boy, this is an interview I've been wanting to do for a long time!  Ever since I started emailing with Roger Johnson a few years ago, I knew I wanted to do an Interesting Interview with him.  But holy cow, is this guy busy!  Let's do a quick rundown of some of his activities: editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, Press and Publicity Officer of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, makes multiple television appearances about Sherlock Holmes, maintains the 221B sitting room at The Sherlock Holmes Pub along with his wife, Jean Upton, contributor to the Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, member of the Baker Street Irregulars and the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes, etc., etc. etc.  (As an aside, one of the pictures in this week's interview was actually taken by Mark Gatiss.  I'll let you try and deduce which one.)

As you can see, Roger has every reason to say he's much too busy to answer questions for a little blog in America.  But when Canonical Cornerstones came out, I tried to interview every contributor and Roger's life wasn't allowing time for it then.  But instead of just saying no like so many folks would have, he kept apologizing and asking me to come back around at a later date!  Over the past few years, I've been lucky enough to email back and forth with Roger for a few things, and his charm just radiates in every message.  One of my Sherlockian bucket list items is definitely getting to meet Roger Johnson and Jean Upton in person some day because they must be the nicest people in Sherlockiana.  So enough of me prattling on about how great Roger is, time to see for yourself!

How do you define the word “Sherlockian”?

To me, “Sherlockian”, as an adjective, simply implies some sort of a relationship or a relevance to Sherlock Holmes. As a noun, I take it to mean a person with a considerable interest in the character, the canonical stories, and anything or – in extreme cases – everything relating to the character and his world. On the whole, I prefer the term “Holmesian”, since throughout the canon there are only two people who call the great detective by his given name: his brother Mycroft, and Mr Sherman, the bird-stuffer of no. 3 Pinchin Lane, Lambeth, who has evidently known him for a good number of years, and calls him “Mr Sherlock”. Even Watson, who surely knows him better than anyone outside his own family, always addresses him by his surname, and only refers to him as “Sherlock” to distinguish him from Mycroft. That was the way of middle- and upper-class society in late 19th century England. (In the TV series Sherlock, of course, Holmes and Watson address each other by their given names, which is absolutely right for the early 21st century.) 

How did you become a Sherlockian?

Good question! And I’m not sure I can come up with a good answer. I was born in 1947, and the first Holmes book I remember reading was The Hound of the Baskervilles; I couldn’t have been much under eleven, because that was the age at which one graduated from the children’s section to the adult section at the public library. I’m sure I must have read some of the short stories before then, but at what age… No, I can’t be certain. I was reading fluently at the age of four, and I seem always to have been aware of Sherlock Holmes, though in 1950s England there were no children’s editions of the stories. We didn’t get the Rathbone films on television until much later, and the Ronald Howard films weren’t shown on British TV until about twenty years ago, so I didn’t see a serious dramatised version until The Speckled Band, with Douglas Wilmer and Nigel Stock, in 1964, by which time I was seriously hooked on the stories.  And throughout the fifties and sixties we did have the classic BBC radio series with Carleton Hobbs and Norman Shelley. (Hobbs’s, to me, remains the voice of Sherlock Holmes.) 

In the early 1960s, I discovered August Derleth’s chronicles of Solar Pons, “the Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street” They were published in America, of course, under Derleth’s own imprint Mycroft & Moran, but they were available by post in the UK from G Ken Chapman, “Exclusive Representative in Great Britain of the Arkham House chain of Publishers”. At first I had the books, one by one, addressed to me at my school, because I didn’t want my parents to know how much I was spending on them. Then I learned of The Praed Street Irregulars, the Solar Pons appreciation society, founded by Luther L Norris of Culver City, CA. Luther, you’ll know, was a member of the Baker Street Irregulars and of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. He encouraged four of his friends to write to me, and they quickly became my friends too, so American Sherlockians actually preceded British Holmesians in my list of contacts. And it was Luther who advised me how to apply for membership in the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, which I did shortly after the Society’s first Swiss Pilgrimage in 1968. 

What is your profession (or previous if you are retired) and does that affect how you enjoy being a Sherlockian?

Until taking early retirement at sixty, I was a librarian in a major public library, so at work, as well as at home, I lived among books. As you may imagine, the resources available there were enormously helpful: general and specialist encyclopaedias and dictionaries, historical and geographical directories, and so much more. By the time I retired, fortunately, I could consult the county library’s catalogue online, and now much of the reference material I need is likewise accessible online. This passionate pursuit of ours isn’t exclusively literary, of course, but without literature it wouldn’t exist. 

What is your favorite canonical story?

Of the long stories, I have a special fondness for The Valley of Fear. Some significant Holmes scholars have dismissed it as unworthy; one I remember called it “gloomy melodrama”, and others complained about the division into two separate narratives, though they seemed happy enough with the same arrangement in A Study in Scarlet. In fact The Valley of Fear gives us Holmes and Watson at their best in an outstanding detective mystery, alongside a superb early instance of the American “hardboiled” genre, and the two neatly tied together at the end.

There are various of the short stories that particularly appeal to me: “The Red-Headed League” for its delightfully bizarre premise; “The Blue Carbuncle” as the essential Holmesian Christmas tale; “The Speckled Band” for the wonderfully vile Dr Grimesby Roylott and his insidious reptilian weapon; “The Greek Interpreter” for introducing Sherlock’s even more extraordinary brother… But as my favourite, I’ll opt for “The Bruce-Partington Plans”, which is the story that has everything. 

All right, almost everything. Mrs Hudson and the Baker Street irregulars are absent, but we have Inspector Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes, both on cracking form. There’s murder, espionage, treachery and the theft of a secret state document – and the London Underground Railway, all in the most appropriate atmospheric conditions imaginable: a magnificently described fog, such as we almost instinctively associate with the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, though it features very rarely in Dr Watson’s chronicles, and only in The Hound of the Baskervilles is it used as effectively as here.

Who is a specific Sherlockian that you think others would find interesting?

It’s a very wide field, so I’ll make my choice from those who have contributed to the literature of Holmes and his world. Several of Michael Harrison’s books are likely to appeal, especially In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes and The London of Sherlock Holmes. D Martin Dakin’s A Sherlock Holmes Commentary is a masterly survey of the canon, though I think few will support his dismissal of half a dozen or more of the late stories as “spurious”. Leslie S Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is a superb achievement, which enhances the reader’s appreciation of the Holmesian canon. And more recently there’s Mattias Boström’s From Holmes to Sherlock. For some unfathomable reason it was released in the UK as The Life and Death of Sherlock Holmes, a title that gives a completely wrong impression of the author’s theme, which is the development of the great detective in literature and drama. It’s a big book – nearly 600 pages – but Mattias’s scholarship is outstanding, his research is meticulous, and the English translation is a pleasure to read. 

Les Klinger and Mattias Boström are very much active today, but the Sherlock Holmes scholar whom I particularly commend is the late Bernard Davies. The following is extracted from the obituary I wrote for the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s website in October 2010:

When Stephen Fry spoke at the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s annual dinner in 2005, almost the first statement he made was: “To be in the same room as Bernard Davies is a remarkable honour.” I don’t think that any of us who knew Bernard would dispute that. At that same dinner, to unanimous acclaim, he received the Tony Howlett Award in recognition of his decades of outstanding service. 

In 1958, having long been a devotee of the great detective, Bernard discovered the Society and realised that he was not alone. Almost immediately he made his mark with his essays “Was Holmes a Londoner?” and “The Back Yards of Baker Street” – the latter establishing beyond any reasonable doubt the true location of 221B Baker Street. They were the first of thirty or so major papers on Holmes, Watson and their world – writings of exceptional quality, all but two written for The Sherlock Holmes Journal or for the Society’s occasional handbooks.

He would not publish an article until he was satisfied that it was as good as he could make it, and there was no collection of his Holmesian writings until 2008, when the Society published Holmes and Watson Country: Travels in Search of Solutions in two large volumes. Bernard’s research was scrupulous, his results were marshalled with intelligence and discrimination, his presentation was clear and comprehensible, and the whole was marked by wit and an engaging enthusiasm.

Although he had not then attended the Baker Street Irregulars’ annual dinner, and had never contributed to The Baker Street Journal, in 1984 Dr Julian Wolff awarded him the Irregular Shilling and dubbed him “A Study in Scarlet”. As Jon Lellenberg so felicitously said: “for Julian, no greater compliment was imaginable than to give him the investiture Vincent Starrett had held until his death in 1974 – the very first one conferred, in 1944, by Christopher Morley and Edgar W. Smith.”

What subset of Sherlockiana really interests you?

I’m particularly interested in presentations of the stories and the characters, whether dramatic or comedic, on stage, screen, radio, CD, or whatever medium. The movies – classic or otherwise – are now mostly accessible, and often via media that would astonish our grandparents. Much the same applies to audio recordings. The number and variety of Sherlockian dramas and comedies has increased to an extent that was hardly imaginable thirty years ago. The expiry of the last American copyrights appeared to usher in a new golden age, though I think it’s actually closer to what Mark Twain called a “gilded age”: the excellence is there for us, but there’s also a potentially unlimited quantity of dross. No matter! We are not obliged to bother with the dross.  Few would have thought, even thirty or forty years ago, that we’d be able to enjoy so many various interpretations of the great detective, from the silent era – including a superbly restored print of William Gillette in a screen adaptation of his own play – to the present day.   

Some years ago I directed and acted in a series of professionally produced Sherlock Holmes plays for hospital radio, with friends from my local amateur theatre company. The recordings are posted on the SHSL website, where you can listen or download them.

As a long-time editor of The Sherlock Holmes Journal, what are some memories that stick out from your tenure?

For most of its seventy-plus years, a team of two has been responsible for editing the Journal. I call myself the Commissioning Editor, as my job is to choose the content, text and illustrations, and write or commission the appropriate editorial sections. Then I pass the result over to my partner-in-crime, Heather Owen, who attends to the layout and forwards the result, after proofreading, to the printer-distributors. In 2006, my predecessor Nicholas Utechin completed an unbeaten 30 years in the editor’s chair; Heather had joined him as co-Editor on the Summer 1983 issue, and she’s still going strong. As they say, do the math!

It's Heather who’s responsible for one of the outstanding memories of my tenure. In the Summer 2012 issue she introduced the first full-colour illustrations – only the centre pages, but the reaction was generally positive, and gradually the use of colour spread, until within three years it had its place throughout the issue. The next stage, which came in 2019, after a good deal of debate among the Society’s council, was individual pictorial covers for each issue and a radical rejigging of the internal layout. (Those who regretted the disappearance of the one-legged newsvendor from the front cover were relieved to find him at his new post on the contents page.)

Memories of people and events that we recorded in the Journal? Obviously, over a period of nearly 18 years there were far too many to list here. There was the wonderful exhibition at the Museum of London in 2014-15, Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die. My wife Jean Upton and I gave some assistance, as did other members of the Society, and it was a delight to have privileged access along with the likes of Glen Miranker and Constantine Rossakis, who had loaned material from their own world-class collections. 

The Society has arranged many visits to sites of Holmesian and Doylean interest, but the long weekend in Edinburgh in 2009 was truly special, as we were celebrating Arthur Conan Doyle’s 150th birthday. Two years later we marked the Society’s 60th anniversary with a special “Diamond Supplement” of the Journal. Over the years we’ve been treated to dramatic and comedic interpretations of Holmes, Watson and their world: among many others, there are the entertaining blockbuster movies with Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law; the now-classic re-imaginings on TV, Sherlock and Elementary, from the UK and the US respectively; and the poignant Mr Holmes. There’s also an encouraging number of stage plays, often good and sometimes outstanding.

The memories aren’t all happy, of course. During my time as editor, we’ve lost a disconcerting number of Sherlockian and Holmesian friends, including Dame Jean Conan Doyle, Bernard Davies, Nick Utechin, Ted Schulz, Jon Lellenberg, Tom Stix and Michael Whelan. It was the latter two who invested me and Jean respectively in the Baker Street Irregulars.

Being married to a fellow Holmesian must be a real treat. How does this shared interest enhance your enjoyment of the hobby?

Jean and I were married in 1991, so we’ve been sharing our lives and our peculiar hobby for more than three decades. I have to confess that my work for the Society, which encompasses quite a bit more than editing the twice-yearly Sherlock Holmes Journal, means that Jean doesn’t get as much time to appreciate the Sherlockian world as she should. That’s one reason why I shan’t be sorry to relinquish responsibility for the content of The Sherlock Holmes Journal when I retire as Commissioning Editor at the end of this year.   

What book would you recommend to other Sherlockians?

Three come to mind, and they probably won’t surprise you. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, edited & annotated by Leslie S Klinger (W.W. Norton – 3 volumes); From Holmes to Sherlock: The Story of the Men and Women Who Created an Icon by Mattias Boström (Mysterious Press) [otherwise The Life and Death of Sherlock Holmes: Master Detective, Myth and Media Star (Head of Zeus)]; and the one that has to come first, if only because I prepared it for publication: Holmes & Watson Country: Travels in Search of Solutions by Bernard Davies (The Sherlock Holmes Society of London [2nd edition, 1-volume paperback]).

Where do you see Sherlockiana in 5 or 10 years from now?

It will still be active, nationally and internationally. Another phenomenon like Sherlock would almost certainly spark a renewed public interest in the canonical stories as well as the many books, magazines, and so forth that are bound to come – but that’s not a necessary factor. Conan Doyle’s sixty long and short stories are at the heart of it, and they’ll ensure that Holmes, Watson and their world continue to live.