The Winter 2018 Baker Street Journal includes these articles:
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp.
The Origins of Sherlock Holmes: Crime Fiction before Conan Doyle
by Leslie S. Klinger.
Follow the Money: How Mycroft Became the British Government
by Ann Margaret Lewis.
The Forgotten Man: Henry Littlejohn and Sherlock Holmes
by Daniel Smith.
Nearly an Intimate Encounter: Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes Manuscripts
by Nicholas Utechin.
The Curious Encounter of Lord Peter Wimsey and Sherlock Holmes
by Peter Calamai.
Bruce–Partington Revisited
by Walter Jaffee.
Art in the Blood
by Scott Bond.
The Commonplace Book.
Baker Street Inventory.
The Sherlockian Societies.
From Gillette to Brett V: New Looks at Old Loves
by Ashley Polasek.
Letters to Baker Street.
“Stand with me here upon the terrace . . .”
Index to Volume 68
Whodunit?
* * *
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp
“What’s the word, humming bird?”
by Steven Rothman, Editor
The accusation of “fake news” seems to be everywhere these days, around the globe. We are told that we cannot trust information coming from others, especially from others we disagree with. Exercising discernment in the sources we use is a necessity.
Though very few of us are detectives, our situation is not unlike Sherlock Holmes’s own. We need facts. We must learn to sniff out the truth, no matter how deeply it lies hidden under often much more appealing variations. We need to know as well as Holmes did that misdirection can come from any source.
Holmes had many London papers and reference works to choose from; we have an almost infinite array of sources. We must resist the temptation to go to the first link sent by well-meaning friends, but rather discover ways to vet all our information, to learn that having a healthy array of sources (both local and international) makes us not only more informed but also more reliably informed, as we can judge information and rate the dependability of reporters.
Holmes distrusted the word of dukes and premiers, knowing that everyone has reasons to color the story that they tell. We must read both widely and critically. Holmes cried out for “Data! data! data!” and so should we all.
The Editor’s Gas-Lamp, Winter 2018, Vol. 68, No. 4.
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