Review - The Sherlock Holmes Society of London - 1959 - 1974 - DVD

If you are a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London this is a DVD you cannot be without. Over two discs are stored a range of short documentaries that cover both the society and some of its investigations.

The cover

Many notable figures from the society’s early days (most of whom are sadly no longer with us) feature in these films. The most prominent of them being Anthony Howlett whose name lives on through the society’s two awards – the Tony Howlett Award for long and notable service to the society and The Tony & Freda Howlett Award for the best literary work in the field produced by a society member.

The first disc contains in-house films as well as some features broadcast by the news programmes of the day such as Pathe. We follow Anthony Howlett around London as he visits places of significance such as the Criterion long bar (in the days when it was a pub and before it reverted to its former state) and the 221B sitting room in the Sherlock Holmes pub. We also get to see the late Bernard Davies guide us through the route taken by Holmes and Watson to the Empty House.

Disc two is devoted to the society’s first Swiss Pilgrimage in 1968. Mixing colour and monochrome footage we are shown the major points of the trip and we also get to see some recently recovered footage that was not widely seen before.

The only downside I noticed on my copy was that the menu on disc one did not always respond correctly. Some of the films are not possible to jump to directly and have to be reached via skipping through the ones that precede them. This is a small niggle though.

Buy it here : http://www.sherlock-holmes.org.uk/shop_item.php?item_id=31
 

Note that this DVD is only available, as I understand it, to society members