EVENT: CONAN DOYLE’S ORIENT

Friday 2nd October 2026 at the Institute of English Studies, Senate House, London

Arthur Conan Doyle never visited Asia, but he had many and various dealings with the Orient in fact and in imagination, as an author of fiction (including the Sherlock Holmes stories), a traveller, an imperialist, a war correspondent, an amateur Egyptologist, and an investigator of the occult. These papers map that fascinating and surprising region, Conan Doyle’s Orient.

Conan Doyle is best known for his Sherlock Holmes tales, and in the minds of many people he is associated with a fog-bound London of hansom cabs and plodding policemen. Of course there was much more to Conan Doyle than this familiar landscape. He was an indefatigable traveller across four continents, and had been a doctor on a whaling ship, an occasional war correspondent, an army doctor (in South Africa), and a popular lecturer on literary and spiritual subjects. As an enthusiastic though not uncritical imperialist (his lifetime, 1859 to 1930, coinciding with the zenith of the British Empire), and in later life a vigorous campaigner for Spiritualism from Toronto to Sydney, he thought globally. In his imagination he had visited Ancient Egypt, the mysterious temples of the Oriental occult, and battlegrounds from the wars of Napoleon to the Boxer Rebellion.

This symposium has its eye on deprovincializing Conan Doyle, examining the scope of his interest and work (fiction and non-fiction) in Oriental subjects. The Orient for our purposes is not just Asia but, in George Orwell’s useful phrase, ‘anywhere south of Gibraltar or east of Suez’. We have invited our speakers to investigate Conan Doyle’s representations of and ideas about Asia and Africa, both historical and contemporary, and dealing with themes and issues such as empire, race, the exotic and the spiritual, Orientalism including the Oriental Gothic, health, travel and tourism.

Conan Doyle studies is a fast-growing field of research for academics and students. We hope the papers given in this symposium will also be of interest beyond the academy to the broad parish of those readers who enjoy the work of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Speakers include:

Eleanor Dobson (University of Birmingham), ‘Unwrapping Egypt: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Mummy Stories Reconsidered’

Darryl Jones (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Arthur Conan Doyle: Adventures in the Sudan’

Douglas Kerr (Birkbeck and Hong Kong University), ‘Redemption on the Imperial Frontier: Conan Doyle and Kipling’

James Machin (Technical Editor, Edinburgh Edition of Arthur Conan Doyle), ‘Chaldeans, Phoenicians, and Lost Civilisations: Conan Doyle and Near Eastern Antiquity’

Shafquat Towheed (Open University), ‘The First Anglo-Afghan War (1841-2), Oriental Knowledge, and Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Mystery of Cloomber (1889)’

Brian Wang, (Hong Kong University), ‘China through Doyle’s Eyes and Pen’

https://ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/events/conan-doyles-orient

Venue:

Senate House
Malet Street
London
WC1E 7HU
United Kingdom

Terrible Lizards: Richard Fallon discussing The Lost World

Dr Richard Fallon, editor of the Edinburgh edition of The Lost World, joins the Terrible Lizards podcast to talk Conan Doyle, dinosaurs, and the enduring appeal of Professor Challenger’s most famous adventure.:

https://terriblelizards.libsyn.com/tls12e02-1

Here’s the episode description:

We have talked plenty about dinosaurs in pop culture, including in movies, but this is hardly a modern phenomenon. Dinosaurs were getting into the mainstream almost as soon as they appeared on the scientific scene and have a rich history in novels, and short stories. This week we are joined by Richard Fallon, a historian specialising in science in literature and with a particular interest in prehistoric animals in this context. Richard and Dave recently wrote a book chapter on the odds parallels between Jurassic Park and Michael Crichton and the Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Having won a prize for this (“Doylean Honors” from the ACD Society!) we though it a great time to sit down with Richard and talk about dinosaurs and other ancient reptiles in fiction and how this has changed over time.

Book announcement: The Tragedy of the Korosko and The Fires of Fate

The latest volume in the Edinburgh Conan Doyle edition is now available for pre-order with the 30% discount code NEW30 — many congratulations to Douglas Kerr for his second book in the series as editor! Please ask your libraries to order a copy. Further info available here:

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-tragedy-of-the-korosko-and-the-fires-of-fate.html

Doings of Doyle #30

Memories and Adventures, with Douglas Kerr

This is the first of a new series of posts highlighting talks, interviews, and podcasts featuring editors of the Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Arthur Conan Doyle. Over the coming months, we’ll be sharing a selection of recordings from the past few years, offering insight into the research and editorial work behind the Edition. We begin with our General Editor, Douglas Kerr, discussing Memories and Adventures on the always-excellent Doings of Doyle podcast:

Please remember to subscribe to keep up with further posts and other project news:

Professor Simon James

We were shocked and deeply saddened to hear of the death on 11 June of our friend and colleague Simon James. He was a member of the Edinburgh Conan Doyle Edition team, and many of us also knew him from other contexts. Simon was a great scholar and critic, and a genial, very funny and empathetic friend. He was wonderfully curious about everything and everybody, and must have been a fabulous teacher.

Messages from colleagues speak of ‘such a loss of a great scholar and truly wonderful, generous and talented man’, ‘a warm, kind, generous person’, ‘a wonderful scholar and a valued colleague’, ‘a vibrant and generous personality’, ‘very good at making one feel supported in one’s endeavours’, ‘the model of a true scholar and gent’; and on and on.

It is a great loss and we send our condolences to Kate and his family.

Douglas Kerr