Shropshire Magazine

Holmes from Holmes: Those who taken the role in the past include Douglas Wilmer, Jeremy Brett and Basil Rathbone. Pictured at right is Nigel Bruce, who played Dr Watson to Rathbone’s Holmes.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So said Conan Doyle’s great consulting detective - but even he would have found the admirable Deerstalkers of Welshpool a pretty improbable collection. Neil Thomas reports . . .

Roy Upton-Holder, pictured on the trail of clues at Powis Castle.

Have you any idea how many times the telephone is mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes stories? Or how often the great fictional detective smokes cigarettes rather than his trademark pipe?

I haven’t a clue . . . but I know a man who has.

Roy Upton-Holder wouldn’t mind me describing him as a Sherlock Holmes fanatic.

He could tell you that the telephone crops up in 11 stories, and Holmes smokes cigarettes on 53 occasions, because he’s done the research.

The 79-year-old has been a Holmes fan and aficionado for nearly 60 years, and nine years ago founded The Deerstalkers Society of Welshpool – one of 24 Sherlock Holmes groups in the UK and the only one in Wales.

Though he now lives in Welshpool with wife Joan, Roy was born in Shrewsbury, on August 5, 1930.

It seems entirely consistent that he attended The Priory Boys School, since one of Holmes’ most celebrated early cases is called ‘The Priory School’.

Leaving school at 16, he worked in the office of Shrewsbury’s Borough Surveyor. However, within a few months he decided that he wanted to play the clarinet, having heard the late Reginald Kell broadcast Weber’s Concertino for Clarinet.

He managed to secure a place to study clarinet and cello at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London at the age of 20.

“Funnily enough my parents were not particularly musical, though my elder brother Raymond is a very accomplished professional concert pianist and has played at a Prom concert with The London Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall. In fact he still plays wonderfully well at the age of 84,” says Roy, as we chat in his first-floor den, packed with Holmes memorabilia, including nearly 90 books on the subject, along with shelves devoted to the Battle of Britain, another of his passions.

It was shortly before he embarked on his musical scholarship that Roy was bitten by the Sherlock Holmes bug.

“Just before I went to the Guildhall, I was in hospital for a couple of weeks, and while convalescing at home my father bought me two volumes of Sherlock Holmes stories: the four novels and the 56 short stories. I can’t remember which I started to read but I can remember the time I started to read it, 10pm, and I didn’t put the book down until 4.30am the next day. A Sherlock Holmes enthusiast was born that day in 1950.”

The following year was the Festival of Britain, an idea thought up to lift morale after the ordeal of World War Two.

“It also included the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition of 1951 which I duly visited  twice,” recalls Roy. “The feeling of walking where Sherlock Holmes had trod, in our imaginations, in Baker Street and the surrounding area, was wonderful.

“London was – and still is – Holmes’s headquarters, so everywhere I went reminded me of one of his cases.”

Meanwhile, his course at Guildhall complete, Roy settled in London and forged a successful career from music, teaching clarinet, flute and saxophone at home, where he had a large practice, and for the London Borough of Barnet as a peripatetic teacher.

“In 1970, I formed the first clarinet choir – an orchestra of six different sizes of clarinet – in Britain, and so for the next few years was busy writing arrangements, over 160 of them, for this combination.

“But Holmes was never far away. In fact, in my teaching room at home there were not only musical ornaments but also Holmes memorabilia, as well as memorabilia about the Battle of Britain.

“Over the teaching years I made many friends through Holmes, of pupils and their parents. One parent made me a silhouette of Holmes in wood which is on the door of our computer room at home, another, who worked for London Underground, gave me a special tile from Baker Street Station. I had it framed and it is on our stairway.”

Joan and Roy Upton-Holder, Roger LIewellyn and Joe Gibson on stage for ‘Sherlock Holmes – The Last Act . . .’ at Theatr Hafren in Newtown in 2001.

In 1977 Roy and Joan were married, after she became widowed.

“In fact, Roy and I and my first husband had all studied together at Guildhall and Roy and he were great friends. They used to share jokes so I have to hear the same ones all over again,” she says with a chuckle.

In 1999 the couple moved from London to Welshpool, where both joined Welshpool Music Club of which they became joint secretaries. Joan is also organist at nearby Guilsfield church.

One day a fellow member of the club, Reverend Philip Harratt, who recently left Chirbury after many years as vicar, visited to discuss music matters.

Enthusiast

“During the course of conversation I happened to mention the name Sherlock Holmes, as one does, and he said that he also was a Holmes enthusiast,” says Roy.

“I mentioned that it was a pity there wasn’t a Sherlock Holmes Society in Welshpool and that I had thought about forming one. Philip said ′if you form one, I’ll be the first member′. And that′s how the Deerstalkers got started.”

Roy had experience of such groups, having been a member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, the Priory Scholars of Leicester and The Six Napoleons of Baltimore.

The Deerstalkers was launched in March 2001 with four members. Today there are around 20, some of whom travel from over the Shropshire border and much further afield for the five meetings a year.

The society annually celebrates Sherlock Holmes′s birthday on January 6  although this year′s gathering had to be cancelled because heavy snow made travel difficult.

“It′s a shame. It′s the first time we′ve ever had to cancel a meeting,” says Roy.

Another annual occasion is Mrs Hudson′s Dinner Party, with Joan dressing as Holmes′s famous landlady to host the event and members donning Victorian costume.

A regular quiz on one of Holmes’s cases sees each member providing three questions, with the winner receiving a prize such as a Sherlock Holmes pen or ornament.

The Great Hiatus is the society’s annual outing with a Sherlockian theme, and The Game’s Afoot is an annual public presentation aimed at recruiting new members.

In fact, Roy is acutely aware in this age of sophisticated computer games, that young people may not embrace Sherlock Holmes in the way previous generations have. He believes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian literature would still captivate if only young people could be persuaded to read it.

To this end the society has donated complete works to both Welshpool High School and Llanfyllin High School, near Oswestry, in a bid to open up the joys of Sherlock Holmes to pupils. The society has built up a huge library of Sherlock Holmes literature, videos, DVDs and CDs, which members can borrow free of charge.

“Our librarian is Dennis J Duggan who does a fantastic job and is a first-rate Sherlockian,” says Roy.

“As a peripatetic woodwind teacher I spend a lot of time in the car, and what better way of passing the time away than listening to a Sherlock Holmes story on CD? There are some excellent CDs in our library.”

Impressive

Roy also undertakes the considerable task of putting together and distributing the society’s impressive 24-page newsletter, The Baker Street Bugle, which comes out every two months. It is packed with fascinating articles, including regular contributions from members, related to the great detective.

Roy recently celebrated producing the 50th of these with a double issue.

“The newsletter does take up quite a bit of time and I find myself at the computer quite a lot. It includes details about the previous meeting and draws attention to new books that have come out, recordings, anything to do with Sherlock Holmes.

“The newsletter is important as it keeps everyone in touch with what’s going on in the world of Sherlock Holmes,” says Roy, whose latest issue includes a review of the new Guy Ritchie movie Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey Jr as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson.

“I thought it was rather good,” says Roy, who, though a traditionalist, is always ready to welcome new work of integrity that promotes the Holmes legend. His favourite screen Holmes is Basil Rathbone, who played the role in Hollywood movies in the late 1930s and much of the 1940s. Jeremy Brett, who starred in the ITV series of the 1980s and early ′90s, pushes him close, though. He also rates Douglas Wilmer′s portrayal in the BBC series of the 1960s.

Roy believes interest in Sherlock Holmes will continue for many years yet.

“There are more than 400 societies worldwide and interest abroad, particularly in America, is phenomenal.”

One of Sidney Paget’s iconic illustrations from The Strand Magazine.

Roy Upton-Holder, meanwhile, will continue to spread the word as much as he can.

“I’m not a Holmes scholar but I am certainly a Holmes enthusiast,” he says.

A trip around Roy’s and Joan’s home tells you that: the house is named Baskerville, a garden shed is numbered 221b, a rockery is called Grimpen Mire and the cat is Mycroft, with his own summer house known as The Diogenes Club.

Roy, of course, has the trademark costume made famous by Sidney Paget’s illustrations in The Strand Magazine – Inverness cape, deerstalker, pipe and magnifying glass. Though 2010 is here, you suspect that, more often than not, in the Upton-Holder household it is 1895 and that the game’s afoot.

• Membership of the Deerstalkers of Welshpool costs just £10 per year. For more information contact Roy Upton-Holder on 01938 554840, email ruptonholder@onetel.com or visit www.welshpooldeerstalkers.co.uk