GOSSIPS AND BUZZ BUZZ

 

Scholars keen to find out more about Conan Doyle had been frustrated by a family court battle that broke out after the death in 1970 of the author's son Adrian. As a result, the collection was locked up in a lawyer's office for about 25 years until the beneficiaries of the author's daughter-in-law, Anna Conan Doyle, decided upon the Christie's auction. Sir Christopher Frayling, head of the Arts Council, which allocates government arts funding, this month called the papers "a vast piece of English heritage" that should be kept together for future scholars. "If this was Jane Austen or Charles Dickens, there would be a national outcry," he told BBC Radio. The archive also became entwined in a mystery worthy of Conan Doyle's celebrated fictional detective: the bizarre death of a leading Holmes scholar. Lancelyn Green, 50, was found dead in his bed on March 27, garroted with a shoelace tightened by a wooden spoon, and surrounded by stuffed toys. At an inquest in April, coroner Paul Knapman said suicide was the most likely explanation, but he acknowledged there was no note, that garroting was a painful way to kill oneself, and that it therefore had been a "very unusual death." He said the deceased had been acting paranoid. Christie's said it had consulted Green as an expert and he provided eight of the photographs that illustrate the sale catalogue.

Doyle, Arthur Conan (1859-1930), a British writer, created Sherlock Holmes, the world's best-known detective. Millions of readers have followed Holmes's adventures and delighted in his ability to solve crimes by an amazing use of reason and observation. Doyle wrote a story in 1893 in which Holmes was killed. But public demand forced Doyle to bring Holmes back to life in another story. Critic Christopher Morley said of Holmes, "Perhaps no fiction character ever created has become so charmingly real to his readers." Doyle was born on May 22, 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland. He began practicing medicine in 1882, but his practice was not a success. He started writing while waiting for the patients that never came. His early stories earned him little money, but he won great success with his first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet (1887).Holmes appeared in 56 short stories and three other novels—The Sign of Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Valley of Fear (1915). Doyle may have been the highest paid short-story writer of his time. He also wrote historical novels, romances, and plays. He eventually abandoned fiction to study and lecture on spiritualism (communication with spirits). For his efforts in support of the British cause during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, King Edward VII knighted Doyle in 1902. He became known as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Sir Arthur died on July 7, 1930.-Janne Wardell.

 

Woman gave birth to a child using 21-year-old frozen sperm

A British woman gave birth to a baby boy using sperm from her husband that was frozen 21 years earlier, their doctor said Tuesday. Dr. Elizabeth Pease, a consultant in reproductive medicine at St. Mary's Hospital in Manchester where the baby was born two years ago, said she believed the age of the sperm made the case a world record. Pease said the father had five vials of his sperm "cryopreserved" at the age of 17, before treatment for testicular cancer that left him sterile. Some of the sperm was defrosted to inseminate his partner's eggs when the unidentified couple decided to try to have children in 1995. The first attempt was unsuccessful and the couple began fertility treatment, again using more of the stored sperm. In 2001, the woman successfully conceived during the couple's fourth attempt at in vitro fertilization. She gave birth in 2002. Greg Horne, the senior embryologist at St. Mary's Hospital, said the case proved that long-term freezing can successfully preserve sperm quality and fertility. "This is important to know because semen stored by young cancer patients is undertaken at a time of great emotional stress when future fertility is unlikely to be an immediate priority," he said. "It also suggests that we need to extend follow-up studies of cryobanked sperm up to 25 years at least," he added. Dr. Virginia Bolton, a consultant embryologist at King's College Hospital in London, said the case was welcome news but "not hugely surprising." "From animal studies, the only damage it seems that could occur to frozen sperm is through background radiation," she said. -AP

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