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Book Review: Roger Oldfield: Outrage – The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes

Outrage – The Edalji Five and The Shadow Of Sherlock Holmes

By Roger Oldfield

Outrage – The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes – a book about George Edalji and his family; but what does it all have to do with Sherlock Holmes, you might ask. Several things, actually.

The name George Edalji is familiar to anyone who has read a bit on Arthur Conan Doyle’s personal history. Edalji is known as a man who was wrongly blamed for slaughtering horses and whom Arthur Conan Doyle helped to clear his name. Usually, it’s about as far as common knowledge goes. In 2005, Julian Barnes published Arthur and George, two intersecting party fictional biographies of Doyle and Edalji, which offers more precise insight into the case and the men’s respective involvement.

However, Roger Oldfield’s Outrage: The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes is an entirely different matter. He writes about George Edalji and the involvement of Arthur Conan Doyle, who takes on the role of his own fictional creation by investigating the case.  Oldfield offers an incredible amount of information and insight into the matter, including interviews, diary entries, newspaper articles and witness accounts; recreating the story of the young man whose family was well respected and appreciated in Great Wyrley, Staffordshire where George’s father was the vicar of the village; the same place where the Roger Oldfield grew up. Therefore, Outrage is not only concerning Doyle’s personal involvement as an amateur detective in the case – which is discussed with a healthy dose of criticism – but Oldfield himself becomes the detective, compiling a great amount of information to find out the truth about this strange and complex case while focussing on the family rather than those aspects stressed by Doyle’s involvement.

The book is many things and it cannot be placed into one single literary category. It is very obvious that Roger Oldfield spent a great part of his life researching the Edaljis, leaning about their history and about their case and sharing those stories with his students. The book consists of three parts: “The Dying Pony”, “A Living Family”, and “A Watching World”, each part placing historical facts, witness reports, theories, and rumours – all accompanied by personal comments by the author – in front of us where they slowly merge into a larger picture.

We learn about George’s family and his circumstances as well as the individual cases of animal slaughter which eventually lead to his arrest and the complex aftermath of the arrest.  Apart from fleshing out the cases, Oldfield places the events into a much wider context than has ever been done before. He follows the Edalji family back to India, describing the personal and religious struggle which preceded the events of the animal slaughter case.

Accompanied by many photographs and facsimiles of letters, the book itself becomes a case file. The writing style is relaxed, and despite the challenging mass of information, it is never overbearing. The way this book is written reflects that Roger Oldfield has taught many generations of students about the Edalji Five and their history, making their history part of his own.

I can absolutely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the case of George Edalji, in Arthur Conan Doyle, or in books which keep you glued to the pages until the very end. It’s a pleasurable, exciting and eye-opening with the bonus of being immensely educational as well.

To get the book, please contact the author Roger Oldfield via his website www.outrage-rogeroldfield.co.uk as it is currently not sold in book stores.

Maria teaches English Literature at Leipzig University, Germany, published a German introduction to Sherlock Holmes and is a fan of all things Holmes – but especially of the Canon stories and Sherlock BBC.  Contact her at @stuffasdreams

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