A new edition of the Baker Street File - 2026

I've previously written about The Baker Street File created as a guide for the filming of the Granada series, and its edition published by Calabash Press. The article I wrote was published in the Sherlock Holmes Review, and I interviewed Christopher Roden who first published the Baker Street File. 

The original wasn't created for distribution (it wasn't published), and the Calabash Press edition is now in demand (and therefore expensive).  As part of my aforementioned article I also interviewed Gus Holwerda (a co-host of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast). Now as part of their 2026 Brettcon event in England, the Holwerda's have published a facsimile edition of the original Granada Baker Street File. Not just any copy - David Burke had loaned his copy that included his handwritten notes.

This new edition is available at their Etsy store, and mine arrived in the mail today, along with a few other items: the tote bag, a Wessex Press CD recording of a Michael Cox talk, and a special Brettcon 2026 edition of Granada's Greatest Detective by Keith Frankel.

At the bottom of the post I'm including the stock photographs from their Etsy store, along with their narrative. I'm partly doing so for preservation purposes - these things disappear from sites once they are sold out.

The volume is softcover, with a rich red cover, and sized about 6 x 10 inches - that's quite a bit smaller that the original size of the Baker Street File (I show a comparison below). The volume is mainly printed single-side, as was the original. 

Burke's copy included his notes across two pages of the volume. Conveniently, the volume includes a transcription of Burke's notes. Here is an example:

So Watson is the epitome of the best kind of English gentleman: kind, gentle, courteous, impeccably polite and well-behaved, modest, brave, faithful to his friends, gallant to women. He is perhaps different in that he loves adventure and gambling. He is very romantic (especially about women. He is not stuffy. He frequently shares laughter with Holmes. Hot tempered where he feels injustice has been done. He is not stupid, but he represents the reaction of an average intelligence in dealing with an erratic genius.
He is conventional in many of his habits.
What I have tried to bring to the relationship is laughter shared, and an angry impatience with Holmes occasional bad-manners, drug taking and criticism of Watson's writing. This is new.

Here is the 2026 edition (right), alongside a copy of the original Baker Street File (left), this copy was actually used as the source text for the Calabash Edition from 1997 (center). 

The Etsy store description:

At long last, The Baker Street File resurfaces!

Originally distributed to the cast of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1983, this document was a 72-page, hand-typed, photocopied and stapled pamphlet, created by series producer Michael Cox, associate producer Stuart Doughty and researcher Nicky Cooney, with Michael’s secretary, Carol Brand, tasked with the job of typing it all up.

The Baker Street File was less of a polished tome and more of a working toolkit, made for function rather than form. So we can forgive any spelling errors or mislabeling herein. In fact, in the time it took to reproduce the text inside, we’ve decided to honor what must have been an excruciating undertaking on the part of Carol Brand, and have opted to leave it just as she typed it in 1983.

Speaking to Stuart Doughty recently, he shared that the bulk of the work was done very quickly, stating, “Michael describes the process in the introduction, and that’s how I remember it. We split the stories between the three of us and then, with no great master plan, read them quickly, at home or in the office, and jotted down the quotes in longhand on A4 lined pads. Michael suggested collating them according to subject and I did that, choosing the subject headings and making some order from all the quotations. I think the abbreviations for the stories were copied from the huge, classic annotated Sherlock Holmes volume. The result was typed up, as Michael writes, by Carol, his secretary. (Secretaries then, not PAs!). I checked it through, edited it a bit, and hey presto!” 

The resulting guide, with fewer than 100 copies created, has become the stuff of legend - whispered about at Sherlockian conventions, with pre-owned copies traded in dimly-lit backrooms, and the new class of Jeremy Brett devotees (affectionately referred to as “Brettons”) left wondering how they can obtain one. 

As the unofficial custodians of the Granada series, we at The Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes Podcast had the opportunity to meet and interview the actor who portrayed Dr. Watson on the first 13 episodes of the show, Mr. David Burke. David found something in the pages of Doyle’s writing that no previous actor had portrayed. Watson was a deep, caring and intellectual individual, not simply the bumbling biographer who shadowed Holmes, as he’d been so often depicted. Behind those twinkling, slightly mischievous eyes was a true friend full of warmth and sincerity.

When he agreed to speak with us in 2022, we were warmly welcomed by David and his wife, Anna Calder-Marshall, into their idyllic home in the countryside of Kent. What we expected would consume an hour or two turned into lunch, conversations on and off mic, drinking wine under the willow tree, and Anna telling us each to have a go on a rope swing that thrust out over their private pond. A brief encounter with a hero of ours turned into years of keeping in contact and discussing future projects, one being to help David publish a book of original short stories. At some point in the intervening months, David and Anna entrusted us with all of David’s tales as well as his original copy of The Baker Street File, which had a number of handwritten notes and markings that he had found useful when preparing to play the character. A date was arranged for us to travel to England to see the Burkes again whereupon we had planned to surprise the couple with review copies of David’s bound stories and The Baker Street File reprinted. Sadly, David had taken his final bow before we could return.

In the months since, as a tribute to this wonderful man, a new burst of energy began driving these books to completion and the result is Dr. Watson’s Baker Street File, an as-accurate-as-we-can-make-it recreation of David’s personal copy of the File, complete with his hand-written notes and markings in the margins.

This copy of The Baker Street File is as true in format to the original as has even been produced, down to the typewriter font, word and letter spacing and even single-sided printing. We hope that you enjoy referencing it on your own Sherlockian journey and we hope that it honors our friend, David Burke. 

“Here’s to us, and those like us, damn few.”