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This was WILD! I've dreamed that I was in the White House and said something about how I would be able to paint a portrait of DJT. Unfortunately, he somehow heard this and wanted me to make one. 😱 I thought about refusing, but for some reason I felt threatened. Then suddenly, there were other painters, and we had a competition: a written test with one question being something like "What is the meaning of life?" The rest of the dream was the usual school test nightmare of trying to write on impossible material instead of paper, having no seat or table, etc. Isn't it enough that my first thought every morning is: "What has he done this time?"

Thanks, guys -- so this is all part of the same thing that's behind the novel The Da Vinci Code, which I have actually read -- but was not terribly impressed by, since it seems to focus on what I felt were extraneous matters (e.g., orgies).

Hi. So I'm completely ignorant of 'games' unless it's Space Invaders (1980s). However, the 'Jesus had children' theory is from the book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which uses the Et in Arcadia Ego painting: so yes, the game was likely inspired by the book, and therefore yes, it is all the same Et In Arcadia Ego mystery. 🤠

The game is called Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (https://www.gog.com/de/game/gabriel_knight_3_blood_of_the_sacred_blood_of_the_damned). It’s the plot that refers to the painting and that Jesus Had Kids theory.

Bit odd for a game to be named in Latin, isn't it? I'm totally ignorant about the matter, but guessing that its name came from one of the sources that Frank mentioned -- what do you think, Frank?

Well there‘s the third Gabriel Knight game.

Hi. I mean the Et in Arcadia Ego mystery discussed in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, on which Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is based. Just for clarity, by 'links' I mean that Shugborough and Rennes le Chateau both have two of the same paintings, Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego version II and David Tenniers the Younger's The Temptation of St Anthony. There is also a link between the third painting from the Rennes mystery, of Celestine V (unknown artist) and Shugborough, via Dante and his Inferno. What other Et in Arcadia Ego mysteries are there? 🤠

Several articles have been mentioned (and I'm easily confused) -- so I'm not sure which one you're referring that has the links.

There are links to the Et in Arcadia Ego mystery that is Rennes le Chateau and Berenger Sauniere: same roots.

This may be irrelevant, but I just reread the second article that Enigma posted above. It's got a nice close-up shot of the inscription, and now I'm not so sure that the final "dot" isn't just a natural freckle in the stone. It's a bit further away from its letter than any of the others (even though that M is the widest letter of the bunch), plus it's right next to a cluster of smaller freckles.

Oh so this ties into Et in Arcadia ego? The plot certainly thickens.

Hi. Of the letters, D stands for Demosthenes, so D is the first letter of the last word of the name of one of Thomas Anson's garden follies: the Choragic Lanthorn of Demosthenes: this is one part of the key. After deciphering the remaining letters, each letter is the first letter of the last word of each of Thomas Anson's garden and parkland follies. The dots are geometric alignment points. Combined with the carving of Poussin's Et in Arcadia Ego, the Shepherd's Monument represents a map of Shugborough estate. But these are just three of the 43 steps required to solve the mystery. A hint or three never hurts. Best wishes, Frank. PS: I think SH is great, but is that Sherlock Holmes or Shugborough Hall? Certainly the former. 🤠

And it's got its own thread already! Welcome, Frank, and please feel free to stick around. Even if you don't happen to be interested in Sherlock Holmes, we have a lot of miscellaneous topics that you may enjoy. I haven't read your book, of course (having only heard of it just now), but my current best guess is that the letters are the initials of a sentence. I'll admit that wouldn't shed much light on the meaning, though!

Hi Frank and welcome! Advertising your own works is normally only allowed here within strict guidelines, but I‘m permitting this one since it’s so fitting the forum‘s spirit. Anyway, welcome and good job, putting in those hours would surely impress even Sherlock himself.

Hi. This mystery has in deed been solved. Please read, Secrets of the Shepherd's Monument, by F E Robson (that'll be me). It is not easy to understand, but that does not make it wrong. It took 20,000 hours over the course of 16 years, but it is correct and will stand up to any amount of scrutiny. Best wishes, Frank.

The character Gregory House in the TV show "House, M.D." is based in part on Sherlock Holmes. My wife and I are watching our way through this series and I noticed some very interesting Holmes references in the episode "Joy to the World" (season 5, episode 11). House receives as a Christmas gift a copy of the book "A Manual of the Operations of Surgery," by Joseph Bell, M.D. Bell, of course, was Arthur Conan Doyle's inspiration for the character of Sherlock Holmes. This is the real title of a book that Bell actually wrote. In the same episode Dr. Wilson also mentions a patient that House once fell for: a woman named Irene Adler. She had some sort of disease that House could not diagnose. She turned out to be fake, as it happens, but the Adler reference was delicious!

Yes and can't wait!

Has anyone seen this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bookish_(TV_series) I don’t know if it’s available in the USA. If it is then I highly recommend it; it’s brilliant. A second series is planned.

I read the first two before I saw the movie and then read the third after I’d seen it. I was wondering about how I’d react to the casting because we all get a mental picture of the characters and there were two that I struggled to visualise. One was Helen Mirren as Elizabeth because I’d pictured her as more of a matronly Miss Marple type figure and no one would call Helen Mirren ‘matronly’ or compare her to Joan Hickson or Margaret Rutherford but it worked in my opinion. The other was the casting of Pierce Brosnan as Ron. I pictured him more like the late Bob Hoskins. Mainly of course it was because I picture Brosnan in a tuxedo playing Bond. He was really good though. It looks like a follow-up movie is on the cards too although it hasn’t been given the final go ahead. Both cast and director are all keen apparently. It’s a petty that Messrs Cumberbatch, Freeman and Gatiss don’t appear to have that same level of enthusiasm.

Came here to post some news and coincidentally happened upon that post, which I had completely forgotten about. Well, they're apparently back to considering a "bridge movie." Don't offhand recall where I heard about it, but here's the IMDb page. It's said to cover "Aragorn's quest to capture Gollum between The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring ... to keep the Ring's location [a secret] from Sauron," Philippa Boyens is listed among the writers, and so far, looks like they also have Andy Serkis onboard (as both Gollum and Director), plus Ian McKellen and Elijah Wood (yes, as Frodo) -- but no mention of Viggo Mortensen. They also say "The film explores Aragorn's early adventures as a ranger," so maybe they're hoping to avoid the dreaded Elrond-Legolas Syndrome, where a character looks older as you go back in time. Mortensen hasn't been in a Tolkien movie since 2003's Return of the King, and has meanwhile aged from his mid-40s to to his late 60s, a bit old to be playing a "young" Aragorn. I'd guess they're looking to cast a Mortensen-type actor who's somewhere around 30. As for the three actors listed, Serkis will doubtless be doing Gollum via motion-capture again, McKellen can simply forgo some of the aging makeup he used last time -- and I have absolutely no idea what Frodo would be doing in this story.

Yeah I have only seen the film, not read any of the books.

I don’t know if anyone else has read any of these books but I have to recommend the crime novels of Richard Osman, beginning with The Thursday Murder Club. To be honest I would never had decided to read them had they not been recommended to me by a friend from the USA so I decided to give them a go and I don’t regret it for a second. I won’t go into detail but it’s basically set in an upmarket retirement village in Sussex (on the south coast of England) Four friends get together to form The Thursday Murder Club to look into unsolved crimes. The four friends are Joyce (a former nurse, now widowed) Ron (a former Trade Union organiser) Ibrahim (a psychiatrist) and Elizabeth (a former high ranking MI6 officer who’s writer husband suffers from dementia) The stories are cleverly written, the characters are brilliant and the humour is great (with a fair bit of poignancy thrown in) Think of ‘a well written combination of Agatha Christie and Midsomer Murders) They’re difficult to put down. I’ve read three of the five written so far and I’ll be picking up the fourth next week. The first one was also made into a movie which I saw on Netflix just before Christmas. It was really well done. Joyce was played by Celia Imrie, Ron was played by Pierce Brosnan, Ibrahim was played by Ben Kingsley and Elizabeth was played by Helen Mirren. The bad guy in the story was played by David Tennant. There’s one great moment where Helen Mirren disguised herself and looks just as she did when she played the Queen. I noticed straight away then Celia Imrie said “You look just like The Queen.”🙂 👍👍👍

It would be perhaps hard to imagine no one attempting one at some point Carol but the trend is toward doing ‘versions’ of the character which is fine. I can understand producers/writers liking the freedom of not being shackled to certain familiar storylines but another option would be to do one off, movie-length stories taken from the various Holmes pastiches that have been written. Yes it’s a strange thought. The series certainly struck a note with younger people which might perhaps be a little surprising? Not down to the quality because it was excellent but because of the storylines, which were quite complex and younger people today have a tendency toward action over brain power as far as I can see. Tough guys, high-tech weaponry, special effects, car chases etc. Maybe my impression is wrong though? During the flashbacks in the movie we saw McKellen just before his retirement so I was thinking of around that kind of age Carol but set just after he’d retired to keep bees as in the Laurie King stories. McKellen would have been ideal if he was 20 years younger (and wanted to do it of course) Peter Cushing played Holmes when he was 70 and he thought that he was too old…he got away with it but he’d have been perfect to play a recently retired Holmes. It will certainly be interesting to see if they eventually make the Laurie King version. To be honest I do wonder what the problem is? Yes, I read about that one the other day Carol. I’ll have to track it down for a listen. I really dislike giving books away Carol and stupidly I found that I’ve given away at least three by mistake. In my local town there’s an old second hand book shop. It’s been closed for at least 15 years and yet there it sits, full of books! I talked to a former bookshop owner in a nearby town 2 or 3 years ago and he said that he’d tried to buy the stock but the local council had to,d him that they went with the shop and couldn’t be sold separately. Could anything be more insane?

Then again, I recall when Brett was being compared to Rathbone. And presumably Rathbone started out being compared to somebody before that. But as you say, maybe in a few more years. Well, I could probably imagine it, but Moffat & Gatiss have been quite adamant that they would never recast either Cumberbatch or Freeman. If when you say "them" however you mean "somebody" in the relatively distant future -- who knows? I guess if the original show (hopefully as typified by the first couple of seasons) has made a sufficiently positive impression on the current younger generations, the concept might well outlive Cumberbatch & Co. So do I. Wasn't McKellen's Holmes struggling with the early stages of dementia? Barring the imminent development of a cure (yes, please!), I don't see how they could explain him being able to remember the case long enough to investigate it. Though -- hmm -- I'm pretty sure they "aged" him with makeup for that movie. If so, then perhaps (without the "old" makeup) they could do a prequel. He's only in his mid-80s and according to IMDb, currently has several projects lined up (including something called The Hunt for Gollum). Now that you mention it, so am I. (Though according to Wikipedia, "In 2000, Monica Dolan starred as Russell in a 4-part BBC Radio drama of The Beekeeper's Apprentice, with James Fox playing Holmes.") Apparently King is continuing to write the books (with the most recent one published just six months ago, in June 2025). A while back I did sort through several boxes of attic books, and now have one large boxful that I probably wouldn't mind giving away (but I want to look through once more, just to be sure), just need to grit my teeth and follow through. Then I can triage some more boxfuls. Fortunately I don't seem to be acquiring books very often nowadays (and I do hope that Alexander McCall Smith will wrap up his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series pretty soon). My big quandary is finding a good home for the books that I don't keep. When Mom died, I took several boxes of perfectly good, interesting books to the local used-book chain, but they were interested in only two (!) of the newer books. The charity shops and the library book sales are a lot more open-minded, I think, but I wish I knew how many donated books they actually find new homes for -- vs. how many they umm, don't.

The series might be a good one and I certainly shouldn’t pre-judge. It’s more a case of “how many different ‘angles’ can there be?” I loved House so there’s no reason why this one couldn’t be good too. I imagine that I’ll eventually get around to watching an episode at some point. I can’t see a traditional series coming any time soon either Carol. Things like the Watson series don’t have the baggage that a traditional series carries because there’s nothing for the viewers to compare it to so it’s judged as a standalone work, as it should be; individuals either like it or they don’t. A trad series is always going to be compared to the Granada series and anyone playing Holmes would be compared to Brett so I really don’t see anyone attempting it….not for a few years anyway. There’s certainly more chance of a new Sherlock at some point but, as you say, we may have a few years to wait. Here’s a hypothetical one for you Carol (and anyone else) could you imagine them doing a Sherlock at some point with someone other than Cumberbatch playing him?🤔 I always hoped that they might do another ‘older Holmes’ movie with McKellen but I doubt it. Talking of ‘older Holmes,’ I’m surprised that, as yet, we’ve seen no Mary Russell/ Holmes movie based on the Laurie King books. A few years ago it was said that an adaptation was being looked at and planned but there’s been nothing yet. It’s difficult to imagine why it’s such a difficult prospect. I’ve been moving books on over the past few years out of necessity Carol. I’d have loved to have had a proper library room but I just don’t have that kind of space so the local charity shops have been getting regular donations from me. It’s impossible to estimate how many books I’ve given away although it’s well over a 1000. I’ve probably got no more than 1000 left now (with around 330 being on the subject of Jack the Ripper) Do you know where I can buy a TARDIS cheap?😁