The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02]
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Kitten Kong. A well-remembered 1971 episode of the BBC-TV series The Goodies features a giant cat which climbs the Post Office Tower.
“Knocked ‘Em in the Old Kent Road.”Music hall ditty, written and popularised by Albert Chevalier. Shirley Temple sings it (hideously) in A Little Princess (1939).
Late Night Line-Up. A BBC-TV show that ran on BBC2 from 1964 to 1972. Its original remit was to publicise other programs on the then-new channel, but this expanded to cover many cultural, political, and media topics.
Bernard Levin.Journalist, author, and broadcaster—a very familiar TV pundit in the 1960s and ‘70s.
a long-case clock.A grandfather clock.
Lord Leaves of Leng.See “Soho Golem” in The Man From the Diogenes Club.
the Lord Lieutenant.Commander of a county militia, and historically the sovereign’s local representative—with varying powers and authorities.
Lobby Ludd. These circulation-building newspaper stunts were a phenomenon of the 1920s and ‘30s. Strictly, I’m fudging chronology—the first of these, the Westminster Gazette’s Lobby Lud, appeared a few years after this scene, in 1927. That’s why the extra “d.”
“maiden tributes of modern Babylon.“ The phrase was used by the Pall Mall Gazette in an expose of Victorian child prostitution.
malarkey. Hijinx, impertinence, horseplay.
Manfish (1956), directed by W. Lee Wilder. It’s a loose adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold Bug.”
Maple White Land. See:The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
the Married Women’s Property Act.Passed 1907, a key piece of legislation in the Edwardian emancipation of women—it meant that husbands could no longer dispose of their wives’ property without their permission.
MCC. The Marylebone Cricket Club, the original governing body of cricket in England and throughout the world. Originally, the MCC organised the English national cricket side. They held out against allowing women to become members well after the Diogenes Club did.
Sir Henry Merrivale.A.k.a. H.M. John Dickson Carr, Sir Henry’s biographer (and Arthur Conan Doyle’s), mentions his membership in the Diogenes Club.
Paulette Michaelsmith.See: “End of the Pier Show” in The Man From the Diogenes Club.
Mary Millington. The leading British porn star of the 1970s. She appeared in films (Come Play With Me, The Playbirds), stag reels, and many magazine and newspaper spreads. She claimed to have had a one-night stand with Harold Wilson, and committed suicide at the age of 33 in 1979.
Mr. Huggins and Mr. Young.A brand of coffee, favoured by hard-boiled private eyes as a substitute for soft-boiled eggs at breakfast.
Charles Shaar Murray.Journalist, who specialised in pop music. He was at IT between spells atOz and the NME. He wrote the introduction to In Dreams, an original anthology I edited with Paul J. McAuley.
new bugs. School slang—new pupils, rookies, fresh fish.
O Levels. CSEs.Exams taken in the 1970s by UK schoolchildren at about sixteen.
the Oval. Kennington Oval, a cricket ground in South London.
parlour. A reception room, so called because people used it mostly for talking.
pasty-stall. Cornish pasties, traditionally a balanced lunch for tin-miners: meat, potatoes, and vegetables cooked in a pastry parcel. Mostly horrible if bought from supermarkets, but a culinary delight if homemade. You used to be able to get excellent pasties from waterfront stalls and pubs in Lyme Regis.
Pentonville. HM Prison, Pentonville. perambulators. Baby carriages. Isidore Persano. See Leo Dare. the Post Office Tower. Now the BT Tower.
the Pour le Mérite.A German medal, better known (at least thanks to the book and film) as the Blue Max.
Enoch Powell.Far-right politician of the 1960s and ‘70s, who left the Conservatives to join the Ulster Unionists. A controversial figure (to put it mildly), he famously espoused anti-immigration and repatriation policies (as expressed in his racially inflammatory “rivers of blood” speech). Arthur Wise’s novel Who Killed Enoch Powell? (1972) imagines his assassination.
prang. WWI flying slang: crash.
read the riot act. To lay down the law. The expression comes from a law passed by the British parliament in 1714 against riotous assemblies—when an official read out a proclamation that a given crowd should disperse, the malcontents had twenty minutes to go away before the authorities used force to break them up.
rooking. Colloq: deceiving, conning.
the Royal Vic. The Royal Victoria Military Hospital, Netley. A famous building in its day, demolished in 1966. See: Spike Island: The Memory of a Military Hospital, by Philip Hoare.
Neville St. Clair. See “The Man With the Twisted Lip,” by Arthur Conan Doyle.
St. Trinian’s. A notorious girls’ school, first seen in cartoons by Ronald Searle, then a series of films starting with The Belles of St. Trinian’s (1954).
sarky. Sarcastic.
Jimmy Saville. Disc jockey and TV personality, host of the long-running Jim‘ll Fix It, and known in the 1970s for creepy road safety adverts (“clunk-click, every trup”) in which he smarmed over children who’d been horribly mangled in car accidents.
the Scotch Streak and the Go-Codes.See: “The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train” in The Man From the Diogenes Club.
the Seamouth Warp.See: “End of the Pier Show” in The Man From the Diogenes Club.
Sam Sherman. See Al Adamson.
Dr. Silence. See:John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, by Algernon Blackwood.
Dame Ethel Smyth.British composer and a leading suffragette.
the snug. A small bar-room, separate from the larger “public” bar of a pub.
some scandal which was never spoken of in the village. See: Jago.
spend a penny. Use a public convenience—they once had coin-operated stalls.
Albert Steptoe. The “dirty old man” played by Wilfrid Brambell in the BBC-TV sitcom Steptoe and Son (1962-75). A considerably more unpleasant character than the equivalent played by Redd Foxx in the US remake Sanford and Son.
take the money or open the box... make-your-mind-up-time. Catch-phrases on UK TV quiz shows.
a Tiller girl. The Tiller Girls were a troupe of dancers, founded in 1886 by the choreographer John Tiller. Many troupes around the world used the name and the distinctive high-kicks. Tiller also choreographed the original New York Rockettes.
Titfer. Cockney rhyming slang: tit fer tat = hat.
“To Be Specific, It’s Our Pacific, “ “So Long Momma, I’m Off to Yokahama, “ “We ‘re Gonna Slap the Jap Right Off the Map, “ “When Those Little Yellow Bellies Meet the Cohens and the Kellys.”I didn’t make any of these up.
Tripella Liplik Pik. The sea-ghost is actually pronouncing this properly— it’s “The Three Little Pigs” in Pidgin English. The other two books, for the record, are Alice in Wonderland and the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
tweeny. An “in-between maid,” so called because she was expected to work downstairs, assisting the cook, and upstairs, assisting the parlour-maid.
Zanuck. Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox.
Zebedee from The Magic Roundabout. A moustachioed puppet on a spring, who featured in a truly bizarre children’s program. Originally made in France, The Magic Roundabout became a popular and cult success in the UK thanks to overdubbed narration by Eric Thompson (Emma’s Dad). It displaces about as much cultural water in Britain as Rocky and Bullwinkle in the US. There was a horrible CGI revival movie.
Colonel Zenf. See Leo Dare.
Zenith the Albino.Anthony Zenith, dilettante master criminal, most active in the 1920s and ‘30s, repeatedly clashing with the detective Sexton Blake. See: Zenith the Albino (1936), by Anthony Skene. Reported killed in the blitz, but we’ll take the word of a Dr. Shade over hearsay...
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Who’s Who
ARIADNE. Ariadne, Elder of the Kind, has occasionally lived a relatively ordinary life, for instance as the wi
fe of a schoolmaster at Dulwich College at the turn of the century, and as a costume designer in Hollywood (“gowns by Ariadne”) in the 1940s. The Kind, a race apart from humanity, mostly keep themselves to themselves, but there have been a few notable troublemakers. See: Bad Dreams.
CHARLES BEAUREGARD. Among the first Valued Members recruited by Mycroft Holmes (q.v.), Charles Beauregard succeeded his mentor as Chairman of the Ruling Cabal upon Mycroft’s death in 1918. He politely declined six knighthoods. For his activities in another timeline, see: the Anno Dracula cycle, Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron: Anno Dracula 1918 and Dracula Cha Cha Cha (a.k.a. Judgment of Tears: Anno Dracula 1959).
JENNIFER CHAMBERS. The sister of the original Dr. Shade. In the 1920s and ‘30s, Dr. Chambers had many unusual adventurers on the books of her Harley Street practice. See: “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch.”
THE COLD. For its existence in another universe, see Doctor Who: Time and Relative.
DR. DAVID CROSS. A parapsychologist, associated with both the Institute of Psi Technology and the Diogenes Club. He worked with both Susan Rodway and Keith Marion. After the death of Adam Onions, he was appointed director of IPSIT and discontinued the remote viewing program which provided overwhelming evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. See: Jago.
REBECCA D’ ARBANVILLIERS. In later life, Rebecca was a famously nervous socialite. She married the visionary ladies’ wear tycoon Benjamin Blandford Holmes, who she met in the waiting room of the prominent (and presumably pseudonymous) alienist “Sigmund von Doppelganger”; she was being treated for an acute terror of rabbits and he sought a cure for compulsive self-abuse. On his deathbed, Rebecca’s father ceded his title to Gonville Tregellis-d’Aulney, a distant cousin, so she never did become Lady D’Arbanvilliers. Rebecca’s sisters Arrabella (“Bella”) and Gwendollyn (“Dolly”) grew up to marry the abacus and tally-stick tycoon Bartholomew Cleaver (remembed as the inventor of the “end-user license”) and the decadent poet D’Arcy Guillaume, respectively. Rebecca’s nephews Richard Cleaver (“Clever Dick”) and William Guillaume (“Wicked William”) inherited her speech impediment. Guinevere Guillaume (“Gee-Gee”), William’s twin sister, evaded this family curse and became an artists’ model, notorious for her affairs with Fantomas, Pablo Picasso, Colonel Sebastian Moran, and Barbara Stanwyck. Guinevere was the first woman to dance the Charleston on the wing of a monoplane. Rebecca’s granddaughter Theresa worked as a striptease artiste under the name “Tiger Sharkey” and starred in the underground classic stag film Sixth Form Girls in Chains before marrying a Conservative Member of Parliament (see: “Soho Golem”). Theresa’s niece Andrea was the breakout star of the “reality TV” program It’s a Madhouse! (see: “Going to Series”). Andrea survived well into the third series of Celebrity Madhouse—but became a national pariah when she stabbed a glove-puppet worn by a popular children’s entertainer.
GENEVIÈVE DIEUDONNÉ. A long-lived adventuress. For her lives and loves in other timelines, see Anno Dracula, Dracula Cha Cha Cha, “Castle in the Desert,” and “The Other Side of Midnight” for another involvement with the Diogenes Club, and the books collected in Jack Yeovil’s The Vampire Genevieve for a further-flung reality. For more of the Genevieve featured in “The Big Fish” and “Cold Snap,” see “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch” and Seven Stars. Little-known fact: Krzystztof Kieslowski tried to persuade her to star inTrots Quatre Couleurs: Ultra-Violette.
THE DIOGENES CLUB. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced the Diogenes Club in “The Greek Interpreter,” along with its most prominent member, Mycroft Holmes. Later, in “The Bruce-Partington Plans,” we learn that not only does brother Mycroft work for the British government but, under certain circumstances, heis the British government. The notion that the Diogenes Club is the ancestor of Ian Fleming’s Universal Export, a covert front for British Intelligence, was first made by Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The timeline of The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club and The Man From the Diogenes Club is shared by “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch” and Seven Stars. Separate alternate timeline versions feature in the Anno Dracula cycle and “The Man on the Clapham Omnibus.”
CONSTANT DRACHE. East German-born visionary architect, and probable diabolist. His buildings win awards, but are notoriously uncomfortable to live and work in. See: “Organ Donors,” “Going to Series.” Also, an alternate timeline equivalent of the villain of Jack Yeovil’s Drachenfels.
THE GUMSHOE. The narrator of “The Big Fish” returns in “The Trouble With Barrymore,” an episode of Seven Stars. An Anno Dracula universe version of the character appears in the story “Castle in the Desert.” If he isn’t Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, then he has a lot in common— including a wife, an office, and that problem with frequently getting hit on the head—with him.
ANTHONY JAGO. The Reverend Anthony John Jago, a unique Talent, is the major character in Jago. An ancestor, John Jago, features in Anno Dracula. Much of his eventual belief system comes from the Victorian Reverend Henry James Prince, though his paranormal abilities have much in common with the novelist John Morlar (see: The Medusa Touch, by Peter Van Greenaway).
RICHARD JEPERSON. The Most Valued Member of the Diogenes Club in the 1970s. See the stories collected in The Man From the Diogenes Club and Seven Stars. Alternate timeline versions appear in “Who Dares Wins: Anno Dracula 1980” and “The Man on the Clapham Omnibus.”
CATRIONA KAYE. Catriona first appeared in my play My One Little Murder Can’t Do Any Harm (1981). She also pops up in Jago (which features the Mystery of Swastika Girl), The Bloody Red Baron: Anno Dracula 1918, “The Pierce-Arrow Stalled, and...,” Seven Stars, and “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch.”
KENTISH GLORY. An adventuress of the 1930s, who took her name from a variety of moth. See “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch.” She briefly teamed with Dr. Shade, and later married him. Played by Valerie Hobson in Dr. Shade’s Phantom Taxi Mystery (1936). Not to be confused with Penny Stamp, Dr. Shade’s other assistant.
SEWELL HEAD. This psychic prodigy is the focal character of “Swellhead” in The Man From the Diogenes Club. An alternate timeline version appears in “Pitbull Brittan.”
DR. MYRA LARK. A psychologist more interested in the uses of insane people than their cures. See: “You Don’t Have to Be Mad...” in The Man From the Diogenes Club and “Going to Series.”
DEREK LEECH. The controversial multimedia tycoon appears most prominently in “The Original Dr. Shade,” “SQPR,” “Organ Donors,” “Where the Bodies Are Buried 3: Black and White and Red All Over,” “Going to Series,” and The Quorum. At his most diabolical, he is the narrator of Life’s Lottery.
KEITH MARION. The mixed-up fellow appears in Life’s Lottery. One of his many, many selves features in “The Intervention.”
INSPECTOR HENRY MIST. The canny Victorian policeman first tangled with “publicist” Billy Quinn in “A Drug on the Market.” Head of Scotland Yard’s Bureau of Queer Complaints from 1892 to 1911.
MAUREEN MOUNTMAIN. Descendant of the Mountmain family, a dynasty of Irish black magicians active over several centuries. She was the mother of Mimsy, the daughter Richard Jeperson didn’t know about until 2006. See: Seven Stars.
KATE REED. Katharine Reed was originally going to be a character in Dracula, but Bram Stoker never managed to include her. To make up for that, she is prominent in the Anno Dracula cycle. For more of the Kate of “The Gypsies in the Wood,” see “The Mummy’s Heart” in Seven Stars.
FREDERICK REGENT. A London policeman, seconded to work with the Diogenes Club in “The End of the Pier Show.” By the time of “Swellhead,” he had risen to the rank of Chief Inspector—despite marrying a stripper.
SUSAN RODWAY a.k.a. SUSAN AMES. After demonstrating various paranormal abilities in her early teens, Susan became a minor celebrity and the subject of a trashy paperback biography The Mind Beyond. After being caught in an apparent hoax, she retreated from the public eye. See: Jago.
LOUISE MAGELLAN TEAZLE. Author of popular children’s books: Weezie and the Gloomy Ghost, The Haunting of Chasemoor Grange School, etc. Once caused a minor controversy by referring to the works of Enid Blyton as “utter piffle” on a BBC Radio broadcast. A long-time associate of Catriona Kaye, she lived in the Hollow, Sutton Mallet—purportedly, the most haunted house in Britain. The Louise Magellan Teazle Appreciation Society Web-site is at http://www.johnnyalucard.com/ghost.html .