A festive Sherlock Holmes adventure, in which the great detective follows a trail of clues connecting a battered old hat and a lost Christmas goose to the notorious theft of a valuable gem, the blue carbuncle. Can Holmes find the missing jewel, collect the reward, and save an innocent man from prison? The story begins at 00:01:28.

Narrated/performed by Simon Stanhope, aka Bitesized Audio. If you enjoy this content and would like to help me keep creating, there are a few ways you can support me (and get access to exclusive content):

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Timestamps:
00:00:00 Introduction
00:01:28 The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
00:51:55 Credits, thanks and further listening

The music used at the beginning and end of the story is an extract from 'Duet for Two Violins' by Luigi Boccherini, Op 5 N2 Larghetto.

About the author: Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859–1930) was a Scottish doctor and author, celebrated for his world-famous creation Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective who set the standard for crime fiction into the 20th century and beyond. In addition to his Holmes stories, Conan Doyle is also remembered for his fantasy and science fiction novels and stories, including 'The Parasite' and 'The Lost World' series of novels, his historical fiction, and for numerous short stories contributed to magazines over a 40 year period. He was knighted by King Edward VII in the 1902 Coronation Honours.

'The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle' was first published in the January 1892 edition of The Strand Magazine. It was the fifth short story to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes and was subsequently re-published in book form when the first 12 stories were collected together as 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' later that year. It has been frequently adapted for radio and television; it is one of only six surviving episodes of the 1960s BBC television series starring Peter Cushing as Holmes, and it also featured in the first series of the 1980s Granada TV series starring Jeremy Brett.

A note on the text: for those reading along with the book, please be aware that there may be some minor differences between the text of the story as originally printed in The Strand (1892) and the later book publications. For clarity, the text read here is the original 1892 Strand Magazine version.

Recording © Bitesized Audio 2023