The image stereotype of the Sherlock Holmes character (Source: Culture Livresque)
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Few characters from modern literature pop up on cinema screens and TV sets as frequently as Sherlock Holmes does. Some observers have stated it more firmly. Christopher Redmond estimates that Sherlock Holmes is the most prolific screen character in the history of cinema (A Sherlock Holmes Handbook (1994)). Just how many different Sherlock Holmes screen adaptions have been made is too large and elusive a number to pin down accurately, but screen vehicles of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous super-sleuth and Mensa-alumni certainly number in the hundreds✱.
(Photo: CrimeReads)
A publishing can of worms
When Arthur Conan Doyle (ACD) died in 1930 the author left his literary works in Trust to his widow (Jean Conan Doyle) and immediate family. But in excluding his daughter Mary from his first marriage, ACD opened the door to an ongoing family rift, decades of squabbles, strife and litigation by his heirs, descendants and their spouses.
As the intra-family ‘Barney’ over who controls the copyright to the Sherlock Holmes works deepened, the imbroglio entangled an investment company specifically set up to manage the windfall (aptly named “Baskervilles Investments”) and even the Royal Bank of Scotland (‘History of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Copyrights’, (2015), www.arthurconandoyle.com).
1954 Holmes TV series with Ronald Howard (Photo: dvdfr.com)⌖
The upshot of the kerfuffle was that each of the competing parties claimed to be the rightful holder of the rights to ACD’s literary estate, and then attempted to sell it notwithstanding the prevailing uncertainty over ownership. American TV producer-director Sheldon Reynolds acquired a licence from two of Arthur’s sons to make a Sherlock Holmes series in the 1950s. When, 20 years later, Reynolds tried to get a licence for a follow-up series on TV, he found that the legal landscape had changed. The rights were now held by the Royal Bank of Scotland who had acquired them after the previous owner defaulted on a loan. Eventually, with funds provided by his Pfizer heiress mother-in-law, Reynolds secured the rights to the Holmes stories.
Andréa Plunket (Source: goodreads.com)
Culture of litigation
Since 1990 the main battle for control of the copyrights has pitted Reynolds’s ex-wife, Hungarian-born heiress Andréa Milos (née Reynolds, née Plunket) versus the Conan Doyle Estate and others. Plunket has doggedly claimed to hold the rights to the name “Sherlock Holmes” and the stories, despite a lack of legal support for the claims. Lawsuits were exchanged between her andthe Estate. Plunket also threatened tosue the BBC over its Sherlock television series for allegedly infringing ‘her’ trademarks (‘The Scandalous Sherlock Holmes Copyright Issue’, Mattias Boström, I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, 30-Jul-2015, www.ihearofsherlock.com).
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate for its part has been particularly litigious in defence of its literary legacy. The Estate has consistently striven to maintain water-tight control over both the Sherlock Holmes stories and the characters. In 2013 it demanded author Leslie S Klinger pay a fee to license the Sherlock character for an anthology he was planning to do. Klinger’s response was to sue the Estate on the basis that most of the Sherlock material was in the public domain. In court the judge upheld Klinger’s position, while reaffirming that some late works were still covered under copyright (‘Sherlock Holmes Copyright: An overview’, Brogan Woodburn,www.redpoints.com). In 2020 it sued Netflix over its upcoming film Enola Holmes. The grounds? The film apparently depicts Holmes as having emotions and respecting women. This, the Estate contends, breaches Conan Doyle’s copyright (‘Lawsuit over ‘warmer’ Sherlock depicted in Enola Holmes dismissed’, Alison Flood, The Guardian, 22-Dec-2020, www.theguardian.com).
‘The Red-Headed League’ story (Golden Press edition, 1963)
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End-note: An additional complication over the Holmes copyright issue is a demarcation between the UK and US laws. In the UK copyright lasts for 70 years after an author’s death (in Conan Doyle’s case, the copyright expired in 2000). Conversely in the USA some copyrights extend for 95 years from the date of the work’s first publication⍟. This has proved a stumbling block for TV series and film-makers trying to adapt one of the Sherlock stories in recent years (‘Sherlock Holmes And His “Copyrighted Emotions”‘, Copyright House, 28-Sep-2020, www.copyrighthouse.org).
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✱ including works for film, music, radio, stage, video games, there are over 25,000 products that are related to the famous detective (Woodburn)
⍟ the last of ACD’s published work expires in 2023
One of the more novel art genres to emerge in the first third of last century was the “Pitman Painters” phenomenon in northern England. Known as the Ashington Group✱, these were a small collective of unionised mine workers in county Northumberland who approached their local Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) seeking out tuition in new areas of education. Initially the pitmen were hoping WEA could find a economics professor to tutor them in the “dismal science”. When none could be arranged, their interest switched to learning painting and drawing.
⇡ ‘Coal Face’, Jimmy Floyd (1947) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)
Artist and WEA teacher Robert Lyon took on the task of teaching the miners—mainly from the Woodhorn and Ellington collieries—all of whom had no formal art training. The workers however didn’t take to dry lectures on the Classical and Renaissance art, so Lyon adopted a more pragmatic approach of teaching the miners the basics of drawing and painting. Lyon advised the miners to simply “paint what they knew” ‘Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters’, Artist Biographies, www.artblogs.co.uk.
⇡‘Coal-Face Drawers’, Oliver Kilbourn (1950) (Image: TUC150.tuc.org.uk)
In 1934 the workers formed themselves into a small society of miner-artists who met weekly to paint and discuss their work. Most of the small group were adherents of the political platform of the Independent Labour Party) (‘Ashington Group’, Wikipedia). The Ashington men even wrote their own constitution, setting out the regulations each of the members had to abide by, including a commitment to the establishment of a permanent collection of their work (” ‘An Experiment in Art Appreciation’: The WEA and the Ashington Art Group”, Marie-Therese Maybe, North East History, Vol 37 2006, www nelh.net).
⇡ ‘Pithead Baths’, Oliver Kilbourn (1939) (Credit: Woodhorn Museum)
With guidance from Lyon and support from patrons, especially from celebrated collector Helen Sutherland, the group got to observe ‘professional’ art in galleries – Newcastle, London (Tate and National Galleries), etc. Absorbing the influences of professional art, the group of amateur artists increasingly focused on local subjects from their lives and their environs. They also experimented with art forms and styles…trying sculpture, dabbling in abstraction, but ultimately they stuck with social realism, painting mostly in a naive style. In the communal environment of the group hut members critically evaluated each other’s work.
⇡ L Brownrigg, ‘The Miner‘
The Ashington colliery was situated in what some called “the largest coal-mining village in the world”, (‘Celebrating 150 proud years of Ashington, in Northumberland – in 10 archive photos’, Chronicle Live, David Morton, 05-Oct-2017, www.chroniclelive.co.uk). The achievement collectively of the mine workers was to capture their lived experience accurately and truly on canvas, showing the severity of life in the pits. Devoid of sentimentality, the paintings depict the day-to-day reality of gruelling, dirty, backbreaking work, an experience that outsiders have no familiarity with, eg, Leslie Brownrigg’s ‘The Miner’ conveys the deprivations of the tunnel ‘hewer’, labouring away in ultra-cramped, severely restricted space, “crouching semi-naked within the tomb-like shafts” (Mayne). Painting their own lives, the pitmen “testified to a familiarity that no one else from trained art backgrounds could truly understand” (Ashington Group of Pitmen Painters).
⇡ ‘X’mas Tree 1950’, Harry Wilson
Pitmen Painters did not restrict themselves to the life of mine workers below the ground. The non-professional group of artists took on all aspects of home life, ordinary social activities, the pub, football matches, dog tracks, fish-and-chip shops, pigeon ‘crees’ (sheds), etc. What comes through in many of the paintings is just how unglamorous 1930s coal-dominated Ashington was – “dreary rows (of homes) a mile long…ashpits and mines down the middle of still unmade streets” (Mayne).
The group’s first exhibition at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in 1936, gave them new public exposure and even a critical nod from the likes of Julian Trevelyan and sculptor Henry Moore.
‘Pigeon crees’, Jimmy Floyd ⇡
After WWII interest in the Ashington Group waned but the men from the pits continued their painting. The early 1970s brought a renewal of interest in the Ashington Group due to the efforts of critic William Feaver After meeting what remained of the group including foundation member Oliver Kilbourn, Feaver “reconstructs their history, revives their work, curates exhibitions, culminating in a China tour in 1980, the first western exhibition in China after the Cultural Revolution✧ (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres, (2009), (‘Pitman Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver’, Vulpes Libres, (2009) (http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com)⊞.
⇡ Norman Cornish, last of the group
Despite their late rediscovery the Ashington Group’s days were numbered. Coal mines in the Ashington area and the north were closing down in 1980s Thatcherite Britain. The trigger which brought the group to a sudden halt was a prosaic and trivial matter of 50p! In 1982 the annual ground rent on the pitmen’s hut in Ashington was increased by 50p to £14 (Mayne). This proved a straw too much for the ageing handful of members still active and the Ashington Group folded in 1983, just one year shy of its half-centenary. Today the Pitmen Painters are all gone and Ashington and like towns are bereft of traces of their coal-mining past, however the art of the pitmen (or most of it) remains as a visual reminder of that life. With Feaver and other admirers’ help, the permanent collection, a key article of the group’s constitution, exists today, housed within the Woodhorn Mining Museum.
Footnote: Mining art Japanese style Coal miner art is not the exclusive domain of Northumberland or even Britain. It also emerged in Japan in the art of Sakubei Yamamoto. Yamamoto’s entire work life from the age of seven or eight was in coal mines in the Fukuoka Prefecture. Only at age 57 did Yamamoto start painting seriously. Over the following years he produced over 700 paintings of his work milieu, providing “a visual record of the brutality of mining life, capturing the poverty of workers and their families, the personal lives, customs and superstitions, and their struggles for a better life. Like the Pitmen Painters’ permanent collection, Yamamoto’s ouevre found a home in a former mine site, the Tagawa History and Coal Museum (‘The Pitmen Painters of England and Japan’, Diana Cooper-Richet, The Conversation, 16-Jan-2018, www.theconversation.com).
⇡ (L) O Kilbourn (Image: Bellcode Books)
Pitmen personnel: the Ashington Group’s founder members include Oliver Kilbourn (probably the best known of the Pitmen Painters)⌖, George Blessed, Jimmy Floyd, Harry Wilson, Lee Robinson, John Dobson and John F Harrison.
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✱ the group initially met in a small hut in Longhorsley, but after WWII began, they were forced to relocate into Ashington proper, a small town in the coal-mining region of Northumberland
✧ on the China tour group members visited the mining province of Shansi
⊞ Feaver’s book on the group inspired a 2007 play by Billy Elliot author Lee Hall
⌖ prolific in output and broad in scope (including historical subjects among his artwork), Kilbourn exhibited his own series ‘My Life as a Pitman’ in Nottingham in 1977
Woodford is one of those sleepy little towns on the Great Western Highway about mid-way across the Blue Mountains range. Originally the village was called “20 Mile Hollow”, the nomenclature had a pattern to it, Bull’s Camp☸ just on the eastern side of Woodford was known as “19 Mile Hollow” and modern day Linden, further east was originally “18 Mile Hollow”, and so on.
(Image: Blue Mountains City Council)
Woodford’s main claim to fame is the historical landmark Woodford Academy, a property with a varied multi-functional past. Traditionally the custodians of this land are Darug and Gundungurra peoples, but after William Cox’ s convict labour built the Bathurst Road over the mountains, the first known European activity dates to the late 1820s/early 1830s when a convict and illegal squatter on the Woodford site, William James, operated a sly-grog shop.
The first significant structure here started off as an inn circa 1833-1834 on 20 hectares of land granted to Irish-born emancipist Thomas Michael Pembroke (the building of weatherboard construction was called the “Woodman’s Inn”☯). Licensee Pembroke’s facilities included nine rooms, stables for six horses, a store and stock and sheep yards. Woodman’s Inn provided food and lodgings for traveller, including soldiers and colonial officials, between Sydney and Bathurst. Pembroke however suffered some financial setbacks and was forced to sell the inn to Michael Hogan in 1839.
‘Woodman’s Inn’ (1842) (Mitchell Lib.)
Under Hogan’s ownership the weatherboard structure was replaced by a stone building in 1843. The inn licence for the now named “The King’s Arms Hotel” changed hands over the ensuing years – James Nairn, William Barton, Josiah Workman, John Cobcroft and Thomas James were some of the resident publicans. The 1851 discovery of gold put an end to the isolation of Woodford. In 1855 Hogan sold the inn to William Buss of Cowra for £1,040 and the hotel became better known as “Buss’ Inn”. The inn flourished with plentiful trade from passing gold diggers heading for Bathurst and soldiers. But in the mid 1860s business declined and Buss’s widow in turn sold the establishment to Alfred Fairfax (described at the time as a “wholesale grocer of Sydney) in 1868 for £450. Fairfax had an incentive to buy when he did…in 1867 a western rail line was constructed from Penrith to Weatherboard (later “Wentworth Falls”). In 1869 a railway platform (“Buss’ Platform”) was established at what was now called “Woodford House”, advertised as a “gentleman’s country guest house” and “mountain retreat”. At this time the Blue Mountains was becoming a fashionable spot to be…valued for its “fresh, healthy, cool mountain air, waterfalls and broad vistas”.
(Source: Blue Mountains Gazette)
Fairfax acquired extra acreage on the site, consolidated into a 26-hectare estate, using much of it for commercial orchard planting. He also created a network of walking tracks around the property, one of which was called the “Transit of Venus” track. Fairfax was something of an amateur astronomer, possessing a 4.75-inch Schroder telescope and had allowed Woodford House to be utilised for observing the 1874 Transit of Venus✴. Alas for Fairfax the orchard failed and finding himself in financial difficulties he was forced to mortgage Woodford House in 1877.
Woodford House 1889 (‘London Illustrated News’)
In the 1880s, under manager John Robert Place, the renovated and expanded Woodford House was being touted as providing “superior accommodation”, “a change of air and mountain scenery” and “a capital tennis court on the grounds”. The guest house was not a cheap stay, two weeks’ board was £4/4 (December 1890), equivalent to a fortnight’s pay for a skilled worker.
In 1897 Fairfax sold the Woodford House estate to David Flannery who increased his holdings by 90 acres. At this time the property was being described as a ‘sanatorium’ (cf. the Hydro Majestic at Medlow Bath, see the 31 April 2015 blog: Medlow Majestic in the Wilderness: Transforming a White Elephant into a White Palace?).
In 1907 Woodford House entered a new phase of utilisation when poet-cum-rector John Fraser McManamey initially leased the property৳ from Mary Jane Waterhouse (the new owner) and converted it into Woodford Academy, a small, exclusive school for boys of all ages✧. In the early 20th century a trend emerged where parents who could afford to were sending their children to small private boarding schools in the Blue Mountains which like Woodford Academy were converted grand estates. The appeal was the promise of “fresh mountain air and bracing climate” thought “beneficially to both children’s constitutions and academic performance”❂.
Woodford Academy c.1920 (Photo: RAHS)
From 1907 to 1925 when the school closed for four years—before reopening as a day school for girls and boys—over 300 students had been educated there. Woodford Academy closed for good in 1936, but McManamey stayed on tutoring private students. When he died, killed in a car accident outside Woodford Academy in 1946, the property was subdivided, some of the land was sold to the Department of Education and a portion of it donated to the Presbyterian Church. McManamey’s daughters took in long-term boarders, in 1979 the surviving daughter Gertrude bequeathed the house and grounds to the National Trust, continuing to live there until her death in 1988. After 1979 the National Trust undertook extensive repairs and improvements.
Today Woodford Academy is a museum of Blue Mountains colonial life, conducting educational tours and “ghost tours”. The 1870s dining room can be hired for dinners and the Academy hosts community events like the Mid-Mountains’ annual Harvest Festival.
Footnote: after establishing the Academy McManamey immersed himself into local community activities – Woodford Bush Fire Brigade, Woodford Progress Association, (president of) Woodford Tennis Club, as well as serving as a Blue Mountains shire councillor.
Woodford Academy, 90-92 Great Western Highway, Woodford 2778 NSW
𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷𓂷
☸ a camp for convict road gangs working for magistrate and assistant engineer Captain John Bull
☯ it was also possibly known at times as “The Sign of the Woodman”
✴ chosen as a site for its “clear and steady atmosphere“, (Fairfax’s house was) “a most promising station”
৳ in 1914 McManamey purchased 5.06 hectares of the Woodford estate including the house
✧ McManamey prior to Woodford was headmaster at Cooerwull Academy in Bowenfels (Lithgow area)
❂ English, History, Mathematics, Science, Latin plus one modern language
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Bibliography
‘Woodford Academy – History’, Blue Mountains Australia (BMPH), http://infobluemountains.net.au
‘Seriously “Old School” – Woodford Academy’, National Trust, www.nationaltrust.org.au
Goodlet, Ken, ‘Woodford Academy’, Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/woodford_academy, viewed 20 May 2021 ‘Woodford Academy’,
A Rare Treasure’, Ken Goodlet, Blue Mountains History Journal, Issue 6, 2015, www.bluemountainsheritage.com.au
‘Woodford’s vital role in the 1874 Transit of Venus’, Robyne Ridge, Blue Mountains Gazette, 13-Jun-2018, www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au
See also the preceding blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part I’
After the UN negotiated a cease-fire in Cyprus in 1974, following the Turkish army’s military incursion, the ‘Green Line’ from 1964 was reestablished…a new buffer zone cut right through Nicosia, separating the northern and southern sections of the city. The divided island was left in a highly militarised state – UN estimates put the Turkey presence in the north at around 30,000 soldiers whereas the Republic of Cyprus maintains a force of 12,000 plus up to 2,000 troops from Greece. The fallout from what the Turkish regime called Kibris Baris Harekâti (“Cyprus Peace Operation”) left 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced (A Borowiec, Cyprus: A Troubled Island (2000); A Smit, The Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution (2012)).
Source: The Economist
Since the Turkish invasion and the subsequent unilateral declaration of an autonomous Turkish Cypriot entity (in 1983 consolidated into the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”), there have many attempts to settle the Cyprus impasse, all of which have floundered. Among the would-be fixers have been a succession of UN secretary-generals including Perez de Cueller, Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, all advancing plans in a vain attempt to end the decades-long stalemate.
Annan Plan
Kofi Annan’s plan proposed a restructure of the island into a federation comprising two states – the “United Republic of Cyprus”. Put to a referendum in 2004 it was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots, a disparity which demonstrates how far apart the two sides are and how difficult getting a consensus on the issue will be. The context of the Greek Cypriots’ hardline stance—adopting a view that acceptance of the plan would in fact “legalise the island’s de facto partition”—should be viewed in light of the fact that Cyprus had already been guaranteed membership of the European Union (EU) (‘The Peace Processes: 2004 Annan Plan’, Michael Theodoulou, Cyprus Mail, 29-Dec-2016, www. cyprus-mail.com).
Kofi Annan (Source: The Guardian)
Changing the paradigm: Reunification
The international community as a whole, the UN, the EU, tend to favour a unification resolution of the island country. Barriers to reunification however are myriad – including where to draw the boundaries between the two communities; the issue of demilitarisation of the island⊗; the question of displaced Cypriots which opens the can of worms of property rights; the repatriation of Turkish settlers from North☮ (Chan).
Putting Cyprus first
An additional underlying factor is the future role of the three guarantor powers, Turkey, Greece and Britain. A future unified Cyprus needs security against new interventions by Turkey and Greece (‘Cyprus Stalemate’, (Fiona Mullen), Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, broadcast 05-May-2021). Added to the destabilisation, the two hostile Aegean littoral states have continually interfered with Cyprus’ internal politics for their own political advantage. The outside meddling complicates the island’s dilemma, forming a barrier to serious negotiation between the Greek and Turkish communities. When the government in Athens or Ankara is in domestic difficulties they have a habit of reverting to a hardline on the Cyprus issue to deflect attention from their woes at home (Kaloudis, George. “CYPRUS: THE ENDURING CONFLICT.” International Journal on World Peace, vol. 16, no. 1, 1999, pp. 3–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20753188. Accessed 10 May 2021).
A deficit of patriotism
Such is the polarised nature of life in divided Cyprus that both the Turkish and the Greek communities are more loyal to the “mother country” than they are to their own country. This diminished or even absent sense of patriotism by Cypriots works against the misson of securing a solution for Cyprus (Kaloudis).
Image: www.dw.com
Mistrust and baggage
The simple fact that Greece and Turkey are weighed down by so much historical baggage intensifies the difficulty of finding a viable solution for Cyprus. Ancient rivalries, colonial relationships and wars, have contributed to an atmosphere of mutual distrust which extends to contemporary Cyprus. Greek mistrust of more powerful neighbour Turkey fuels hawkish Greek Cypriot perspectives, seeing in the Turkish Cypriots’ two-state solution a Turkish hidden agenda – the first step by Ankara in securing control over the entire country (‘Cyprus: Turkey is heading for a two-state solution’, Costas Venizelos, Greek City Times, Dec 2020, www.greekcitytimes.com). Conversely, the Turkish community (18% of population) fear domination by the numerically much greater Greek community (78%), add to this differences in ethnicity, language and religion, doesn’t make finding common ground between the two communities any easier to accomplish (Kaloudis).
If tensions rise between Turkey and Greece, there is the chance of a knock-on effect on the Cyprus situation. When is more likely the reality as new sources of potential Greek-Turkey conflict abound – control of air space in the Aegean Sea, Greece’s desire to fortify its islands in the eastern Mediterranean, claims on each others’ continental shelf, etc.
Photo: www.in-cyprus.philenews.com
Oil catalyst
The dispute over continental shelves is linked to the most worrying Aegean issue, Turkey’s recent oil and natural gas ventures, exploring and drilling in territorial waters contested by Greece and Cyprus§. The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) backs Greek territorial claims in the region, however with Turkey not a signatory of UNCLOS, it’s probable that Ankara will not feel itself bound by its law and thus raising the prospect of an escalation of conflict (‘Greece calls on Turkey to stop renewed gas exploration activities in East Med’, Diego Cupolo, Al-Monitor, 10-Aug-2020, www.al-monitor.com).
Deserted Varosha (Photo: www.the-sun.com)
Famagusta ghost town
Another simmering trigger-point for Greek-Turkey tensions over Cyprus is the “no-go” Famagusta province in the island’s north. Deserted by Greek Cypriot residents in 1974, it was seized by the Turkish military and fenced off with barbed wire. Famagusta’s holiday beach resort of Varosha, has come to attention recently because the TRNC are in the process of reopening this “ghost town” to commercial activity and human habitation…this has prompted protests from the republic of Cyprus who declared the move illegal (‘Cyprus asks UN to step in as beach in north is opened after 46 years’, Helena Smith, The Guardian, 09-Oct-2020, www.theguardian.com).
One of the core stumbling blocks to productive negotiation on the Cyprus stalemate is the fundamental question of who owns Cyprus? A large element of the Greek Cypriot community in particular take a partisan view of the question – insisting that its population majority on the island justifies overall ownership, whereas the Turkish community just as avowedly insists on its right to an “equal partnership” (Mullen).
Failure of political leadership
The Cypriot politicians fronting up to the merry-go-round of fruitless negotiations have abjectly failed in their task to find a resolution…their own entrenched interests and a disinclination to compromise means they come up empty every time. As the progressive-thinking Cyprus Mail summed up the parlous state of Cypriot leadership currently being dished up: “We have returned to the good old days of the Cyprus problem, when every statement issued by one side had to be answered by the other and the blame game was never switched off” (‘Our View: ‘Anastasiades has led the Cyprob to a dead end’ Cyprus Mail 09-May-2021).
With the appointed leaders being part of the problem, some believe it’s time to dump the barren leader-led process and try a markedly new approach to negotiation. One pathway worth pursuing might be to devolve the responsibility to the civic assemblies level, as has been tried with success in Ireland (Mullen).
Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades (www.dailysabah.com)
There’s a perception by some observers that the Greek side doesn’t especially want to reach a settlement. The periodical summits and meetings come round and they go through the motions, paying lip service to the process. This view of a political lack of will has been articulated even among Greek Cypriots, the person in the street (‘Rationality and the Cyprus Issue’, Hugh Pope, International Crisis Group, 08-Mar-2011, www.internationalcrisisgroup.org). In contrast to the hypocritical politicians on both sides, a December 2010 Interpeace poll revealed that two-thirds of Greek and Turkish Cypriots wanted a resolution (Cyprus Mail).
Behind such cynicism is a complacency on the Greek Cypriot side, many of the politicians may be happy with the status quo…Greek Cypriots in the south are comparatively wealthy cf. the economically weak northern entity. The south has all the privileges of EU membership denied to the north. This diminishes some of the impetus, at least domestically, to seek change. All this doesn’t absolve the motives of Turkish politicians from scrutiny. The North Turkey regime is dependent on Turkey for protection, the situation suits Ankara, also giving it a location to offload surplus population. Turkey is in a position to use Cyprus as a bargaining chip in the Mediterranean (‘Opinion: The never-ending Cyprus conflict’, Spiro Moskovou, DW, 22-Nov-2016, www.dw.com). Ankara seems reasonably comfortable with the state of things too, as long as it has a military presence in control of the north.
TRNC President Tatar (www.dailysabah.com)
TRNC president’s pitch
The Northern Cyprus leader Ersin Tatar used the April summit in Geneva to push his two-state solution (2SS)… its merits in the TRNC president’s eyes were that it represented a fairer proposal than the Greek Cypriot one, allowing for what he calls “political equality” between the two communities, adding that 2SS would make possible an opening up of the economy in the north.
Turkish Cypriots justify the establishment of TRNC as a right of self-determination, but it’s hold on Northern Cyprus has been rejected by the international community as an illegal occupation of an EU member state (the Republic of Cyprus). As a result the body of EU law has been suspended in the northern section of the island (Mullen).
The seemingly insurmountable hurdle remains the yawning gulf between what each communities wants. A 2009 survey found that 78% of Greek Cypriots supported a unitary state solution, while 71% of Turkish Cypriots backed the two-state solution (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). While both sides with blinkered vision cling to such an absolute position, its hard to envision any breakthrough to one of the world’s most Intractable regional conflicts happening in the foreseeable future.
Kípros/Kıbrıs (Image: www.britannia.com)
Footnote: The Enosis question
The Greek Cypriot quest for Enosis (‘Unioned’) with Greece received a boost from the activism of ultra-right paramilitary organisation EOKA-B in the early Seventies. EOKA-B was involved in plots to assassinate Cypriot leader Makarios III (unsuccessful)—when he turned against the goal of Enosis—and in the assassination of US ambassador to Cyprus Rodger Paul Davies (successful), a protest against Washington’s failure to take action on Turkey’s 1974 invasion✼. The Greek Colonels, behind the 1974 coup which unseated Archbishop Makarios, also espoused Union with Greece in its efforts to created a “Hellenic State of Cyprus’. This was perhaps the high-water mark for Enosis in Cyprus. Polls in recent years have indicated that support for union with the ‘motherland’ has dissipated (‘Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
✼ notwithstanding the US supported the Greek Colonels’ overthrow of the Greek government and monarchy in 1967
⊗ Turkey and Greece’s heavy military commitment in Cyprus imposes a massive burden on the economies of Greece and Turkey, a resolution would free up finances which are much needed elsewhere in their countries
☮ Ankara embarked on a expansive settlement program after invasion – by 1980 between 35 and 40 thousand Turkish settlers had migrated to Turkish-controlled areas (Helge Jensehaugen(2017)‘Filling the void’: Turkish settlement in Northern Cyprus, 1974–1980,Settler Colonial Studies,7:3,354-371,DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2016.1196031)
§ over the last decade the (Turkish) ‘Barbaros’ research vessel has repeatedly infiltrated Cyprus’ EEZ, a clear violation of UNCLOS
The image stereotype of the Sherlock Holmes character (Source: Culture Livresque)
(Photo: CrimeReads)
As the intra-family ‘Barney’ over who controls the copyright to the Sherlock Holmes works deepened, the imbroglio entangled an investment company specifically set up to manage the windfall (aptly named “Baskervilles Investments”) and even the Royal Bank of Scotland (‘History of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Copyrights’, (2015), www.arthurconandoyle.com).
Andréa Plunket (Source: goodreads.com)
The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate for its part has been particularly litigious in defence of its literary legacy. The Estate has consistently striven to maintain water-tight control over both the Sherlock Holmes stories and the characters. In 2013 it demanded author Leslie S Klinger pay a fee to license the Sherlock character for an anthology he was planning to do. Klinger’s response was to sue the Estate on the basis that most of the Sherlock material was in the public domain. In court the judge upheld Klinger’s position, while reaffirming that some late works were still covered under copyright (‘Sherlock Holmes Copyright: An overview’, Brogan Woodburn, www.redpoints.com). In 2020 it sued Netflix over its upcoming film Enola Holmes. The grounds? The film apparently depicts Holmes as having emotions and respecting women. This, the Estate contends, breaches Conan Doyle’s copyright (‘Lawsuit over ‘warmer’ Sherlock depicted in Enola Holmes dismissed’, Alison Flood, The Guardian, 22-Dec-2020, www.theguardian.com).
‘The Red-Headed League’ story (Golden Press edition, 1963)
