Changes

Perhaps I should explain. Ms Park Bridges seems to have spent days researching the history. She has gone into Victorian theatre and culture, the birth of the motor car, dress, French life of that era... but she’s failed at an easy hurdle: the difference between American and English. (I apologise – I don’t mean to rant, but I fear I might.) The author inserts a lovely in-joke about the Americans not being able to make tea as well as the British... but then throughout the book she insists that the British Watson takes tea with cream in. Yes, cream ‘’in’’ ''in'' the tea. I wanted to believe it was so. So much so, in fact, I downloaded ‘’The ''The Complete Works of Sherlock Holmes’’ Holmes'' to my e-reader and did a word search. There are over 20 mentions of cups of tea and not one of them includes the use of cream. This wasn’t the only vernacular slip-up. Apparently we had railway cars in England rather than railway carriages and used the word ‘’gotten’’''gotten'', as in Holmes’ Holmes' comment ’’After ''After I had finally gotten the room in order.’’ '' Holmes is quintessentially English so it seems a shame that these details were overlooked. They don’t detract hugely from the adventure but they do jar in this setting.