‘Bending the Willow’ was the first book about Jeremy Brett to reach the publishing presses shortly after his untimely death in 1995, and as David Stuart Davies admits in his ‘Afterword’ of 2002, “the bulk of this book was written with passion in the days immediately following JB’s death”. It was never intended to be a biography: rather, a discussion and evaluation of Brett’s work in the Granada Holmes series.

I have always felt that ‘Bending the Willow’ falls somewhere between this evaluation (which it does very well) and a type of biography (which it does less well, and which it should have just left alone in a book discussing a particular actor’s characterisation of an iconic character there is no need to include chapters directly relating to people not immediately involved in that work – to me, such inclusion is dubious at best). Stuart Davies included in the previous edition an ‘Afterword’ which really adds nothing to the case, especially when he touches – clearly with some reluctance – on the question of whether Brett’s sexuality impacted on the way he portrayed Sherlock Holmes, concluding that “all that kind of baggage would have been left in his dressing room”. Far better for the book to simply stand as a definitive study of, as it says in its subtitle, ‘Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes’.

The main ten chapters of this fascinating book do reflect with sharp insight on the Adventures, the Return, the Casebook, and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, as well as discussing in some depth the feature length episodes which appeared throughout the series. The book gives credit where due to Michael Cox – fighting for a ‘new’ Holmes from 1980 onwards – and touches on his perception of Brett as ‘a mere matinee idol’. Throughout Stuart Davies’ account of the early years of development of the Granada series, he also mentions in passing many other adaptations such as the two films with Ian Richardson in the lead, and the woeful version of The Hound which featured Hollywood star Stewart Granger as a kind of wild west Holmes.

Does the book really give us an insight into Brett the actor as he started to get under the skin of Sherlock Holmes? I feel it does – for example, when thinking about The Crooked Man (a tale adapted for the Adventures), he felt that “Sherlock Holmes would have hated the military discipline, the military ethic, and so he chose to play the early scenes very bad-temperedly”. Later, relating to The Naval Treaty, a detail relating to the Foreign Minister having his boots resoled struck a chord, as even the greatest people in the land cannot always afford new shoes.

Brett also contributed ideas to the way scenes were shot. In ‘The Greek Interpreter’, which is the first story to introduce Mycroft Holmes on the screen, he “devised a shot which was rather clever. When  Melas ... comes to the Diogenes club, Mycroft moves to greet him; then Sherlock emerges from behind the bulk of his brother, giving the impression of the younger sibling escaping from his big brother’s shadow”.

I feel these kinds of insights are much more valuable than Stuart Davies’ depictions of Brett’s mental state and illness throughout the filming of the Holmes series from the Return onwards – yes, it is significant that Brett was hospitalised on a number of occasions during filming or breaks in filming, but I feel too much emphasis has been placed at times on his state of mind – it seems unlikely that a professional actor would take his mental baggage on set, and Stuart Davies gives no evidence to support an hypothesis that Brett’s mental problems changed his portrayal of the great detective in any way. Far more interesting is chapter nine’s deduction that the feature-length films were planned as competition to John Thaw’s opera-loving detective Morse, whose debut on television was in 1987.

‘Bending the Willow’ is, given its length, a valuable documentation of the Brett Holmes, and as such, is recommended for all those new to the series as well as those who have followed it from the start. Stuart Davies writes well and has included reminiscences from most relevant people (although input from Brett’s family would have been helpful and illuminating). If we are to see a future edition, I would like to see the more irrelevant parts of the book pruned in order for the book to fully concentrate on the development of a great television character.

Louise Penn, April 2010