Welcome to John Lellenberg, BSI, to Founding Membership

On behalf of the membership of the Society, we wish to extend a warm and belated welcome to Mr. Jon Lellenberg, the distinguished author and Sherlockian as a Founding Member of The John H Watson Society.

Mr. Lellenberg has long been “Thucydides,” the Historian of the Baker Street Irregulars. He also is invested in the BSI as “Rodger Prescott of evil memory.”
He belongs to numerous scion clubs and is active with the University of Minnesota Sherlock Holmes Collections. He has been the representative of The Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. for many years.

Mr. Lellenberg has authored numerous books on matters Sherlockian and Doylean, the most recent being, Dangerous Work: Diary of an Adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle, edited by Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower, published by The University of Chicago Press, 2012.

He also has related non-fiction work to his credit, including Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, which was a BBC Book of the Week in September 2007, and won the Mystery Writers of America’s “Edgar Award” for best critical work that year, plus other similar awards.
 
Mr Lellenberg was a Pentagon official for many years and travelled extensively in Europe, during which time he became well acquainted with the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and the Danish equivalent of the Baker Street Irregulars, the Sherlock Holmes Klubben i Danmark, along with the Cold War history and landscape of the Continent.
 
He retired from the Pentagon in 2006, after spending his last several years as Director for Policy and Strategy for its Special Operations and Counterterrorism Bureau.

When not writing or busy on other projects, Mr Lellenberg likes to read history and biography. He enjoys American and British cultural history, and  finds Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe and P. G. Wodehouse relaxing and therapeutic. One of his earliest fiction heroes was D’Artagnan. He is also fond of John Buchan’s Richard Hannay tales.

Please join in welcoming Mr. Lellenberg with the traditional greeting of the Society to members:

“You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”