943. Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of SILVER BLAZE 🐎 (Learn English with a Short Story)

Hmm, interesting. So it seems you'd like to listen to another Sherlock Holmes story on Luke's

English Podcast. Well, you're in luck because today that is exactly what we're going to do.

Hello, welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. And yeah, it's time for another story on the

podcast because today I just would like to do another Sherlock Holmes story. That's

just what I would like to do today and I hope that that's what you would like to listen to as well.

Today we're going to do a story called The Adventure of Silver Blaze which is

a Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, first published in 1892. So it's

quite an old story but I've adapted the text in this story. I've adapted it so it's all modern,

up-to-date English, the kind of English that you can expect to be able to hear or use today.

So don't worry, it's not old-fashioned English. It's a fairly old story, a classic old story

but with modern, up-to-date English. So, The Adventure of Silver Blaze.

The Silver Blaze in this story is actually a horse. It's a racehorse. So this is

the story of the disappearance of a famous racehorse and also there's a murder involved,

a possible murder involved in the story as well.

So a racehorse and horse racing. Horse racing is actually a pretty big part of

British culture and life and Irish culture as well. There are regular horse races

where horses ridden by jockeys, those are the people who ride horses.

Horses being ridden by jockeys are ridden around a track and lots of people watch horse racing either

at the racing ground or on television and also there's a lot of gambling involved. People bet

money and try to win money by choosing the horse they think is going to win and actually there's

a lot of money involved. Often large sums of money are won and lost in these horse races

but it's a big tradition in the UK and horses are bred and trained at stables and often these

stables are owned by families who have been breeding and training horses for generations.

So this is a very traditional part of our culture. It's a

long tradition. The horses themselves are amazing.

They are beautiful specimens, very athletic and incredible and very fast and some of the

horses that are bred and that are raced become major champions winning lots of different cups

and trophies and races and things like that. So horse racing is the context for this particular

story and what we're going to do is we'll start the story in just a moment. We're going to read

through the story and what I'd like you to do is to become a kind of detective yourself.

In fact you're going to be a sort of text detective for this story meaning

that you've got to pay close attention, listen carefully and obviously try to follow the story,

try to keep up with the details. Also notice and pick up bits of vocabulary as we go and

I'll be explaining various words and phrases which I think might be useful or important

for you to help you understand the story. Try to notice the specific details of the case.

Speculate about what is going on. Who is the suspect? What is the motive?

Their reason for committing the crime in this story? And I will explain as we go

so I'll read a section of the story and then I'll pause and I'll explain what has happened

to make sure that you are following and keeping up and that you pick up some bits