Arthur Conan Doyle

Jump to content [s]
Jump to site navigation [0]
Jump to search [4]
Terms and conditions [8]

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 22 July 2008 15.39 BST

1859-1930

"When you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Birthplace

Edinburgh, Scotland

Education

Jesuit boarding schools in England and Austria, University of Edinburgh (medicine)

Other jobs

He was a ship's doctor on two vessels before opening a medical practice in Portsmouth. Like Dr Watson's, his practice was "never very absorbing", allowing time for writing.

Did you know?

He played football and cricket at a national level.

Critical verdict

While Sherlock Holmes remains the greatest detective ever created, not all Conan Doyle's creations and genres - historical romance, science fiction - have entered the pantheon. Who remembers Brigadier Etienne Gerard and Rodney Stone the boxer? His later spiritualist efforts are also glossed over.

Recommended works

The Hound of the Baskervilles is generally considered to be the best Holmes novel, while the first collection of short stories The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is packed with such memorable tales as The Red Headed League and The Speckled Band.

Influences

Many have detected in Holmes the presence of Dr Joseph Bell, one of Conan Doyle's medical professors, but influences on his style are harder to come by. In fact, along with Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin, Holmes was probably the first star of detective fiction.

Now read on

Try GK Chesterton, the creator of Father Brown; of the many pastiches (which extend to physics primers, chess puzzles and cookbooks), search out David Scott or Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story, in which the great detective takes on Jack the Ripper.

Adaptations

Of the countless film and television adaptations, the question is not so much which film you prefer, but which Holmes. Some of the more renowned include Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and, on TV, Jeremy Brett.