Let me tell you a bit about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes. He was born in Scotland in 1859 and he studied to be a doctor at Edinburgh University. Medicine took him to the Arctic Circle (on a whaling ship) and Africa before he established a practice on the English south coast.

His first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, became widely read worldwide before he was 30. Throughout his life, Conan Doyle saw the “Holmes” stories as commercial and wished to be regarded as a serious author by his other work (plays, historic novels and poetry – Sherlock Holmes initially gained huge readership in a popular magazine).

A man of principle and courage, whatever his own reservations regarding his creation of Sherlock Holmes, his knighthood and other awards made him one of the most influential and respected men of his generation. But he was not without controversy. He held strong beliefs in the occult and in particular he expounded spiritualism, being able to communicate with the dead. [Read more…]