Who was Sherlock Holmes?

Sherlock Holmes, the best-known, fictional detective of all time, first appeared in print in London in a story called A Study in Scarlet in Beeton's Christmas Annual 1887. Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes's creator, was born in Edinburgh in 1859 and studied medicine at Edinburgh University. One of his tutors, Dr Joseph Bell, is said to have been the inspiration for the great detective. Doyle was a senior physician in the Second South African War and was knighted in 1902. His stories of Sherlock Holmes were so successful that he gave up medicine and devoted himself to writing. Holmes appeared in The Sign of Four, The Valley of Fear and in several volumes of short stories, first published in the Strand magazine. In the stories, Holmes's apparently miraculous ability to solve incredibly complex cases never fails to amaze Dr Watson, Holmes's friend, whom Sir Arthur uses as the narrator of the stories. Such was the popularity of the stories that when Sir Arthur 'killed off' Holmes in a story, the outcry from the reading public was so great that he was forced to bring him back to life in a subsequent story. Holmes's phrase, 'Elementary, my dear Watson', when explaining his methods to the Doctor