Who created Sherlock Holmes?

Fiction’s most famous detective was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Born in Edinburgh in 1859 he decided to become a doctor, and it was when he was studying medicine at university that he met the man who was to later inspire him to create his most famous character. The man was his professor, Joseph Bell, who was particularly good at finding out not only what ailed his patients but, through careful observation, details of their character, job and circumstances. It was his powers of ‘deduction’ that so impressed Conan Doyle and inspired him to create his famous detective.

In 1887 Conan Doyle published his first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, featuring the super sleuth and his friend Dr Watson, and in the years that followed many other books and short stories appeared, all eagerly awaited by Holmes’ growing army of devotees. In fact, Conan Doyle somewhat resented the popularity of the Holmes stories, for he believed that his other work was equally as good, though not nearly so popular with the Public. He tried to kill off Holmes in one story, but there was such an uproar that he was forced to bring the detective back for more adventures.

Although successful writer, Conan Doyle continued to practice medicine, going to South Africa during the Boer War to treat injured troops, and he did some real-life sleuthing, too, championing those he believed had been wrongly convicted or badly treated. He was knighted in 1902. Incidentally, the phrase that has come to be associated with Holmes – “Elementary, my dear Watson!” – does not appear in Conan Doyle’s work!