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    The Elementary Sherlock Holmes
    The Elementary Sherlock Holmes
    The Elementary Sherlock Holmes
    Ebook150 pages1 hour

    The Elementary Sherlock Holmes

    By Matthew E Bunson

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    About this ebook

    To a great mind, nothing is little' Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes has become such an iconic figure that he's almost real. He's on our TV screens, he's in our films and, of course, the books are still as popular as ever. This fascinating little miscellany tells you everything you need to know about this enduringly popular figure, and lots of stuff you don't! It contains the plots of all the novels, character descriptions, details of some of the plethora of Sherlock websites, and highlights the best films and TV adaptations. Entertaining and engrossing, The Elementary Sherlock Holmes will satisfy the curious and enlighten even the most dedicated Holmes fan.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateNov 6, 2014
    ISBN9781910232149
    The Elementary Sherlock Holmes

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      Book preview

      The Elementary Sherlock Holmes - Matthew E Bunson

      INTRODUCTION

      If you’ve watched Benedict Cumberbatch in the excellent BBC series Sherlock and found yourself wondering: ‘Yes, but how many Baker Street Irregulars were there?’ then this is the book for you. Or if you occasionally ask yourself, ‘I wonder how many times a butler appears in the stories?’ then this is the book for you. Or if you’d like to know what Sherlock really thought of women, then this is the book for you.

      Perhaps you know that your brother-in-law’s knowledge of the Great Detective needs brushing up with a potted version of all Conan Doyle’s 56 short stories and 4 novels (and a cheat’s guide to whodunnit in all of them at the end) – if so, this is the book for him. And if your neighbour confessed to you the other day that she didn’t know the significance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s father’s middle name, then this is definitely the book for her.

      And for anyone who wants to find out more about the Victorian world of Sherlock Holmes, Dr Watson, Mycroft, Moriarty, Mrs Hudson and Inspector Lestrade, and the continuing legacy of Doyle’s most famous creation in the areas of literature, film, TV and radio, this book will enlighten, amuse and entertain.

      As Holmes himself said, ‘Education never ends,’ so if your knowledge of Sherlock is less than comprehensive, I deduce that The Elementary Sherlock Holmes is precisely what you need.

      CHARACTER

      SHERLOCK HOLMES

      YOUNG SHERLOCK

      Little is known with any high degree of certainty about the early life and family of Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first consulting detective. His ancestors were country squires and one of his grandmothers was the sister of the French artist Vernet – ‘Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms’ (‘The Greek Interpreter’). He was born in 1853 or 1854 (he was 60 years old in ‘His Last Bow’, set in August 1914). He attended university for two years, solving his first case while an undergraduate (‘The Gloria Scott’). A friend’s father is so impressed with his powers of deduction that he plants a seed by suggesting Holmes makes a career of it; Sherlock tells Watson that it ‘made me feel that a profession might be made out of what had up to that time been the merest hobby’.

      Although many authors have speculated since on what might have happened in his formative years, these are the only facts we learn from the stories about Sherlock’s life before he leaves university.

      SHERLOCK BEFORE THE FALL(S)

      When Watson and Holmes agreed to share lodgings at Baker Street, the Great Detective’s career was presumably still in its infancy, hence his need to share the cost with another. By 1889, however, Holmes was able to say (in The Hound of the Baskervilles) that he had investigated some 500 cases ‘of capital importance’, and just two years later he claimed (in ‘The Final Problem’) to have worked on a thousand cases. By now he was famous throughout Europe and had conducted investigations for several monarchs.

      Holmes told his friend in ‘The Final Problem’, ‘Your memoirs will draw to an end, Watson, upon the day that I crown my career by the capture or extinction of the most dangerous and capable criminal in Europe.’ The demise of Moriarty gave Sherlock the opportunity to relinquish his role as the Great Detective by allowing Watson, and hence the rest of the world, to believe he had joined the Napoleon of Crime at the bottom of the Reichenbach Falls.

      Illustration

      THE GREAT HIATUS

      This is the name given to the three-year period between Sherlock’s supposed death in Switzerland and his triumphant return in ‘The Empty House’. During this time he tells Watson he has been in Tibet, Mecca, Khartoum and Montpellier under the alias ‘Sigerson’, until the murder of Ronald Adair drew him back to London. He only told Mycroft he was alive, and that only because he needed money from him.

      LATER CAREER

      Between his return in 1894 and his retirement around ten years later, Holmes solved hundreds of cases, including one (‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’) that earned him a private audience at Windsor with Queen Victoria, from which he returned with a handsome emerald tiepin. In June 1902 he declined a knighthood, and it seems he retired the following year. Certainly in December 1904 Watson announced to readers of Strand Magazine (in ‘The Second Stain’) that Holmes had ‘definitely retired from London and betaken himself to study and bee-farming on the Sussex Downs’.

      RETIREMENT

      Holmes spent his retirement on a small farm five miles from Eastbourne, dividing his time between ‘philosophy and agriculture’ – a suitably Sherlockian combination. Despite turning down all employment including some princely offers during his twilight years, such was the crisis facing his country in the years before the start of the First World War that Holmes acquiesced to the request of the prime minister and returned to service. His task – to penetrate the spy ring of the German intelligence master Von Bork (‘His Last Bow’). Although Watson continued to chronicle mysteries Sherlock had solved before his retirement, ‘His Last Bow’ was the Great Detective’s final case.

      DEATH

      Nowhere in the stories is mention made of the final passing of Sherlock Holmes. There appeared in the December 1948 issue of Strand an obituary for Holmes written by E.V. Knox; coming a mere two years before the demise of the magazine itself, the obituary was more a product of postwar pessimism than a legitimate termination of interest in the detective.

      His passing, whenever it occurred, could not have been better marked than by Dr Watson, who wrote in 1891 after Reichenbach that Holmes was ‘the best and the wisest man’ he ever knew.

      Illustration

      FAMOUS PORTRAYALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

      The

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