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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Sherlock Holmes
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The world's best-known detective, created by *Conan Doyle. He featured in Conan Doyle's first novel, A Study in Scarlet (published in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887), but he only reached a wide public with the short stories which began in 1891 in the new *Strand Magazine. These were collected in two volumes (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1892, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes 1894). In the last story of the second volume, 'The Final Problem', Holmes and the arch-villain, Professor Moriarty, together plunge to their deaths at the Reichenbach Falls.
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But public demand eventually persuaded Conan Doyle to return to his most popular creation. In The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–2 in the Strand Magazine) he recounted an early case of the dead detective. And in 1903 he revealed, in 'The Empty House', that Holmes had used his knowledge of Japanese wrestling to throw Moriarty over the precipice before faking his own death to put other vengeful criminals off the track. The flow of short stories could continue.
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Nearly all the cases are narrated by the good-hearted and unsophisticated Dr Watson (*'Elementary, my dear Watson'), who eventually moves in with Holmes at 221B Baker Street; he is the perfect foil to the deviously brilliant detective with the razor-sharp powers of deduction. Holmes has certain unvarying props (pipe, dressing gown, violin, deerstalker), of which the strangest in modern terms is the syringe for calming his nerves with a shot of cocaine.
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