"It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes" (Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in 'The Red-Headed League')

Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh in 1859, educated at Stonyhurst and Edinburgh and was trained as a doctor. After a medical practice at Southsea between 1882 and 1890 in which he was only moderately successful, he took to writing. His works include a number of short stories and romances, but his greatest popular triumph was Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was the master of the minute observation who was inevitably forced to explain his techniques in detail to his sidekick Dr. Watson (who was always very much the Boswell to the great detective's Dr. Johnson, or perhaps more aptly Penfold to his Dangermouse).

The first Holmes book was A Study in Scarlet (1887) and continued in publications such as "Strand Magazine". The string of sequels - notably The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891) and The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) testifies to the growing and continued popularity of this figure. Indeed, fanatics of the series were so angered by Holmes's apparent death at the hands of arch-villain Moriarty that Doyle was forced into reviving the character who, by that time, was becoming something of a burden. The author himself was fonder of his historical romances, for example Micah Clarke (1888), The White Company (1891) and Rodney Stone (1896). The reading public has never agreed, though critics have judged them to be worthwhile.

His later life was dominated by his interest in spiritualism (he wrote a book on the history of the subject in 1926) and his doomed personal quest to convince others of its value. He had more success writing outside fiction, for instance the pamphlet 'The War in South Africa' and other books with public issues as their heart. Interestingly, Holmes never once said "Elementary, my dear Watson" and despite his cocaine addiction he was never in fact heard to say "Quick, Watson, the needle!"