Books & Poetry

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a Scot who adopted London and of course housed his hero at 221b Baker Street. I’ve had a long-term fascination with him. He wrote only four Sherlock Holmes novels, yet he became the most famous author on earth and the best paid author on earth with a set of short stories! The Holmes stories were published in The Strand Magazine which sounds posh but, in truth, was popular; not as posh as, say, Punch. They paid him a fortune to produce Sherlock doing a case. All the research suggests he’s the first person to have serialised a detective. He invented the serial detective; all the Poirots and Marples and whoever else came after he died. And the genius of it all, of course, is that Conan Doyle was a flawed man. A great man is a flawed man. He had a house in South Norwood called Undershaw, which I’ve visited to pay my respects.
Feature continues

What he did very well was depict both the lowlife and something you’re too young to remember but I certainly can, smog-ridden London. You take for granted strolling round the East End at night. When I was a young man, before the 1956 Clean Air Act, you couldn’t see a yard in front of you. That sort of London is clear in his books and, like Dickens, he brings London to life. You believe in the Baker Street Irregulars – the street children who assist Holmes – and you can almost see the hansom cab going over the cobbled stones because he’s a damn good storyteller.

He was desperate to give up Sherlock and throw him into the Thames. He wanted respect for his other works like ‘Brigadier Gerard’ which he thought were superior. It broke his heart when publishers came back dropping Danegeld in front of him, to the point where he had to kill Holmes off in ‘The Final Problem’ and bring him back to life! But in the end, you know, the public decide. God bless the public, they decide.

I read him first aged 11 or 12. The stories are equally accessible to children: he has that remarkable double gift which very few authors have. His natural successor in that respect is John Buchan, who I also read at that age. He tells a cracking good yarn, doesn’t he, because the blighter sets you up! I read Conan Doyle again recently because I wanted to look at some techniques he was using ahead of his time which I found interesting. The great game he plays with Watson, for instance, where he says, ‘Tell me the six reasons we know he’s a left-handed pianist with a red moustache who comes from the Ukraine.’ It’s such a clever device. The reader isn’t just waiting for the story, he’s waiting for Watson to be duffed up. At the same time, Watson is a thoroughly decent fellow, everybody’s uncle, a much nicer person than Holmes.

I’ve learnt from Conan Doyle that you must tell the story and make the reader want to turn the page. It’s a gift, by the way. You can’t explain it. Conan Doyle had it, full stop. You can have writing lessons; they even seem to have them at London University! But what you can’t have is storytelling lessons.

Conan Doyle was passionate about miscarriages of justice and intervened in several cases, most famously that of the half-Indian lawyer George Edalji who was accused of mutilating animals. And, of course, he devoted vast amounts of time and money to promoting his religious beliefs. [Conan Doyle became obsessed with spiritualism.] He was the Tom Cruise of his day.