The Real Sherlock Holmes
The new Sherlock Holmes movies seems to be a hit, and I can’t wait to see it. I’ve always been a huge fan of the original consulting detective, and keep Doyle’s stories on my phone for re-reading whenever I’m between books.
Although some purists are indignant at the liberties taken with the latest incarnation of Holmes, I tend to not mind. For me, the definitive Holmes was already done – by Jeremy Brett
By the way, the Sherlock Holmes character was based, at least in part, on real-life Scottish physician Joseph Bell. Arthur Conan Doyle served as Bell’s clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and was impressed by his powers of observation and deduction. “It is to you that I owe Sherlock Holmes,” Doyle wrote to his former professor and mentor in 1892.
A Discovery Channel documentary on Doctor Bell is available here.
Interestingly, the relationship of Bell and Doyle was fictionalized in the BBC series Murder Rooms – The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes, where Doyle plays Watson to Dr. Bell’s Holmes as the two solve a series of crimes together.
