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Sherlock Holmes comes to BBC 7
| | | | (l-r) Michael Williams and Clive Merrison | | | Sherlock Holmes was born on the sixth of January 1854. We know little about his parentage, but he was the grandson of a sister of the French artist Emile Jean Horace Vernet.
He made his debut in the Strand magazine of 1891. In appearance, he’s described as having hawk like features, with a thin narrow face framed by dark hair, and heavy brows over piercing eyes. His usual indoor garb, when on a case, was a dressing gown and pipe. And he was generally to be barely discerned across his sitting room, wreathed in a dense cloud of tobacco smoke as he puffed away. Occasional ingestion of cocaine, "7% solution", helped to stave off boredom.
By 1881 he has achieved the dizzying heights of professional success, as a consulting detective living at 221b Baker Street with Doctor Watson, his friend and colleague. In character, he has almost a split personality, Watson learnt from bitter experience, "Nothing could exceed his energy when the working fit was upon him; but now and again a reaction would seize him, and for days on end he would live upon the sofa in the sitting-room, hardly uttering a word or moving a muscle from morning to night".
Holmes is the author of several monographs, all on rather rarefied subjects, from "Upon the distinction between the ashes of the various tobaccos" to "A contribution to the literature of tattoos".
But it’s for his work that he’s justly famous. On Thursday the twenty third of June 1881, Reginald Musgrave came to call on Sherlock Holmes, to ask for his help in the matter of the Musgrave Ritual. This was the start of his career, and what a career, lauded by royalty, courted by the public, his reputation seemed unassailable. His cases, reported by Dr Watson are numerous; "The Speckled Band", "The disappearance of Lady Francis Carfax" and "The Empty House" to name but a few. He was however defeated by “The Woman”, Irene Adler did manage to outwit him in "A scandal in Bohemia".
All this came to an abrupt end in 1893 when "The Final Problem" reported Holmes's death at Reichenbach Falls, in Switzerland. However Holmes actually survived and resumed detecting in 1901 in the case of "The Hound of the Baskervilles".
But all things come to an end and he made his final appearance in the detecting world in, "The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place" in March 1927.
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