Sherlock Holmes, The Most Portrayed Fictional Character Of All Time, Lives On As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Hits 160

The Herald Scotland looks at the longevity of the fictional character Sherlock Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (seen in the above photo), as the writer turns 160.

As common on 21st-century screens as he was in Victorian bookstores, Sherlock Holmes is one of those characters who simply refuses to die. 

We mean this quite literally. In 1893, Holmes was killed off while grappling with arch-nemesis Moriarty – reportedly prompting outraged readers to don black armbands in a mixture of protest and mourning. 

Though probably untrue, the story shows the regard in which Holmes was held even then, and author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was eventually cajoled into reviving his fallen hero. 

 Doyle – who was born 160 years ago last month – himself had a colder relationship with his creation. He – correctly – felt the character cannibalised his other work (who remembers Professor Challenger?), and began to “weary of his name”. He didn’t even rate his own writing, referring to the stories as “an elementary form of fiction” (pun, one assumes, intended).

Doyle died in 1930, aged 71, but Holmes grew more vivacious with every passing decade. The Guinness Book of World Records lists him as the most portrayed character of all time – with more than 75 actors spanning more than 250 screen appearances.

Since the turn of the millennium, the centenarian Mr Holmes has been enjoying something of a purple patch. Benedict Cumberbatch rocked ratings for the BBC in Sherlock, while Robert Downey Jr  did the same on the big screen in Guy Ritchie’s soon-to-be trilogy, and Ian McKellen scored rave reviews with a more thespian take in 2015’s Mr  Holmes.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/17692904.sherlock-holmes-lives-on-as-conan-doyle-hits-160/

Note: The above photo is of actor Jeremy Brett, my favorite Sherlock Holmes. 

On This Day In History Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Holmes, Was Born

On this day in 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was born. 

You can read about his life and work via the below link: 

https://www.biography.com/people/arthur-conan-doyle-9278600

Note: The top photo is of Sir Arthur Conan Dole. The above photo is of Jeremy Brett, my favorite Sherlock Holmes actor.  

On This Day In History Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator Of Sherlock Holmes, Was Born

As History.com notes, on this day in 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the iconic fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, was born.

You can read about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-is-born?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0522-05222017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=187277472&kx_EmailCampaignID=12766&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0522-05222017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Note: My favorite Sherlock Holmes actor, Jeremy Brett, appears as Holmes in the above photo.

On This Day In History Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Was Published

As History.com notes, on this day in 1892 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 

You can read about Doyle and Sherlock Holmes via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-published?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-1031-10312016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=103988729&kx_EmailCampaignID=7826&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-1031-10312016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Note: The top photo is of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the bottom photo is of actor Jeremy Brett, who offered, in my view, the best portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

Political Correctness? Elementary, My Dear Watson: Is Celebrated Sherlock Holmes Actor Jeremy Brett Too White For An English Heritage Blue Plaque?

For the older generations who grew up with actor Basil Rathbone portraying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective character, he is the one and only Sherlock Holmes. I suppose I understand that sentiment, as I feel that way about Sean Connery and Ian Fleming's character James Bond.

But I and many other TV viewers thought the late Jeremy Brett was the definitive Sherlock Holmes.

But according to Chris Hasting at the British newspaper the Daily Mail, Jeremy Brett was not honored with an English Heritage blue plaque on the house where he once lived simply because he was a white actor.

You can read the Daily Mail piece via the below link:      

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3739495/Is-celebrated-Sherlock-Holmes-actor-white-blue-plaque-Fears-political-correctness-robbed-state-commemoration.html

You can watch the episodes of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett via the below link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=einpc7psJB0&list=PLzovi87vDfzJGGoYv7u4FDQpoYduhoMf_

Happy Birthday To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Creator Of Sherlock Holmes

As History.com notes, on this day in 1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, was born.

You can read about the late, great author via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/sir-arthur-conan-doyle-is-born?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2016-0522-05222016&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=48575723&kx_EmailCampaignID=4793&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2016-0522-05222016&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

On This Day In History: The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes Was Published

As History.com notes, on this day in history The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1887.

On this day, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is published. The book was the first collection of Holmes stories, which Conan Doyle had been publishing in magazines since 1887.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-adventures-of-sherlock-holmes-published?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2015-1031-10312015&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=1044593&kx_EmailCampaignID=715&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2015-1031-10312015&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

Happy Belated Birthday To Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator Of Sherlock Holmes

Happy birthday to the creator of the iconic fictional character Sherlock Holmes. The late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, in 1859.

You can read about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in a TIME piece and watch a video about the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London via the below link:

http://time.com/3856098/arthur-conan-doyle-history/

Sherlock Holmes Creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Was The Victim Of A Police Conspiracy

Alison Flood at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on how the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, was the victim of a police conspiracy.

Sherlock Holmes would never have stood for this: newly discovered documents show that the Staffordshire police fabricated evidence to try to discredit Arthur Conan Doyle’s investigation into the curious case of George Edalji, a Birmingham solicitor accused of maiming horses and sending poison-pen letters at the turn of the 20th century.

In a printed report discovered in a collection of letters, chief constable of Staffordshire police, GA Anson, admits attempting to discredit Doyle by creating an elaborate ruse. This involved him fabricating a letter to the writer signed “A Nark, London” and setting up various informers to make Conan Doyle believe the letter had been sent by one Royden Sharp, the man the Sherlock Holmes creator had tapped for the so-called “Great Wyrley Outrages”.

“This letter is very well known to writers on the subject, and this document proves the letter was sent by Anson to Conan Doyle to try and discredit him,” said Sarah Lindberg of Bonhams, which today put the report up for auction alongside 30 autographed letters from Doyle about the case, 24 of which are to Anson. “The new evidence was a total fabrication planted by Anson, and all part of an elaborate ruse involving Sharp.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/18/arthur-conan-doyle-set-up-by-police-fabricated-letters

I Relate To The Way Sherlock Talks About Death’: Ian McKellen On His New Film Role In 'Mr. Holmes'

Vanessa Thorpe at the Guardian offers a piece on Sir Ian McKellen portraying Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic character Sherlock Holmes as an older man in retirement.

There will be no deerstalker. There will be no pipe. In their place will be a straw hat and a walking stick. But with the appetite for Sherlock Holmes growing after the worldwide success of Benedict Cumberbatch’s television portrayal, Sir Ian McKellen is about to give fans of the great sleuth more of what they crave.

The 75-year-old actor’s new film, Mr Holmes, has its world premiere at the Berlin film festival on Sunday and offers a vision of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective living quietly in retirement in Sussex, keeping bees. Directed by Bill Condon, the film is about a crime, but also about age, unreliable memory and the power of the past.

                                 

Preparation for the part has allowed the award-winning Shakespearean actor to reflect on his own age. “Mr Holmes really is as much about being old as it is about the crime,” McKellen said this weekend. “I do relate to the ease with which Sherlock talks about death. That ease is something that has come to me and to a lot of my friends. Death is suddenly ever-present, although we all ignore it when we are young.

“For Sherlock, in this story, it is a race against time, and it is not quite like that for me. I don’t intend to retire. I will go on working on and off. I am happily going on with my life.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/08/sherlock-film-mr-holmes-ian-mckellen

The First Great Sherlock Holmes: Five Ways British Actor William Gillette Transformed How Sherlock Holmes Looks And Talks

Tom de Castella at bbc.com offers a piece on how British actor William Gillette transformed how Sherlock Holmes looks and talks.

A 1916 silent movie featuring Sherlock Holmes - long presumed lost - is due to have its premiere in Paris. It stars a man who changed the way we see Conan Doyle's famous sleuth forever.

He was the first great Sherlock Holmes. But few will have heard of US actor William Gillette.

He is thought to be a distant relation of the family behind Gillette razors, wrote plays about the American civil war, patented a noise to imitate the sound of a galloping horse and built an enormous castle in Connecticut. But it is his Holmes that fascinates people today.

And until three months ago, it seemed that no-one would ever see it.

Gillette adapted Sherlock Holmes for the stage in 1899 and played Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's detective more than 1,000 times.

He made only one film, the 1916 silent movie version of Sherlock Holmes. For decades the movie was presumed lost, one of the great missing links of Sherlockiana. Then in October 2014 it was discovered at the Cinematheque Francaise, a film archive in Paris.

"At last we get to see for ourselves the actor who kept the first generation of Sherlockians spellbound," says Professor Russell Merritt, who has been researching the film's origins. "As far as Holmes is concerned, there's not an actor dead or alive who hasn't consciously or intuitively played off Gillette."  

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a video of William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes via the below link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30932322

It's Elementary – Of Course Sherlock Holmes Was Real

 

Allan Massie offers an interesting piece in the Telegraph on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional (or perhaps not) iconic character.

The Museum of London has a new exhibition honouring the most famous Englishman of the 19th century. In his lifetime he had rivals for that title – Mr Gladstone, and WG Grace, for instance. But their memory has faded, and Sherlock Holmes stands supreme. It is quite right that the museum should be hosting this exhibition – the first in the capital since 1951 – for Holmes’s London is, even more than Dickens’s, the London of our historical imagination, the London of hansom cabs, horse-dung, flickering gas-light and pea-soup fogs, the London of sinister opium dens in Wapping.

Some still say that there was no real Holmes, that he was only the creation of an Edinburgh-born doctor, Arthur Conan Doyle. For these sceptics, he exists only in four novels and 56 short stories, almost all recounted by his friend, housemate and collaborator, Dr Watson. Yes, they admit, there is indeed a plaque on 221b Baker Street, proclaiming that Sherlock Holmes lived there; but, they add triumphantly, there was no such address when Conan Doyle wrote. It’s all a work of fiction.
 

Tell that to the Marines, but not to the Sherlock Holmes Society, or indeed to its New York brother, the Baker Street Irregulars. Tell it not to the Sherlock Holmes Society of Japan, which has more than 1,000 devoted members; there is a statue of Holmes in Karuizawa. The Japanese, it seems, are devoted to him because, in recounting his struggle with the Napoleon of crime and distinguished mathematician, Professor Moriarty, at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, he ascribed his victory to his knowledge of “baritsu”, the Japanese art of wrestling. (This should correctly be “bartitsu”, we are told; which only goes to prove that Holmes was human and capable of making a mistake.)

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/museums/11171447/Its-elementary-of-course-Sherlock-Holmes-was-real.html

Note: The above DVD cover shows actor Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. He's my favorite Sherlock Holmes actor. 

The Napoleon Of Crime: Sherlock Holmes And Professor James Moriarty Are Perfect Foes

Anthony Horowitz, author the Sherlock Holmes continuation novel Moriarty, offers a piece in the British newspaper the Telegraph on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great fictional villian.

“He is the Napoleon of Crime, Watson. He is the organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected in this great city. He is a genius, a philosopher, an abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows every quiver of each of them.”

Who else could it be but Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes at the Reichenbach Falls and quite simply the greatest villain in literature ever created? Thanks to the artist, Sidney Paget, we know exactly what he looked like although Conan Doyle certainly helped with a memorable description: “…extremely tall and thin, his forehead domes out in a white curve, and his two eyes are deeply sunken in his head.” A great many master criminals have caught the public imagination – Hannibal Lecter, Fu Manchu and any one of the James Bond villains spring to mind – but none have done so quite so successful as Professor James Moriarty.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11167631/Sherlock-v-Moriarty-perfect-foes.html 

Lost Sherlock Holmes Film Discovered In Paris Vault

Melissa Locker at vanityfair.com reports on the finding of a lost Sherlock Holmes film with the original stage actor who defined the character during his time.

Long before Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downey Jr. played the famed detective, Sherlock Holmes was the domain of American actor and playwright William Gillette, who left an indelible mark on the character.

Now, some sleuthing has uncovered the only known film capturing Gillette's portrayal of the Baker Street detective, which the San Francisco Silent Film Festival calls a "vital missing link in the portrayal of Holmes on film."

The silent movie, made in 1916 and titled Sherlock Holmes, combines elements of several Sherlock stories. It had been lost for decades, misfiled in the vaults of the Cinémathèque Française film archive in Paris.

The newly rediscovered film has French subtitles and annotations implying that the black-and-white film was meant to be colorized before being distributed to French markets. According to the BBC, staff at the archive came across the long-lost film while cataloguing the thousands of nitrate film reels in its collection.

“William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes has ranked among the holy grails of lost film,” said film restorer and San Francisco Silent Film Festival board president Robert Byrne, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter. “Audiences are going to be blown away when they see the real Sherlock Holmes onscreen for the first time.”  

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/10/lost-sherlock-holmes-film-discovered?mbid=social_twitter

Death Does Not Become Them: Arise The New James Bond, Jane Austen and Sherlock Holmes

Linda Morris at the Sidney Morning Herald offers a piece on the continuation novels of famous characters created by authors who passed on.

Agatha Christie detested her fictional detective Hercule Poirot. In her words, Poirot was "a bombastic, tiresome, egocentric little creep", and so in the 1940s she bumped the fussy Belgian off, writing Curtain, Poirot's final case.

Christie was eventually overruled by an adoring public and her publishers and the novel was kept in a bank vault, where it remained unpublished until shortly before her death in 1976.  And that, in the ordinary course of a literary life, should have been the end of it.

Except that Christie's canny literary estate, chaired by her only grandchild, Mathew Prichard, has assented to Poirot's exhumation in a new mystery authored by the British crime writer and poet, Sophie Hannah.

The Monogram Murders adds another title to the ample Christie legacy of 33 Poirot novels, one play and more than 50 stories. In accepting the commission, Hannah walks in the eminent footsteps of Sebastian Faulks (Devil May Care and Jeeves and the Wedding Bells), Val McDermid (Northanger Abbey), Alexander McCall Smith (Emma), William Boyd (Solo), Jeffrey Deaver (Carte Blanche) and the Booker Prize winner John Banville (The Black-Eyed Blonde), all feted novelists who have joined publishing's current obsession with literary resurrections.

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It is an easy sell, the pairing of international writers to literary classics. New books bring bankable royalties for the deceased's literary estates, and in theory, adds to the material engagement of younger readers with the classics.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/death-does-not-become-them-arise-the-new-james-bond-jane-austen-and-sherlock-holmes-20140917-103lh0.html 

Note: Like Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming killed off their popular characters, but both later resurrected their characters due to popular demand. 

Sherlock Holmes: Can A Fictional Man Be A London Icon?

Beth Rose a the BBC News offers a piece on a Museum of London exhibit on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's great character Sherlock Holmes.

"The air of London is the sweeter for my presence," Sherlock Holmes once said, and yet the detective never lived, nor died. He existed solely in our imaginations.

Now, the Museum of London is planning a new exhibition focusing on the detective, citing the creation of the author and medic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as one of London's most "iconic" figures.

The museum says it will be the first time since the Festival of Britain in 1951 that there has been a major Sherlock Holmes exhibition.

It comes complete with artefacts which it is hoped will unpick the origins of the character and shine a gaslight on Victorian London.

Curator Alex Werner said: "Sherlock Holmes was an incredibly powerful, cultural, London icon.

"The main challenge was anything you select [for this exhibition] has nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes because he is a character, but on the other hand it has everything to do with him.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-27487080

Has The Real Sherlock Holmes Been Deduced?

Jasper Copping at the British newspaper the Telegraph offers a piece on a new book that claims a real life detective helped inspire Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous fictional detective. 

He enthralled Victorian England with his unrivalled skill at cracking cases, based on astute logical reasoning and grasp of forensic science, not to mention a mastery of disguises and encyclopedic knowledge of the criminal underclass.
 

But this detective was not Sherlock Holmes but a real life investigator, Jerome Caminada, who, new research suggests, helped inspire Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated hero.
 

A biography of Caminada out this month reveals a series of striking similarities between him and the fictional character, in terms of their unorthodox methods and character. It also establishes strong echoes between the real detective’s cases and plot lines used by Doyle.
 

The author, Angela Buckley, has even established that Caminada’s casework involved tackling an alluring and talented criminal, similar to Irene Adler, and that the detective even had a Moriarty-like nemesis who plagued him over the course of several cases until a final, dramatic confrontation.
 

Mrs Buckley said: “Caminada became a national figure at just the time that Sherlock Holmes was being created. There are so many parallels that it is clear Doyle was using parts of this real character for his.” 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10700558/Has-the-real-Sherlock-Holmes-been-deduced.html

American Detective: The Man Arthur Conan Doyle Called 'America's Sherlock Holmes'

Benjamin Welton at the Atlantic offers an interesting piece on an American detective.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous characters, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, are almost undoubtedly the most enduring figures in the history of detective fiction. Even though the original book series first surfaced in 1887, popular TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic (BBC’s Sherlock and CBS’s Elementary) are doing much to rekindle an interest in Doyle’s mystery-solving duo, while other mediums—from the Guy Ritchie films starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law to the Ian Edginton and Davide Fabbri comic series Victorian Undead (which pits Holmes and Dr. Watson against a whole bevy of supernatural creatures)—are doing their part to insure that the Great Detective and his Boswell can be found in every nook and cranny of popular culture.

Despite the fact that Holmes and Dr. Watson are fictional characters, though, their cultural influence can even be discerned in the history of the world outside of the printed page. Ever since the end of the Victorian age, real detectives and police officials have often been held to the standards of fiction and have even seen their exploits re-cast as updated versions of one of Doyle’s many gaslight era tales. One American law-enforcement figure, in particular, bore the burden of living up to Holmes’s legacy: William J. Burns, an Irish-American sleuth who bore more than a passing resemblance to Doyle himself.

According to William R. Hunt’s biography Front-Page Detective: William J. Burns and the Detective Profession, 1880-1930, Burns was a friend of both President Theodore Roosevelt and Doyle—the latter of whom publicly hailed Burns as “America’s Sherlock Holmes."

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/11/the-man-arthur-conan-doyle-called-americas-sherlock-holmes/281618/

Characters Brought Back From The Brink

 

In light of crime thriller writer Ian Rankin announcing the return of his popular fictional police inspector John Rebus, the British newspaper the Guardian looks at other authors who have revived their characters.

Other authors who breathed new life into old heroes include Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Fleming, John Updike, Anthony Burgess and even John le Carré

You can read the rest of the interesting piece via the below link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2012/jun/08/characters-brought-back-from-brink?newsfeed=true

Note: I disagree with the Guardian writer when he states " the consensus among buffs is From Russia With Love is the last great Bond novel."

Like many Fleming "buffs," I think From Russia With Love is the best Bond novel, but Fleming wrote On Her Majesty's Secret Service later on and many Fleming fans, like me, consider this novel to be one of Fleming's best.     

Which Literary Character Has Been Portrayed A Record-Breaking 254 Times On TV And Film? It's Elementary... Sherlock Holmes

Mario Ledwith and Nick Enoch at the British newspaper the Daily Mail wrote an interesting piece on the many TV and film portrayals of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic fictional character Sherlock Holmes.

Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr, Tom Baker... the full list of actors who have taken on the role of Sherlock Holmes is so long that the super sleuth himself might struggle to remember all the names.

And now, Holmes has broken the record for having more film and Tv portrayals than any other literary character.

The consulting detective has been depicted on the big and small screen a total of 254 times.

Sir Arhtur Conan Doyle's creation beats the next most popular character, Hamlet, by a total of 48 appearences.

You can read the rest of the story and see photos of many of the actors who portrayed Holmes, included Jeremy Brett (seen in the above photo), my favorite Sherlock holmes, via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2146091/Sherlock-Holmes-portrayed-literary-character-TV-film.html?ito=feeds-newsxml