Sherlock Holmes

The enduring icon of crime fiction, probably for centuries to come, written for by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Characterised as being:

• a 'consulting detective' resident with (and occasionally without) his friend John H. Watson M.D. in 221B Baker Street, London;
• an Oxbridge graduate (one of the great debates is which university and which college...) in chemistry, with a particular hobby of forensics;
• tall, thin, eccentric and active, with a tendency to be very fastidious in his dress;
• clothed (by stereotype) in a tweed suit and ulster overcoat with an Inverness cape, deerstalker cap and pipe. (The look was originally invented by the American actor W.S. Gilette for a series of Sherlock Holmes plays brought to the stage as Conan Doyle was writing some of his later stories: the only place where it's nearly described in the actual canon is in 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'.)

Ob SF: featured in Sherlock Holmes Against The Martians.

Also featured in more spin-off or spoof movies than you can shake an elegant walking-stick at...

Also on telly: one example here - http://www.imdb.com/Mlinks?0098765

Category Book (four long stories and scads of short stories: many, many editions...) Category Radio Programme (Clive Merrison as the detective) Category Movie