Killing Sherlock: Lucy Worsley on the Case of Conan Doyle

The character of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes made its creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, rich and famous. But the author came to bitterly resent the detective. Lucy Worsley looks at the origins of Holmes and how the early stories reflected the dark side of Victorian Britain. As Conan Doyle’s peers looked down on his work and Holmes started to over-shadow the novelist, his creation’s fate was sealed.

Arthur Conan Doyle had managed to finally rid himself of Sherlock Holmes. But who was the author without Sherlock? Lucy Worsley explores Doyle’s desire to distance himself from his creation and become the hero of his own story, including taking on the role of detective himself in one of the most important legal cases of the 20th century. But reality would prove harder to control than fiction.

After Sherlock Holmes’s return from the dead, his creator Conan Doyle became an evangelist for spiritualism. Lucy Worsley investigates the resurrection of Sherlock and finds that the darkness of the later stories mirrored the reality of Doyle’s life. His star declined after a spat with the magician Houdini. Sherlock Holmes, in contrast, found a life beyond his author on stage and screen.