There's no police quite like Holmes
WHAT is it about Sherlock Holmes? 117 years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle tried to kill off the character by pushing him over the Reichenbach Falls with Professor Moriarty, he has refused to lie down for long.
Indeed, a few years after his presumed death, Doyle bowed to huge public demand and enormous financial offers from his publishers and brought Holmes back to life. His decision was also based on the more down-to-earth acknowledgment that the public had no particular appetite for most of his non-Holmesian writing and he needed an income to subsidise his other interests and projects.
Since then, the character has turned up everywhere: around 260 (and counting) films, beginning with Sherlock Holmes Baffled in 1901; hundreds of radio and television adaptations; dozens of plays; a handful of musicals and ballets; thousands of parodies and pastiche; board games; computer games; statues; museums; and countless advertising tie-ins.
Hardly a week goes by without a new book about Holmes. I have just finished The Baker Street Phantom, in which the ghost of Holmes is summoned to do battle with the ghosts of Jack the Ripper, Dracula, The Invisible Man, Mr Hyde and Moriarty. A world-wide opinion poll in 2000, to mark the new millennium, put Sherlock Holmes on the same recognition level as Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddah and Hitler (who was, as it happens, a fan of Holmes!)
There are Sherlock Holmes societies across the world devoted to the study of the detective and his methods. Members play what is known as 'the game', the game being to accept that Holmes and Watson are real people and that the cases are all based on fact. Working from that premise they put the events and the characters into historical context and tie all of them into known circumstances of the late Victorian era.
There's a society in Northern Ireland, the Crew of the SS MayDay, which meets on the last Sunday of most months to play 'the game.' The fact that it is now into its 16th year, with most of the same members, indicates just how much fun there is to be had with this particular game.
It's almost 45 years since I discovered Holmes. I was recovering from a tonsillectomy and a visiting aunt brought me a collection of the stories. The first one I read was The Adventure of the Silver Blaze, which has the wonderful exchange:
"You consider that to be important?" he asked.
"Exceedingly so."
"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
And that, for me at least, is the essence of Holmes: the ability to deduce truth from the simplest and most unlikely circumstance. It is all about the observation of trifles, observing rather than merely seeing, refusing to construct theories before you have the facts. And above the desk in my study I still have my favourite quotation: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I continue to apply that maxim to my work and writing.
It has been an interesting year on the Holmes front. Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law starred in the very successful Sherlock Holmes film and a sequel is due to start shooting in October. The film got very mixed reviews from both critics and Holmes purists (hardly surprising in some ways, considering that the plot is utter tosh), but it seems to have been a hit with the 18-35 audience which is cinema's key demographic now. There is also a Holmes play running in the West End, with Peter Egan in the title role, which goes on tour in a few weeks' time.
But it's the BBC's Sherlock, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, which has really captured the public imagination. This is Holmes in 2010, a Holmes who uses computers and texts in exactly the same way that the 1890s Holmes used reference books and telegrams.
He still has the same relationship with Watson and Scotland Yard. The plots - a little over-egged for my tastes - are sourced from the original stories and very cleverly adapted for today's audience. Actually, if you want to see another very clever updating of Holmes then watch Hugh Laurie as Dr Gregory House in the television series House.
But why has Holmes remained so popular? He's not a particularly pleasant person. He's a quasi-autistic sociopath who places his own intellectual stimulation above all else. When bored, he resorts to drugs. He is astonishingly condescending and a congenital show-off. When not interested, he simply switches off and retreats into his own world. Yet for all of these flaws and faults he remains a character that people admire.
Part of that is due to Watson, for Watson is each and every one of us. Slower than Holmes, but not stupid. As brave as Holmes, but not reckless. Seeing all that Holmes sees, but lacking the logical processes required to complete the whole picture. Indeed, in some ways Watson is a more successful creation than Holmes, for without Watson then Holmes wouldn't have worked as a character. It is Watson who humanises Holmes and Watson who understands that Holmes has to be who he truly is. Any intellectual compromise or concession to self-serving emotion and Holmes would just be another detective.
For what matters to Holmes above all else, as it did to Doyle himself, was truth and justice. It wasn't just about solving cases that others couldn't: his role as the world's first 'consulting detective' allowed him to help those - from the highest to the most humble - who, quite literally, had no one else to turn to. Holmes didn't work for either recognition or huge fees. He worked for the sheer intellectual pleasure to be derived from a mystery.
And that's why the character has spread beyond the confines of his fictional exploits and become larger than life. He is bigger than Doyle, bigger than the stories, bigger than the actors who portray him. Sherlock Holmes doesn't need introductions or explanations. We talk about him and write about him as though he were real: and maybe, just maybe, he is. Or, as someone put it: "Be he never so humble, there's no police like Holmes."
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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