The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

'I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart'.

Scandal, treachery and crime are rife in Old London Town. A king blackmailed by his mistress, dark dealings in Opium dens, stolen jewels, a missing bride - these are cases so fiendishly complex that only the great Sherlock Holmes would dare to investigate. For he, and he alone, has the extraordinary faculty of perception and almost unhuman energy which could solve them ...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859, one of seven children who survived to adulthood. Rejecting his family's strict Catholicism and, cut off from their patronage, he decided to set up his own practice in Southsea in 1882.

After the death of his first wife, Louise Hawkins, he went on to marry Jean Leckie in 1907 and they had two sons and a daughter. He died in 1930.