Wingsch Real Estate Investments   

Portrait: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a British writer and physician

Wednesday, 27 September 2023 - 11:00 am (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: Editorial / Redaktion
Category/Kategorie: Portrait Reading Time:  4 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Holmes and Dr. Watson. The Sherlock Holmes stories are milestones in the field of crime fiction.

Doyle was a prolific writer; other than Holmes stories, his works include fantasy and science fiction stories about Professor Challenger, and humorous stories about the Napoleonic soldier Brigadier Gerard, as well as plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. One of Doyle’s early short stories, “J. Habakuk Jephson’s Statement” (1884), helped to popularise the mystery of the Mary Celeste.

The Crimes Club was a private social club founded by Doyle in 1903, whose purpose was discussion of crime and detection, criminals and criminology, and continues to this day as “Our Society”, with membership numbers limited to 100. The club meets four times a year at the Imperial Hotel, Russell Square, London, where all proceedings are strictly confidential (“Chatham House rules“). Its logo is a silhouette of Doyle. The club’s earliest members included John Churton Collins, Japanologist Arthur Diósy, Sir Edward Marshall Hall, Sir Travers Humphreys, H. B. Irving, author (Thou Shalt Do No Murder) Arthur Lambton, William Le Queux, A. E. W. Mason, coroner Ingleby Oddie, Sir Max Pemberton, Bertram Fletcher Robinson, George R. Sims, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, P. G. Wodehouse, and Filson Young.

Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. His last words were directed toward his wife: “You are wonderful.” At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden. In his will, he bequeathed £250 per year to Alfred Wood, who had served as his private secretary since 1897. He was later reinterred together with his wife in Minstead churchyard in the New Forest, Hampshire. Carved wooden tablets to his memory and to the memory of his wife, originally from the church at Minstead, are on display as part of a Sherlock Holmes exhibition at Portsmouth Museum. The epitaph on his gravestone in the churchyard reads, in part: “Steel true/Blade straight/Arthur Conan Doyle/Knight/Patriot, Physician and man of letters”. A statue honours Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, where he lived for 23 years. There is a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, close to the house where Doyle was born.

Read more on The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre and Wikipedia Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). Photos by Wikimedia Commons. If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

---

Recommended posts:

• Portrait: Jules Verne, science fiction writer
• Portrait: Ernest Hemingway, American novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and sportsman
• Portrait: Franz Marc, one of the key figures of German Expressionism
• Portrait: Mark Twain, an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer
• Portrait: The German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist and essayist Thomas Mann
• Portrait: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, national poet and naturalist
• Portrait: Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, geologist and biologist
• Portrait: The novelist and short-story writer Franz Kafka
• Portrait: Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher
• Portrait: John S. Collins, the founder of Miami Beach
• Portrait: Oscar Wilde, Irish poet and playwright
• Portrait: The architect and founder of the Bauhaus School Walter Gropius
• Portrait: Britain’s longest-reining monarch, great and exemplary European, conciliator, beacon of stability, constancy, integrity, conscientiousness, Britishness, solid as a rock, institution, inspiration and companion of generations of people around the globe: Queen Elizabeth II and the end of an era
• Portrait: Albert Schweitzer, a French-German theologian, organist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician
• Portrait: Baron Munchausen