The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle, By Russell Miller

Why Sherlock Holmes' creator was away with the fairies

Spiritualists never die. As if pickled in formaldehyde, they simply "pass to spirit" or "go to Summer Land", an ethereal kind of heaven. Arthur Conan Doyle, in thrall to spiritualism, called for a new science of the paranormal and, in 1925, opened the Psychic Bookshop in London. The best Sherlock Holmes stories were written before he converted to spiritualism in 1917. It flourished amid the bereavement of the First World War, in which the writer lost his adored son, Kingsley.

A steely moralist, Conan Doyle campaigned on behalf of battered wives and against the iniquities of the Belgian Congo. Yet where was the morality in spook-dabbling? His attempts to authenticate photographs of wood nymphs convinced many that he had taken leave of his senses. Russell Miller provides a sympathetic account of his subject's spiritualist crises, and asks: had Conan Doyle dabbled in mediums and moonshine before The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1901, would the fire-breathing beast really have come from the Beyond, as we are at first led to believe? Probably, yes.

Do we need another biography of Conan Doyle? Andrew Lycett's appeared in 2007, along with a handsome volume of correspondence edited by three distinguished Sherlockians. Miller says he is the first biographer to have "unlimited access" to this correspondence, yet much of what passes as "new" can be found in the letters already published. That said, Miller's is a highly readable life-and-times account. He dilates interestingly on the darker side of Holmes, first made explicit in the drug-taking of The Sign of Four (1890). Did his creator also have a weakness for narcotics? Miller offers no new evidence.

The real drama of his life remained Sherlock Holmes: the man in the deerstalker distracted him from "serious literature", and he grew weary of his creation. In one extraordinary letter, his mother, Mary Doyle, advises him against killing off Holmes, as the British public would not be amused. The detective's disappearance in 1893 caused Sherlockians to march in protest down Fleet Street. Mother knew best. This book will delight fans of Conan Doyle, but please note: Holmes never said "Elementary, my dear Watson"; PG Wodehouse did.