He is our representative in this strange household. Not really, but we do get all our information about Holmes through Watson. Agatha Christie – through the mouth of her own detective Hercule Poirot – asserted that Conan Doyle’s greatest creation wasn’t Sherlock Holmes but Doctor Watson. Over time, the stories show how Watson gradually humanises this thinking machine. Watson, we know from the books, marries at least a couple of times and is a much more admirable and humane figure than Holmes. Happily, the 21st century Sherlock produced by the BBC, with Benedict Cumberbatch as this very Aspergian Holmes and Martin Freeman as this vulnerable and engaging Watson, gives us a more accurate portrait of their relationship. Nigel Bruce deliberately portrayed Watson as this bumbling dolt, which is very different from the Watson of the books, who is a soldier, doctor, battle veteran and an authority on “the fair sex”. Most of us grew up on Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce in those old B movies of the 1930s and 40s.
From your readings of the books how would you describe them? There have been so many different Sherlock Holmes films, which all depict Watson and Holmes differently. I think everyone needs to know the foundation of that relationship. In short, this is an introduction to a partnership and friendship that will be chronicled over 56 short stories and four novels. He makes lists of what Holmes seems to know a lot about and what he doesn’t seem to know about at all – including the Copernican theory. At the beginning, Doctor Watson tries to puzzle out the profession of his strange roommate at 221b Baker Street. If you’ve never read any Sherlock Holmes books you really need to start with that one because it introduces this rather mysterious and romantic character.
Your first choice is A Study in Scarlet, which describes how the famous detective pair, Holmes and Watson, met. Let’s have a look at some of the books you are all such fans of. Being an invested member of the group is a lot of fun, especially since my fellow Irregulars range from the retired chief technical officer for Apple to judges and lawyers and notable writers such as Neil Gaiman. The Baker Street Irregulars continues to flourish, hosting an annual birthday banquet with lots of toasts and talks. She always insisted “the Game” should be played without cracking a smile. There are discrepancies in “the canon”, there are gaps, there are problems with chronology but Irregular scholarship will find a way to reconcile or make sense of them all.ĭorothy Sayers was a member of an equivalent group in England – The Sherlock Holmes Society of London. In it people play what is called “the Game”, which is founded on the premise that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson are actual historical figures and the stories historical records of their exploits.
They decided to run a contest in the Saturday Review of Literature for people who had the same kind of passionate interest in 221b Baker Street, and from this contest there emerged a kind of literary society and dining club, which has being going strong for more than 75 years now. The Morley kids had grown up reading the Sherlock Holmes books and used to tease each other with questions about the most minor details in them. The Baker Street Irregulars was founded in the 1930s by three brothers – Christopher Morley, who was a well-known literary journalist of the time, his brother Felix Morley, who was for a while the editor of my newspaper, The Washington Post, and their brother Frank Morley, who worked in publishing and once shared an office at Faber & Faber with that other great Sherlock Holmes fan, TS Eliot.