Sometimes fiction is greater than reality.
This week, I decided to have a little fun and write the history of one of my British heroes, namely Sherlock Holmes. Okay, so Sherlock Holmes is actually a fictional character invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, yet he still seems more real than many of the other people I have written about in these pages.
Every so often a writer comes up with an idea that somehow strikes a cord within a large segment of the population, so that even though the stories aren’t actually true, people feel that they should be. Sherlock Holmes is probably the best example of this phenomena and over the past 100 years a huge body of fictional-scholarship has developed around the character. For many this fake scholarship is half the fun.
Another example of this is The Necromonicon, the book of the dead. This dreaded tome first appeared in the writings of the American horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft back in the twenties. Since then the book has been mentioned or appeared in countless stories, movies, and even at least one cartoon. These days, several books have been published under the title in an attempt to feed off the popularity of the nonexistent original.
It will be interesting to see if any of the current crop of literary creations ever reach the status of these two. In fifty years time, will Harry Potter be spoken about as a real boy and J.K. Rowling just a woman who wrote down his adventures? We’ll see.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this little biography of one of British History’s most fascinating characters.
