The
Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle August 1997
About the Author Bibliography Martin
Booth
The
Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle August 1997
About the Author
Bibliography
The Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle
It has been said that if Arthur Conan Doyle had never written
or done anything else of note but create Sherlock Holmes he would still be famous today,
but that without his celebrated detective he might well have been forgotten. Such a
circumstance would have been an unjust fate, for Conan Doyle's own life was as exciting
and fascinating as that of any ripping yarn hero. Born into an illustrious Roman Catholic
family, he suffered a difficult, poverty-stricken childhood with an alcoholic father.
After training as a doctor, he abandoned medicine to pursue a
literary career which brought him great wealth: he was the first block-buster popular
novelist. No adventure or opportunity passed Arthur Conan Doyle by: he took a voyage on an
Arctic whaler, was an all-round sportsman and inveterate traveller, popularised sking in
Switzerland, served as a doctor in the Boer War, twice stood as a prospective member of
parliament, advocated divorce law reform, invented safety aids in the Great War and
famously championed against injustice. A man of enormous self-confidence, he had the
courage of his convictions, knew where his duty lay and was never afraid to become
embroiled in controversy: in later life, he conducted an exhaustive crusade to spread the
doctrines of spiritualism, for which he was widely ridiculed and in the pursuit of which
he spent a large portion of his fortune. He was also dictatorial, doggedly stubborn,
rejected all criticism and would never admit he was wrong about anything. Arthur Conan
Doyle was, in short, an enigma.
The Doctor, The Detective and Arthur Conan Doyle is a detailed
and extensively researched biography which offers for the first time the true source of
Sherlock Holmes' cocaine habit and presents to a new generation of readers a modem day
interpretation of the life of this paradoxical and highly versatile author, the father of
detective fiction.
About The Author
Martin Booth was born in 1944 and educated in Hong Kong. A critically acclaimed novelist,
he is the author of Hiroshima Joe, A Very Private Gentleman and Adrift in the Oceans of
Mercy, in addition to being the biographer of Jim Corbett, the famous tiger hunter turned
conservationist.
Martin Booth is also known as a children's novelist and non-fiction writer, his latest
book being the highly praised Opium, A History.
