Hesketh PearsonArthur Conan DoyleA Life Arthur Conan Doyle was once described as ‘the most prominentliving Englishman’, so it is not surprising to discover that biographies ofConan Doyle proliferated in the decades after his death in 1930. This ‘tellerof tales’ who lived an upright life based on his own personal code of chivalryand who supported causes both worthy and lost alike, seemed something of anenigma to his friends and to the public. He had created Sherlock Holmes, one of the handful of trulyimmortal characters of fiction known the world over, and biographers havesearched the details of Doyle’s life ever since to prove that the writerhimself was indeed Holmes, and possessed his qualities. The evidence thoughseems to indicate he was more of a Dr. Watson! The paradox of a writer whocould display the mental incisiveness of his detective on the page, yet alsobelieve in spiritualism, which one can never imagine Holmes taking seriously,fascinates his biographers to this day. One of the latest biographies, Teller of Tales by Daniel Stashower(1999), attempts to put Doyle’s belief in spiritualism, to which he devoted thelast part of his life, in its social context. The mass deaths of World War I had encouraged the desire forbelief in and contact with the spirit world. A spiritualist colleague, the Rev.John Lamond, wrote one of the earliest Doyle memoirs in 1931. In 1945, Doyle’s son Adrian wrote from the familyperspective in The True Conan Doyle, and in 1949 John Dickson Carr, himself awriter of crime stories, wrote what some aficionados think is the definitivebiography. He was lucky to have access to Conan Doyle’s family papers beforethey became enmeshed in a lawsuit, which continues to this day, and has limitedthe availability of this source material to subsequent biographers. There isapparently a vast amount of material, as Doyle had a ‘horror of destroyingdocuments’. Hesketh Pearson’s biography appeared in the same decade asAdrian Conan Doyle’s and John Dickson Carr’s, in 1943. It is written in hisusual popular and jaunty style making it a ‘good read’. Pearson draws heavilyon Conan Doyle’s own autobiographical writings, Memories and Adventures,published in 1924, and is therefore full of anecdotes from Doyle himself,giving a strong sense of his personality, which was a mixture of humor andearnestness. Pearson also intersperses the recollections of Doyle’sfamily and friends, and seemingly knew Doyle personally. Perhaps because ofthis close association with the Doyle circle, he skirts around some of theissues raised by later biographers. Doyle’s long platonic friendship with JeanLeckie for instance, who became the second Mrs. Conan Doyle, is referred toenigmatically: ‘This marriage in September 1907 to Miss Jean Leckie, whosefamily he had known for some time, made a new man of him’; and his greatobsession with spiritualism is treated tactfully as something of anembarrassment. Doyle’s greatest faux pas, his belief that a fakedphotograph of fairies by two little girls in Cottingley, was genuine, receivesa one sentence mention—‘Doyle believed in fairies, but did not think theirpresence was proved until someone had made a photograph of them’. Suchsensitive issues in Doyle’s life had to wait for later biographers to explore,when the necessity to tread carefully while friends and family were alive, hadpassed. Pearson’s Doyle comes across as a very likeable fellow, whothought of himself as a complex character. Perhaps he was right, for hecertainly retains a fascination for 21st century biographers. The Internet isfilled with biographies and theses on his works, ranging from thestraightforward in a series called Great Scots (which also includes anintroduction to the geography and culture of Scotland) to the intellectual in APost-Colonial Canonical and Cultural Revision of Conan Doyle’s HolmesNarratives. How Holmes would have relished that title! And so the quest for the real Conan Doyle continues until asthe great man said himself; ‘you have eliminated the impossible; whateverremains, however improbable, must be the truth.’ Notes by David Timson AcknowledgementThe text of Arthur Conan Doyle - A Life by Hesketh Pearsonis used by kind permission of Michael Holroyd. Tim Pigott-SmithTim Pigott-Smith’s busy acting career has covered stage,television and film, and extensive work on radio and audiobooks. His films havevaried from Remains of the Day and The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Escape toVictory and The Four Feathers. He has spent many seasons with the RoyalShakespeare Company and the National Theatre, the plays including Shakespeare,Amadeus, The Iceman Cometh and Major Barbara. Fame is the Spur, Jewel in theCrown, Kavanagh QC are among his television credits. He has also read numerousclassics on audiobooks.