As my literary agent, Arthur Conan Doyle, has sadly passed away, I have, with some reluctance, taken up other means of recording the singular gifts by which my friend , Mr Sherlock Holmes was distinguished.

I have endeavoured to give some account of my strange experiences in his company from the chance meeting that first brought us together in the matter of A Study in Scarlet up to the final story that was published under the title of Shoscombe Old Place in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, though chronologically that was not the last adventure we experienced together.

It had been my intention to stop there but my hand has now been forced by recent events including yet another portrayal of ourselves on the large screen in “Sherlock Holmes” with Robert Downey Jr. and on the small screen in the BBC series that moves us into the present day.

John H. Watson MD
late of the Army Medical Department