Sherlockiana @ JamesBickers.com

In the 1880s, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle practiced medicine from a small villa in the city of Portsmouth, and while he was there he created the Great Detective we all cherish to this day. There’s a plaque on that villa that commemorates the birth of Sherlock Holmes, but now residents of Portsmouth are (understandably) ready for a statue to be built there.

Celia Clark, chairwoman of The Portsmouth Society, said: ‘A small plaque on the side a block of flats is not terribly prominent.

‘It should be quite important to us as a city that Sherlock Holmes came to life on that very spot.

‘People coming from Japan and America must wonder where he did write it.

‘There is very little physical link to the character and Conan Doyle who was such a public figure.’

Filed under: Odds and ends on January 6th, 2009