To move Holmes around the capital, Conan Doyle used contemporary street atlases and the London Post Office Directory – the closest thing to Google Maps at the time. Conan Doyle grew up in Edinburgh, was educated in Lancashire and Austria, and lived in central London for less than a year before moving first to South Norwood, then in short order to Hindhead in Surrey and later to Sussex. London is often described as another character in the stories.īut, as historian David Cannadine points out in a fine, sceptical essay in a new book accompanying the exhibition, Holmes's London is actually only sketchily imagined in the stories. In the form of his "Baker Street Irregulars", he even employed a street-level spy-network of urchins. Holmes occupied perhaps London's most famous imaginary address – 221B Baker Street – and Dr Watson wrote that his "knowledge of the byways of London was extraordinary". It is apt that the show should take place at the Museum of London. But you can see what they are getting at. It's a winningly daft title: there are an infinite number of men who never lived and will never die, and a very large number of fictional creations of whom the same could also be said. Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived And Will Never Die is the first major show dedicated to the great detective since a Holmes display graced the Festival of Britain in 1951.
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