Robert Gore-Langton

Why Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies

The author's fondness for emanations and ectoplasm ran in the family

‘An Enchanted Picnic’, 1882: one of the fantastical watercolours by Conan Doyle’s father, Charles Altamont Doyle, painted just before he was committed to an asylum. © Peter Nahum at The Leicester Galleries, London / Bridgeman Images  
issue 27 July 2024

Sherlock Holmes fans will be delighted to know that there is a new play featuring the great man. In it Holmes, 72, bored silly by retirement and bee-keeping in the Sussex Downs, is back living at his old haunt of 221B Baker Street and  reunited with the widowed Watson. The case that lands in Holmes’s lap concerns a reported outbreak of fairies in the Bradford area.

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