Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on 22 May 1859.

He became one of the best-known writers of the late Victorian period, though not always for the work he valued most. His reputation rests above all on Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective who made crime feel like a problem to be read through evidence, observation and small physical signs.

Conan Doyle trained as a doctor at the University of Edinburgh. Medicine taught habits of attention: looking closely, drawing conclusions from details and treating outward signs as clues to something hidden. One of his teachers, Dr Joseph Bell, was later linked to the methods Conan Doyle gave to Holmes. Bell could use observation to make sharp judgements about patients, their work and their lives. Conan Doyle turned that kind of close reading into fiction.

Holmes did not invent detective fiction, but he gave it one of its clearest forms. The stories made the detective a figure of reason, method and controlled attention. Crime became something that could be worked through, clue by clue, with the reader invited to watch the process.

Success was not easy for Conan Doyle. He wrote historical novels, adventure stories, essays, and other works, and he sometimes resented the grip Holmes had on his public persona. Yet the detective outgrew him. A Scottish-born doctor-writer created a character so successful that he helped shape modern ideas of crime and evidence, only to find himself partly trapped by that success.