欧宝娱乐

I鈥檝e been listening to Sherlock Holmes stories in the car and think I鈥檓 going to go through and listen to all of them now. I鈥檝e started with The Adventures and have enjoyed it immensely.

There must have been any number of psychological studies performed on Mr Holmes. There is, of course, that wonderful line by Borges in his lectures on Verse in which he says that he believes in the Character of Sherlock Holmes without actually believing in any of the stories in which that character appears. That is such a clever thing to say and I think it is also remarkably true. Although, as with most other true things, I never seem to have too much trouble 鈥榖elieving鈥� in the stories as they are being told.

If I was doing a psychological analysis of Mr Holmes (something, obviously, I鈥檓 grossly underqualified to perform 鈥� but I feel quite safe, given he never actually existed and even if he did he would be well dead by now and so would be quite unlikely to be adversely affected by any nonsense I might come up with) it would probably have a lot to say about the beginnings of these stories. There is a bit of a pattern to how these stories start. Either a client or, all too often, Dr Watson is presented to Holmes and he makes some remarkable logical deduction about these invariably astonished characters from a seemingly insignificant detail he notices via an article of clothing or their hat.

What I find so psychologically interesting about him doing this at the start of each story is that I can鈥檛 help but feel he does this to present himself as the intellectual superior to those around him. The relationship between Watson and Holmes really isn鈥檛 the same as that between Boswell and Johnson, despite the constant reference to the similarities. Watson may be the dutifully biographer, but his role is also that of the slightly foolish, but endlessly appreciative audience. It is as if it is only through his reactions that we learn when to gasp and when to applaud with awesome wonder. Watson is the laughing track of his day. But Holmes repeatedly asserting his intellectual superiority at the beginning of each story is fascinating as it also hints at insecurities in his character. He requires reassurance.

He is a flawed character, our Holmes. Rational, empirical but also all too often only interested in 鈥榩eople鈥� for the complex 鈥榗ases鈥� they present him with. There is also the problem of his drug addiction which he invariably turns to out of sheer boredom - and invariably that is intellectual boredom.

I can鈥檛 begin to tell you how surprised I was to find that Doyle was a spiritualist. It is something I found myself remembering as Holmes performs his tricks. Because there is something terribly similar about the tricks Holmes performs and the 鈥榗old reading鈥� performed by a spiritualist. His 鈥榚xplaining鈥� often results in his audience saying something like 鈥� now it is explained I can see how easy it all is, which then has Holmes complaining he should keep his methods to himself. Except I think there is a deeper significance to him doing these performances 鈥� and that is to constantly have his audience wondering what else there is about them he can 鈥榮ee鈥� - what other secrets has he access to?

A lesser character would have 鈥榤ystical powers鈥� 鈥� Holmes achieves the same thing through the force of his intellect. The only wonder is, given our culture鈥檚 clear distrust (if not active loathing) of the intellect, how he ever came to be quite so loved in the first place. Perhaps his 'coldness' explains this - perhaps it is because he is the model of the detached scientist that it is alright to like him.

Now, talking of love. My eldest daughter became particularly fond of Mr Holmes about five years ago. So much so that she read all of his stories after we watched many of the BBC TV shows of his works made in the 1980s. One day she had been reading one of the stories in this book and Watson mentions, in an off-hand way, that one can calculate how tall someone is from the length of their stride. And so Fi actually tried this, taking various measurements and doing a series of calculations. It is hard to exaggerate the utter joy children bring into one鈥檚 life. They come highly recommended 鈥� as do the wonderful stories in this collection.

Oh, and there are a couple of stories where it is mentioned that someone is reading a book with a yellow cover 鈥� a mystery/detective story. In Italy detective stories are still referred to as 鈥榊ellows鈥�. I wonder why these stories tended to be printed in books with yellow covers? I must wiki it at some stage.