Sherlock Holmes And The Mystery Of His Endless Afterlife

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) It is a bright May morning in the Swiss Alps, the occasional fluffy cloud setting off the clear blue sky. The sun is shining, but the air is cool. Perfect weather, we agree, for murder. This content was published on June 28, 2026 - 10:00 16 minutes Robert Hutton, Financial Times

The killing in which we are to participate will be violent, but it won't be a spontaneous moment of fury. On the contrary, it is long-planned. For months we have been receiving instructions for our rendezvous, which urge us to adopt aliases and wear disguises. Later, I will discover that branches of both the Swiss and British governments have been involved. Just how high does this thing go?

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One answer to that turns out to be 2,700ft: the altitude of the narrow path on which I'm now waiting, next to a waterfall. Above us, the water gushes through a hole in the rock before falling hundreds of feet to a pool below. A slip would be deadly. In front of us are two men. One is dressed for the opera – or he would be if we were in the 19th century – with a dinner suit, top hat and black cloak. The other is wearing a tweed cape and a deerstalker. With a cry, the man in the top hat charges, and the pair wrestle, each trying to push the other over the edge.

Then, just as it seems that the man in the deerstalker has won, they pause, adjust their clothing and do it all again, so that the TV news crews can get a better angle. The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, for that is who we are, is on its once-a-decade pilgrimage to the Reichenbach Falls.

It was here that, in 1891, our hero was thought to have plunged to his death, locked in the arms of his nemesis, Professor James Moriarty,“the Napoleon of crime”. To mark the occasion, nearly 60 of us have spent three days touring Switzerland dressed as Victorians. There is a part of me that is aware that this is all very silly. After all, I say to myself, as I sweat under my own top hat and frock coat, I'm not that into Sherlock Holmes.

I'm here, I keep telling people, because I'm interested in the huge cultural footprint that has been left by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation.“I hear of Sherlock everywhere,” notes the detective's brother Mycroft, predicting the future better than anyone could have guessed, in the 1893 story The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.

Holmes is regularly high on the lists of fictional characters most portrayed on screen, up there with Father Christmas and Dracula. Even if you've never read one of the stories, you know who he is. And you're only going to see more of him, because Conan Doyle's works are now out of copyright, so the character is anyone's to play with.

Right now, you can watch Watson, a modern-day series that follows Holmes's sidekick as he returns to medicine, and Young Sherlock, a Guy Ritchie interpretation best described as“very Guy Ritchie”. Next year we'll see Rafe Spall in The Death of Sherlock Holmes. That's just television. Adrian Braddy, editor of Sherlock Holmes Magazine, says it publishes more than 80 reviews of new spin-off books a year. And The Regent's Park Open Air Theatre in London, round the corner from Baker Street, has just put on a new play, Sherlock Holmes.

This is all before we get to the character's real-world footprint. It is not simply that the walls of Baker Street underground station are tiled with his instantly recognisable profile. The statue of Holmes outside the station is one of at least five around the world. In the past month, I've visited three museums dedicated to him. Last year he got a Lego set.

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This content was published on Jun 23, 2005 Fans of the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes have been criss-crossing Switzerland on the trail of the British sleuth, with a few crimes of their own to solve. swissinfo caught up with the members of London's Holmes Society on their anniversary trip in 2005. (Michele Andina, swissinfo 2005)

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