Letter: It's Sherlockological

Sir: So Tim Owen (Letters, 13 October) feels it is 'poppycock' to celebrate the centenary of the death (or, more appropriately, the disappearance) of Sherlock Holmes in 1993?

This is 'ineffable twaddle', as Holmes himself might have said. December 1993 is the centenary of the publication of The Final Problem in the Strand Magazine. Surely the majority of people are more interested in the factual, rather than the fictional, event?

This is an occasion where it seems more appropriate to congratulate Royal Mail, and the stamps' designer, Andrew Davidson, on a superb tribute to English literature's greatest fictional character - the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - than to carp over Sherlockological trivialities.

Yours faithfully,

CHRISTOPHER RODEN

Founder

The Arthur Conan Doyle Society

Penyffordd, Chester