charles barrow's writing

I was genuinely thrilled to see this plaque on the wall of a house in East Dean, East Sussex. I'd never have made a career of being a detective. I t took minutes for the penny to drop. Sherlock would not have been impressed, nor Poirot.  

I spent a few hours in Portsmouth City yesterday. Charles Dickens was born there. I'd like to have visited the house where he was born, now a museum, but it was closed. There is also a fine statue of him but I didn't find it in my wanderings. Arther Conan Doyle also lived in Portsmouth for a while. He wrote his first Sherlock Holmes novel A Study in Scarlet while he was living there. I did find the spot where he used to live but his house is gone and there is just a small purple plaque on the wall of the building that stands there now. So, I was breathing the same air that two literary giants breathed but I have no souvenirs to show for it, no better understanding of them as writers or people. I feel rather disappointed that I didn't try harder to track these great men down, I merely glanced at the Conan Doyle plaque and then moved on. I could have walked out of my way to find the Dickens statue, that wouldn't have put me out. But I didn't. An opportunity missed. ...

Further to my p.s. post below, in which I discuss extra author content at the back of novels. I just finished reading The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz. It's a Sherlock Holmes novel. Brave writer, Horowitz, to step into Conan Doyle's big shoes and take on the iconic and much loved detective. There seems to be a vogue for bringing dead authors' most famous characters back to life, hasn't Sophie Hannah just done it with Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot? Fans of Sherlock (legion and rabid) needn't have worried, Horowitz has written a cracking tale from start to finish and after it has finished he treats us to some detailed notes on how he went about approaching his task, in ten rules he set himself at the outset. Interesting stuff. And while I'm back on this topic... I heard a brilliant Aaron Sorkin interview on Radio 4's Front Row recently. Sorkin is a master of his craft, The West Wing and The Social Network amongst many others, and it was fascina...