Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of the most famous single character in the whole range of English literature, and was in addition the author of some of the best-loved romances in the language. Conan Doyle, by Hesketh Pearson, is a story which for colour, excitement and humour rivals some of Doyle's own fiction.

Hesketh Pearson is what may be called a "partisan biographer". Mr. Pearson is never content merely to catalogue uninterpreted biographical facts. For him, the writing of biography is a creative act, and the heart of the matter is the biographer's personal response to his subject. This explains why Mr. Pearson's writing is alway so vivid, so entertaining, so filled with unexpected insights.

The biographer sees Conan Doyle as a mass of contradictions - the conventional Scottish doctor whose imagination was seized by the romantic idealism of the Age of Chivalry; the inventor of Sherlock Holmes who came in time to detest his creation; the prudent, profoundly decent Victorian gentleman who pursued the occult and stoutly defended his researches in spiritualism, and even in fairies.

CONAN DOYLE is a sympathetic portrait, and one that will answer many questions about Doyle's creations as well as about his own personality. Doyle's turbulent association with the explosive and hilarious Dr. Budd provides fascinating foreshadowings of several characters who were later to appear in Doyle's fiction. Mr. Pearson introduces the man from whom Sherlock Holmes acquired his powers of observation and deduction, as well as the man whose face has become universally accepted as that of the great detective. But Mr. Pearson's primary interest is in Conan Doyle himself, and he has created a portrait that is by turns admiring, funny, moving and always intensely readable.