a smoking sherlock is essential
W O R D S B Y R O B E R T H A I N A U L T L I T E R A R Y E D I T O R
He ' s probably the world ' s most iconic detective. Famed for the deerstalker hat and calabash pipe that never appeared in the books he is instantly recogniseable as London ' s foremost consulting crimesolver. But while Mark Gatiss ' and Stephen Moffat ' s popular BBC series does away with the deerstalker for the most part, in a sign of the times it also dispenses with the fags and pipe. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ' s original Sherlock was a compulsive smoker both of tobacco and opium and rehabilitating him makes him a very different Holmes.
Sherlock was someone who cared a great deal about smoking and would tailor his tobacco intake to suit his mood. He first appears smoking a pipe in A Study in Scarlet( 1887) though the type of pipe is not specified. Through the later stories we discover that Holmes smokes three tobacco pipes: a clay pipe( his favourite), a cherrywood pipe and a briar pipe. Occasionally he smokes cigars. smokers ' manifesto 05