Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on 22 May 1859. He was the third of nine children, and went to school at Jesuit-run Stonyhurst, where he developed a love for the heroic writing of Sir Walter Scott. He attended a final year of schooling at Feldkirch in Austria, before reading medicine at Edinburgh University. While studying there, he spent time as a doctor’s assistant in Birmingham, and also as a ship’s doctor on board a Greenland whaler. He graduated in 1881, before spending more time as a ship’s doctor and working in Africa.

He gained his MD in 1885 with a thesis on syphilis, and the same year married Louisa Hawkins, the sister of a patient of his who had died in his surgery. After a failed attempt to set up a medical practice in Plymouth, they eventually settled in Southsea. They had two children together.

Conan Doyle wrote stories and articles at university, but with little note. His studies brought him into contact with Dr Joseph Bell, who coldly and fastidiously noted every detail about his patients, making impressive diagnostic deductions from his eagle-eyed observations. Another teacher was Sir Patrick Heron Watson, who was a much more humane and compassionate figure. Conan Doyle would use the two of them as his inspiration for the unusual pairing of Holmes and Watson.