Sherlock Holmes has been named the greatest detective of all time in a poll of British crime-fiction fans. Forty-eight per cent of the 1,000 people asked opted for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s sleuth.

Anthony Horowitz, the novelist authorised by the Conan Doyle estate to write Sherlock story The House Of Silk, last night said that Holmes – played by Benedict Cumberbatch in the recent hit BBC series – and his sidekick Watson were ‘the perfect team’.

Dame Agatha Christie was named greatest crime writer and her Murder On The Orient Express the greatest crime novel in the OnePoll censuswide survey, commissioned to mark the publication of Career Of Evil, by J. K. Rowling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.