And that's how you became involved with the Granada television series with Jeremy Brett ?
Michael Cox, the producer, approached me on the strength of The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook, and asked if I would be interested in writing a book on the making of the series. I got very excited about the idea, and had a meeting with the people at Granada, and it all took off from there. Where they were so brilliant, and I've never come across anybody who's done it with quite the same thoroughness, was that they had a photographer who started taking pictures the day they began work on the series. In other words, they photographed the empty lot before they started building the set. They were building it next to Coronation Street, so you got this wonderful juxtaposition.
Michael Cox, the producer, approached me on the strength of The Sherlock Holmes Scrapbook, and asked if I would be interested in writing a book on the making of the series. I got very excited about the idea, and had a meeting with the people at Granada, and it all took off from there. Where they were so brilliant, and I've never come across anybody who's done it with quite the same thoroughness, was that they had a photographer who started taking pictures the day they began work on the series. In other words, they photographed the empty lot before they started building the set. They were building it next to Coronation Street, so you got this wonderful juxtaposition.
The Television Sherlock Holmes did very well, and what was nice about it was that they didn't just want a book about their Sherlock Holmes, they wanted information on how the character had been created, and how he had been used in films, on television and the radio. A number of books I've done subsequently - a classic example is Hercule Poirot for Boxtree - they didn't want material about the prehistory of the character. But things don't happen out of the air - there's always a beginning. I'm a great believer in putting things in context, because I feel it pushes people off in different directions. Even in today's modern crime fiction, there are precursors to the toughest, most hard-boiled stories. It's happened before - it runs in curves. Having been doing these anthologies for thirty years, I'm very aware of that.