Readers of the Mary Russell books, beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, will notice that the Sherlock Holmes they contain is a somewhat younger man than most Holmesians (or Sherlockians, on the left side of the Atlantic) have been led to expect. He is, after all, long retired to the Sussex Downs (as seen in the preface of His Last Bow) and the Sidney Paget drawings of him that accompanied the original Strand magazine publications depicted a man already middle aged in the 1880s. So what’s this with referring to him in 1915 as “fifty four”?
First of all, we must remember that specific references to age and even dates are both rare and conflicting within the Conan Doyle canon. Sir Arthur was not aiming to construct a fictional biography; he was writing tales to entertain, and often couldn’t be bothered with the details.
Let us look at two of the stories that do give certain reference points of dates.