Only a brave man would cross the wild moorlands after dark - for the ancient legend of the Hound of the Baskervilles has haunted the Baskerville family for generations.

Then Sir Charles's mysterious death brings Sherlock Holmes to the scene.

Sir Charles had been running for his life, but what inspired such terror?

A spectral hound from Hell? Or something far more earthly and cunning ...THE AUTHOR Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh.

He combined a medical career with a literary one, and his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1888, in a story called A Study in Scarlet published in Beeton's Christmas Annual. Regularly published in the Strand magazine, he finally killed off Holmes in 1893.

As a result, 20,000 people cancelled their subscription to the Strand magazine.

Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930.