India – ‘The Jewel in the Crown’ – featured large in the Victorian psyche, and no less among the characters that Sherlock Holmes encountered in his many cases. John Watson himself was invalided out of the army in India; the Agra treasure was lost in The Sign of Four, and Dr Grimesby Roylott established a large medical practice in Calcutta. So an intrepid band of members of the Society are travelling to India in February 2025, making one of the Society’s most ambitious pilgrimages.

In anticipation of the pilgrimage we were able to secure Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones to give a talk on Sherlock Holmes and Victorian India.

She is ideally placed to speak on the subject as she is a renowned historian of colonial India, with an expertise particularly on Lucknow and its culture, and has written several books on this and related topics. She visits the subcontinent as frequently as possible and we were very lucky to have been able to catch her before our trip and before she travelled once again to India. We therefore had to arrange her talk at short notice with the result that although well attended there were many who would have liked to attend but couldn’t.

They missed a treat! Rosie had done a considerable amount of research into the links between India in the Canon and Victorian India with the result that her talk was not only a helpful briefing for those travelling to India but a considerable contribution to our general understanding of the world in which Holmes lived.

Happily thanks to Jane Arnold-Forster we have a video recording of Rosie’s talk which is available to download. You can download it here, but we need to make a small charge (£5) to contribute to the costs of the lecture.

It is well worth it and we hope you will enjoy a fascinating insight to Sherlock Holmes and Victorian India.

Upon purchase, you will recieve an email with a link and password for accessing the recording.