The Victorians loved their statues, didn't they? "Eminent men." Now mostly forgotten. The Georgians gave us their fair share too. Edinburgh is littered with them, invariably holding a book or a scroll or some device denoting their profession. They get photographed a lot, and squeezed into selfies, because that's what tourists do. We're not short of them either.
A couple of statues get rubbed as well. Most famous is Greyfriars' Bobby, the wee dog across from the National Museum, who has a perpetually shiny nose, touched for 'luck' by gullible visitors. Even more bizarre is the shiny toe of renowned rationalist David Hume, who would have hated to know he'd become the object of superstitious practices.
But there's one statue to someone even more famous, albeit fictional. It's on a busy enough road right enough, but just that bit off the regular tourist trail. In summer it's partly concealed by the trees on either side, so that even passing on the bus it's hard to get a glimpse. The portrayal owes a bit more to Hollywood than to the original texts, but that does at least serve to make the character instantly recognisable when you do get to see him. The deerstalker and pipe are pretty obvious clues, not requiring any great powers of deduction.
So what's London's most famous make-believe sleuth doing stood by the edge of Picardy Place? There's a further clue less than a hundred metres away, in the shape of a pub called the Conan Doyle. Holmes' creator was born at 11 Picardy Place. And although much of his schooling took place down in England, he returned to his birthplace to study medicine at the university. One of his tutors there is generally credited as the inspiration for Sherlock's forensic approach to tackling crime, based on the techniques of observation, deduction and inference that Doctor Joseph Bell used in his approach to medicine (at that time regarded as an unusual way of working).
In the later part of his life the author became obsessed with spiritualism, and the city also has The Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre dedicated to this rather less popular aspect of his character. I'm not sure what Holmes would have made of that.
