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I'm Hugh Bonneville and welcome to the Hound of the Baskervilles Part 1.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem, he believed that he and his readers had seen the last of the great detective. Doyle was looking forward to working on other projects, but his most

devoted fans had difficulty letting Holmes go. Furious letters soon began arriving on the author's

desk, calling him a brute for murdering his own creation.

20,000 dedicated readers cancelled their subscription to the Strand magazine.

Some even took to wearing black armbands in an extraordinary act of public mourning.

After almost a decade, Doyle finally bowed to public pressure, penning a new Sherlock

Holmes story, The Hound of the Baskervilles. He didn't quite go so far as to resurrect his

hero, not yet at least, choosing instead to offer an extra novel-length adventure that would fit neatly

somewhere within the existing cannon.

It was released in monthly installments spread across nine issues of the strand.

And it was the huge success of this new tale, perhaps the most beloved detective story in all literature,

even more than a century later that ensured Holmes would inevitably

return to the world of the living. Appearing in another 30-odd stories produced over the next

25 years and innumerable unofficial adventures ever since. So it is that with Holmes missing

presumed dead at the bottom of the Reichenbach falls,

over the next nine episodes we'll be bringing you his most popular adventure,

just as his original readers experienced it.

From the Noyser podcast network, this is The Hound of the Basketboards, Part 1.

Mr Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not in frequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table.

I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before.

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