The Strange Case of the Scientist Who Believed in Fairies

Abstract

In writing the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with its riveting mix of domestic incident and great external events, I was fascinated throughout by one particular aspect – how this medically trained creator of the supposedly super-rationalist detective Sherlock Holmes could become an apostle for spiritualism – to the extent that, in 1920, slightly more than three decades after launching his famous detective, he lent his considerable support to two young Yorkshire girls who manifestly conned the world into believing that they had photographed fairies in their back garden: the famous Cottingley Fairies.