Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 - 1930) was born and educated in Edinburgh, and, as you can hear in the audio clip in Inspector MacDonald's profile, kept his Scottish burr throughout his life.
But there are surprisingly few references in the Holmes canon to the land of his birth. Holmes and Watson never visited, as far as we are aware; none of the stories was set here, and none of the major characters in any of the stories is Scottish.
So, what claims do we have on the Sacred Writings?
The fair Mary Morstan, daughter of an Indian Army captain and introduced in The Sign of Four, was raised in Edinburgh. She later married Dr Watson, who may have been married before. Mrs Watson died between 1891 and 1894, after which Dr Watson may have married again. Possibly several times.
Inspector Alec MacDonald, your honoured host on this blog, was born in Aberdeen, as was fellow Valley of Fear character Menzies the engineer, murdered by the Scowrers in 1875. Aberdeen was also the scene of an occurance which Holmes said paralleled the St. Simon case (The Noble Bachelor), and Mrs St. Clair visited the Aberdeen Shipping Company's offices in the City to pick up a parcel in The Man With the Twisted Lip.
The Sea Unicorn, the steam-sealer captained by Black Peter Carey in 1883-84, sailed out of Dundee, and failed banker J. H. Neligan was murdered by Carey two nights before the ship sighted the Shetland Lights. Dundee was also from where Joseph Openshaw's ominous death notice was sent in The Five Orange Pips, according to the postmark.
Mrs Stewart, whose death in 1887 Holmes blamed on the nefarious Col. Sebastian Moran, had lived in Lauder, south of Edinburgh. Also in The Empty House, Edith Woodley, Ronald Adair's former fiancee, was from Carstairs in South Lanarkshire.
To the west of the capital lies Rosyth, the naval base named on one of the pigeon holes in German spymaster Von Bork's safe in His Last Bow.
In The Case of the Missing Three-Quarter, Holmes states that a drag-hound would follow aniseed "from here to John O'Groats".
Lucy, the daughter of deceased Atlanta lawyer John Hebron and Effie, who married Grant Munro, the client in The Yellow Face, was nursed by a "Scotchwoman".
In The Naval Treaty, Holmes believes Mrs Hudson has as good an idea of breakfast as a Scotchwoman.
