Stephen Fry

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Stephen Fry (born 24 august 1957) is a British writer, director and actor who played Mycroft Holmes in 2011 in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows with Robert Downey Jr. (Holmes) and Jude Law (Watson).

He is a sherlockian scholar, member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London (since his teenage years) and which he presided the 2005 dinner. He is the sponsor of the Lancelyn Green's Arthur Conan Doyle Collection in Portsmouth (UK). In 2004, a project of a sherlockian TV movie for ITV was evoked by the British press (The Daily Mail, 31 march; The Mirror, 30 march and 15 june...) where Fry and Hugh Laurie were the main roles, but the movie was never released.



Celebrity Mastermind

In 2004, he won the Celebrity Mastermind show on BBC where he chose to answer questions about Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Here is the questionnaire:

  1. In which publication did the first Holmes story "A Study in Scarlet" first appear in 1887? (solution: Beeton's Christmas Annual)
  2. In "The Hound of the Baskervilles", by what name did Jack Stapleton head a school in Yorkshire and establish a reputation in entomology? (solution: Vandaleur)
  3. What name did Holmes adopt in his guise as an Irish-American spy? (solution: Altamont)
  4. Mycroft Holmes was a founding member of which club of the most unsociable and unclubable men in town? (solution: Diogenes)
  5. Irene Adler, always known as "the woman" by Holmes, was the prima donna of which opera company when she met the King of Bohemia? (solution: Warsaw)
  6. In "A Study in Scarlet", what 5-letter word is scrawled in blood on the wall in a dark corner of the room? (solution: RACHE)
  7. In "The Valley of Fear", what was the local name for the members of Lodge 341 of the Ancient Order of Freemen in the Vermissa Valley? (solution: Scowrers)
  8. In "The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax", with which London banking firm did Lady Frances have her account? (solution: Sylvesters)
  9. On which theorem did Professor Moriarty write a treatise that won him the mathematical chair at a small English university? (solution: Binomial Theorem)
  10. When relating his very first case, "Gloria Scott", whom does Holmes describe as "the only friend I made during the two years that I was at college"? (solution: Victor Trevor)
  11. In "The Solitary Cyclist", what was the nickname of "the greatest brute and bully in South Africa" who conspired with Bob Carruthers to get Violet Smith’s fortune? (solution: "Roaring" Jack Woodley)
  12. In "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", how did Dr Roylott get the poisonous snake into the room of his step-daughters, killing Julia? (solution: Ventilator)
  13. In which story did Holmes make his celebrated reference to "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time" – the curious incident being that the dog didn't bark? (solution: Silver Blaze)
  14. What did the red-headed London pawnbroker Jabez Wilson have to copy out when he was duped by John Clay into accepting a position with the spurious "Red-Headed League"? (solution: First volume of the Encyclopedia Brittanica)


Stephen Fry answered correctly to questions: 1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13 and 14, and he passed on question 3.



In 2005, he was the narrator of the BBC documentary The Man Who Loved Sherlock Holmes about Richard Lancelyn Green.

In 2011, he played Mycroft Holmes in the movie Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows with Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes.


Audible

In 2017, Stephen Fry read 60 Sherlock Holmes stories and introductions for the audio book company Audible (Amazon).


Interview


Content

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6


TV

Cinema




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