For more than two decades, Sherlock Holmes played a vital, though secret, role in solving the major crimes and scandals of his day - some too damaging to the monarchy, the government or the security of the nation to be fully revealed at the time.

Compiled in narrative form by Dr Watson soon after the great detective's death, Holmes's notes have been kept under lock and key at the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane. Now, seventy years later, we can finally open the secret casebook of Sherlock Holmes.

'Seven stories about the greatest of all fiction detectives . . . all told by Dr Watson in a very credible imitation of the original style' Birmingham Post