The exhibition’s promotional image

It may sound like an excruciatingly long winded Bond film title but The Man Who Never Lived And Will Never Die is actually the name of a major new exhibition about our beloved Sherlock Holmes.

The title sounds highly dramatic and almost apologetic: okay, we know he’s not a real person but he feels like he is so he’s worthy of a exhibition. There’s no need to explain yourselves – of course he is worthy!

Depending on when you are reading this, the exhibition is either upcoming (book your tickets!), or it’s going on at the moment (get over to the Museum of London sharpish) or it has already finished (let us know what you thought – comments below).

It’s billed as London’s first major exhibition about Baker Street’s finest since 1951. How is this possible you may wonder? I did, until I considered that literary characters don’t really have their own cultural places of worship in the same way that for example, cinema, music or fashion does. Unless you count the British Library, they might have done something with the manuscripts and drawings there but really for a show to take off the public craves more than a few tired books and magazine sketches. We need some rock ‘n’ roll please.

It seems like the curators of this show were thinking along those lines too because we are promised way more than old books in display cases. We are getting…wait for it: Benedict Cumberbatch’s Belstaff coat!

For fans of Doyle and the Canon, there is some succor. The exhibition will have the 1903 manuscript of The Adventure of the Empty House, along with an 1897 Sidney Paget portrait of Conan Doyle that has never before been on public display.

Only why do I have the feeling the longest queue is going to be for Benedict’s camel dressing gown?

The Man Who Never Lived And Will Never Die

17 October 2014 – 12 April 2015

Museum of London
150 London Wall
London EC2Y 5HN

Adult £12 (£10.90 without donation)
Concession (ages 12-15, students, over 60, unwaged and registered disabled) £10 (£9 without donation)
Flexible family tickets for 3-6 people (must include at least one child and one adult) £9.50 per person (£8.50 per person without donation)