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Waterfall
Clip: Episode 3 | 3m 27sVideo has Closed Captions
Sherlock Holmes is back from the dead! How did the fictional sleuth survive the Reichenbach Fall?
Sherlock Holmes is back from the dead! After mounting pressure from fans across the world, Arthur Conan Doyle finally revives the great, fictional detective in a new story published in The Strand Magazine. Visiting the Reichenbach Falls, the site of Sherlock's "death," Lucy Worsley explains how Holmes survived his brawl with Professor Moriarty.
![Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs. Doyle](https://image.pbs.org/contentchannels/VYoTqZk-white-logo-41-2QBsm1k.png?format=webp&resize=200x)
Waterfall
Clip: Episode 3 | 3m 27sVideo has Closed Captions
Sherlock Holmes is back from the dead! After mounting pressure from fans across the world, Arthur Conan Doyle finally revives the great, fictional detective in a new story published in The Strand Magazine. Visiting the Reichenbach Falls, the site of Sherlock's "death," Lucy Worsley explains how Holmes survived his brawl with Professor Moriarty.
How to Watch Lucy Worsley's Holmes vs. Doyle
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship♪ On the 26th of September, 1903, Sherlock fans woke up to some exciting news.
Danke schoen.
Danke.
Worsley, voice-over: A short story had been published involving an evil mastermind, a faked death, and the return to a notorious waterfall.
The author, of course, was Arthur Conan Doyle, and he'd done something shocking.
He'd finally given in to the pressure, and he brought his master detective Sherlock Holmes back from the dead.
He was back for good.
There was just one little problem.
♪ At the climax of the story "The Final Problem," published 10 years earlier, Sherlock and his arch nemesis Moriarty had fought to the death right here.
♪ In the end, both of them had tumbled down into these swirling waters.
Holmes's body had never been found, which does make me think that perhaps Arthur was leaving the door open just a crack for Holmes to return.
Otherwise, he'd have killed him off good and proper, wouldn't he, having him shot in the head, something definitive.
Arthur's loyal readers had speculated for years that Sherlock wasn't really dead, and now they were proved right, but how on earth had the detective survived the Reichenbach Falls?
[Birds chirping] This is how Arthur has Sherlock explain his survival.
Now, this is desperately unlikely, but just go with the flow.
Ha ha!
"I have some knowledge," Sherlock says, "of baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling," so he used this Japanese system of wrestling to get Moriarty himself over the edge, and then, "with a horrible scream," Moriarty "kicked madly for a few seconds," "clawed the air" with his hands, and then down he went.
♪ This is classic Arthur, adopting the latest new trend for wrestling and using it for his cliffhanger, except that he got the spelling wrong.
Have a look at this.
I bet this is where Arthur got the idea from.
It's an article from "Pearson's Magazine."
Arthur was a contributor to that magazine, and it came out just before Arthur wrote the story.
It's about a "new art of self-defense"--bartitsu.
The pictures are fabulous.
They show you how to do it.
Ha ha!
There's all sorts of swashbuckling going on here, and that must have been how Sherlock Holmes got Moriarty over the edge, and then Holmes climbed up the cliff face to safety.
Yeah, right.
Oh, it's all just crumbling away.
No.
You couldn't climb that.
Video has Closed Captions
Does Arthur’s science stand up to scrutiny when trialed and tested? (3m 12s)
Video has Closed Captions
Lucy Worsley and Professor Janice Allan discuss the shift in Arthur's writing. (3m 35s)
Video has Closed Captions
Arthur turns his attention to devising a new Holmes story set just before the war: "His Last Bow." (3m 34s)
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