Sherlock in the City

Robin Rowles, leader of our Red-Headed League walking tour

One of the fun things we did on our trip to London last month was taking a "Sherlock in the City: Tracking the Red-Headed League" tour with Robin Rowles.

There are any number of self-directed walking tours of Sherlock Holmes's London that one can take. The gift shop at the Sherlock Holmes Museum sells a booklet, for example. But we chose to go with a guided tour.


Robin is a qualified City of London Tour Guide and a Holmesian. The two came together splendidly as he recounted the story of the Red-Headed League, one of my favorites in the entire Canon, while pointing out sites or potential sites in the story as we walked along -- Pope's Court and Saxe Coburg Square, for example.

In addition to all the Red-Headed League connections, Robin offered us interesting insights on places related in various ways to Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, and London history. Although he advertised it as 90 minutes, the tour was closer to two hours.

As a bonus, we got to see the outside of the apartment building where Hercule Poirot resides in the David Suchet series: