The most famous monuments to Sherlock Holmes. Sculptural compositions (5). Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson The Long Road Home

Five Soviet films directed by Igor Maslennikov about Sherlock Holmes, filmed in 1979-1986, earned love and recognition not only in Russia, but also in England itself. In 2006, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain ordered that Vasily Livanov be awarded the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire for “the most authentic Holmes in world cinema.”

There are many monuments to Sherlock Holmes - in Switzerland, Japan, Scotland and, of course, on Baker Street in London. Plaques mark iconic places associated with Watson, such as in Afghanistan, where fictional hero was wounded in the arm. Memorial plaques hang in the Criterion bar in Piccadilly, in the chemistry laboratory of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where the heroes first met, in the vicinity of the Swiss Falls in Reichenbach. Since 1990, the address 221B finally appeared on Baker Street, which previously did not exist, which did not stop fans of the author of the deductive method from sending countless letters to him for more than a hundred years. Now a museum-apartment has been opened at this address, and the British government has declared the house an architectural monument.

In Russia, the famous couple of Conan Doyle's characters have always been the personification of an impeccable English style worthy of imitation. Their main features - a bright mind, elegant humor, self-irony, aristocracy, incorruptibility, ideal style - formed the standard image of a British gentleman. Historical Russian-English friendship in the best possible way was formed precisely thanks to mutual cultural interest, and the monument to Watson and Holmes at the British Embassy in Moscow is a symbol of dialogue between the two countries.

Anglo-Russian history

Mutual understanding between Russians and English over the centuries has been facilitated not only by literary images and cultural associations, but also by the similarity of views on some problems of world politics. Despite the fact that Russia and England have repeatedly found themselves in different sides front, their military and state interests often coincided, and as a result they repeatedly became political and economic allies. Since 1698, when Peter I visited the British Isles, new era diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries. Following the trade agreement of 1736, England and Russia fought together in the Seven Years' War. Cooling under Catherine the Great, who was skeptical about the “American campaign” of George III, gave way to unity in the fight against French Revolution(both England and Russia sent troops to France, unsuccessfully trying to restore the fallen monarchy), and then in the war against Napoleon. All this gave rise to a surge of Anglomania in Russian diplomatic circles and a passion for “everything English” in high society Petersburg.

Sherlock Holmes entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most popular movie character in the world. Over a hundred films have been made about him. The first was filmed by Arthur Marvin in 1900 in America. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a Scotsman by birth, a ship's doctor and a versatile writer, created the epic about Sherlock Holmes from 1887 to 1926. He was upset by such close public attention to such a frivolous hero. The murder of Sherlock in a fight with Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls caused a storm of indignation. According to legend, having received a letter from Queen Victoria, the writer succumbed to persuasion and revived the hero again.

But in early XIX century, mutual sympathy was again replaced by suspicion. As soon as Alexander I returned from Europe, where he was celebrated as the conqueror of Napoleon, a Russophobic wave broke out in London due to the Russian suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-31. The famous English call in the Crimean War “We will not give up Constantinople to the Russians!” speaks of a gigantic disagreement in the “Eastern Question,” which in those years became a stumbling block for the whole of Europe. It seemed that for the British, Russia was becoming a principle enemy. But only a few years have passed, and the common enemy is Ottoman Empire, as well as the tour of the Russian Imperial Ballet in London, reconciled the two powers and dispelled the myth of a ruthless barbarian from the East threatening Europe. And the great tour of Nicholas II with his wife Alexandra Fedorovna across Europe in 1896 ended with a visit to Queen Victoria, Alexandra’s grandmother. As a result, according to the Anglo-Russian agreements of 1907, the powers became allies within the military-political bloc “Entente”, which united them during the First World War.

The aggression of the Hitlerite coalition forced the anti-communist Churchill to prefer Stalin to Hitler. And in 1945, the Potsdam Conference of the Big Three with Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill determined the fate of Europe for many years.

Russia and Britain are still the most important players and potential partners on the world stage. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, located opposite the British Embassy, are witnesses to this.

What to do at the monument

1. To make an important decision or find a way out of a difficult situation, you need to sit between two detectives and hold on to notebook Watson. You can't touch Sherlock Holmes's smoking pipe - according to Moscow tradition, this promises nothing but trouble.

2. You can stroll along the embassy building and appreciate the intellectual minimalism of the architectural project created under the leadership of Richard Burton. The main idea of the monument is the proximity of English and Russian cultures, expressed, for example, in the combination of traditional stone and wood with environmental materials used by English designers in the process of creating interiors. The grand opening of the building on May 17, 2000 was attended by Princess Anne of Great Britain. About the new building, former English Prime Minister Tony Blair said: “It will not only be Britain's window to Eastern Europe, but also a Russian window to Britain.”

The British in Russia and about Russia

Until the 16th century, England knew nothing about the Moscow principality - instead of it, geographical maps Europe stretched across endless Tartary. In August 1553, the only ship surviving from the English expedition, sent to the Arctic Ocean by King Edward VI, landed in St. Nicholas Bay, at the walls of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery (later the city of Severodvinsk was founded in its place). This is how the British first set foot on the Russian coast. The captain of the ship Chancellor, delivered to Moscow, had with him a letter from Edward VI in several languages, in which the English monarch asks for permission to trade. Ivan IV found the proposal mutually beneficial and gave the go-ahead. The first English trading company, the Moscow Company, founded in 1555, had enormous privileges, which were curtailed only under Peter I. For the British, John granted chambers in Kitai-Gorod, next to the Kremlin, on the territory of which exclusively English laws were in effect.

The memoirs of the English pioneer Chancellor have been preserved, where he describes the luxury of dinners, a red brick castle with nine churches, where the tsar lives: “Moscow itself is a great city. It seems to me that it will be larger than London with a suburb, but at the same time it is wild and stands without any order... Such people, accustomed to a harsh life, are no longer anywhere under the sun, for they are not afraid of any cold.” In his notes, the Englishman also pays great attention to the size of the Russian army that amazed him.

Ivan the Terrible, having kept his guests for about a year, became imbued with sympathy for England and sent the expedition home with rich gifts and assurances of friendship. A few years later, he was inspired not only by the idea of an alliance with a powerful maritime state, but also by his love for Elizabeth I. In the process of sophisticated diplomatic negotiations related to matchmaking, England achieved a virtual trade monopoly with Russia at sea, and Elizabeth, having heard about polygamy and the waywardness of the Russian monarch, still escaped the move to the Kremlin.

Russian Anglomaniacs and Dandies

In the 19th century, Anglomania swept the capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburg and Moscow. From around the 1840s, it became not only fashionable to read Walter Scott and Dickens, but also to travel to the British Isles for no business purposes. Upon their return, Counts Pyotr Shuvalov, Mikhail Vorontsov, and the Golitsyn princes laid out regular English parks, decorated their estates with colonial British artifacts and gathered English important people in their salons. After the German Settlement in Moscow burned down in 1812, Anglican services were held in the house of the famous Anglophile Anna Golitsyna on Tverskaya. In those same years, noble youth, following Pushkin, loved to surprise secular society, imitating the English dandies Byron and Brummel, and some eccentrics, returning from fashionable London dressed in extravagant tailcoats and starched ties, turned away their boots and adopted a special English accent in their speech, posing as foreigners, as mentioned by M. Pylyaev in his book about the Russian aristocracy "Wonderful eccentrics and originals."

The British in Moscow

The first Englishmen, merchants of the Moscow Company, began to settle in Moscow from the time of Ivan the Terrible. Under Alexei Mikhailovich, they were located in the German settlement. From the era of Peter the Great, a British subject in Russian Empire was no longer uncommon. An important event The 19th century was marked by the construction in Moscow of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Andrew (1878) in Voznesensky Lane. Already in our time, since the 1990s, Moscow for the British has again become one of the centers of attraction in eastern Europe. They are brought here by business, art and privacy. At the beginning of the 10s of the 21st century, about 25,000 British people lived in Moscow, of which about 1,000 were students.

On September 24, 1999, a monument to the most famous literary detective Sherlock Holmes was unveiled on Baker Street in London. This detective, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the most popular movie character in the world. In the last century, people even wrote letters to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, considering them to be real personalities.

In March 1990, in London at 221b Baker Street - at the address associated with the name of the great detective and detective - a permanent museum-apartment of Sherlock Holmes opened, which the British government declared an architectural and historical monument.

There are many monuments in the world associated with the name of Holmes. His first statue appeared in 1988 in Meiringen (Switzerland). Holmes' apartment museum was opened in the building of an old English church - a complete copy of the one at 221b Baker Street in London. And at the same time, the adjacent street was named Baker Street. The whole "corner" near the church and the statue is covered with enlarged old clippings from the Strand magazine, which published stories about Sherlock with magnificent illustrations by Sidney Page (1860-1908), who is recognized best illustrator series about Holmes and Watson. Bronze Holmes rests on a piece of rock, having prudently made room for a tourist with a camera. In fact, he indulges in reflection before the final fight with Moriarty.

The next statue of the famous detective was unveiled on October 9, 1988 in Karuizawa (Japan). The sculpture can be seen in the city of Karuizawa, where the most famous Japanese translator"Holmes" Nobuhara Ken, who worked on a cycle about the adventures of a detective for 30 years, from 1923 ("The Hound of the Baskervilles") to 1953 ( full meeting). Certain difficulties arose with the installation of the monument - there were fears that the European style of the Holmes statue would not fit into the classic Japanese look of the city, but in the end, persistent enthusiasts of the project prevailed. The monument was opened only a month later than Switzerland. What the Japanese Holmes is thinking about is not precisely established. Probably about translation difficulties.

Then it was Edinburgh's turn. Here, in the homeland of Conan Doyle, the third monument to Sherlock Holmes was unveiled on June 24, 1991, which caused considerable excitement among Stevenson's admirers - what about the monument to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Stevenson remained on the sidelines this time, but the Edinburgh Federation of Builders was luckier - the opening of the monument was timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its creation.

In London, the bronze Holmes appeared thoughtfully looking into the distance, dressed for the rainy London weather - in a long raincoat, a hat with small brims and a pipe in his right hand.

And on April 27, 2007, a monument to the great detective was opened on Smolenskaya Embankment in Moscow near the British Embassy. This was the first monument where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are depicted together. This is understandable. Our popularly beloved television series is not about deduction with common sense, but about friendship, about the local way of talking in the kitchen, about ideal relationships between people. The sculptures reveal the faces of actors Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin, who brilliantly played the roles of these Conan Doyle heroes.

As one joke goes: the last power station in the UK was closed, now all the energy in the country is generated by the writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who is constantly spinning in his grave due to the constant appeal of our contemporaries to his most famous creation - a series of stories about the adventures of the private detective Sherlock Holmes. Over the 40 years of work on the cycle, the writer created 56 short stories and 4 stories about his adventures. There is some truth in every joke, and there is hardly one literary hero, which would be as famous as the London detective. No wonder he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the most filmed literary character. What Mr. Holmes was like in numerous films, TV series, plays, and radio shows! But, of course, the most interesting thing is to find out how Sherlock Holmes is seen by his compatriots and fellow countrymen.

On September 24, 1999, the first and so far only monument to Sherlock Holmes in the British capital was opened in London. To guess where the monument stands does not require mastery of the deductive method. Of course, on Baker Street, right next to the metro station of the same name (by the way, it is not clear why Sherlock Holmes and his friend, Dr. Watson never took the metro: the station was opened in 1863, and the events described in the works of Conan Doyle unfold in the 90s. So, instead of taking a cab, detectives could easily use this type of transport, although then there would be no spectacular chases through the narrow London streets).

The English sculptor John Doubleday depicted the hero Conan Doyle as a middle-aged man, thoughtfully peering into the distance, with a pipe in his hand, wearing a winged cloak and a hunting cap with two visors. It is unlikely that a real London detective of the 19th century could wear such a costume: both the cloak and the headdress were more likely to be found in the countryside; in the city it would attract too much attention. But this is exactly how Sherlock was dressed by the artist Sydney Paget, who worked for the Strand Magazine, where Conan Doyle’s stories have been published since 1891. Paget's illustrations have become classics and are recognized as the best. And so the familiar image was established.

Sherlock Holmes's famous apartment at 221b Baker Street is also a fictional place. In Conan Doyle's time there were only 100 houses on the street. Researchers of the writer's work suggest that the prototype of the detective's home could be houses 19 - 35, especially since just opposite is house number 32, from where Colonel Moran tried to shoot Sherlock. Opened in 1990, the museum - the detective's apartment is located in house No. 239, and the number 221b emblazoned on its door is nothing more than the name of the company that owns the museum.

Besides London, several other places in the world can boast of having a monument to the famous detective. These are the Swiss Meiringen (a town in the vicinity of the Reichenbach Falls), the Japanese city of Karuizawa (the first translator of the stories about Sherlock Holmes Nobuharo Ken lived there), the Scottish Edinburgh - the birthplace of Conan Doyle - and Moscow. In the Russian capital, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson (this is the first monument where the detective is not depicted alone) are located at the English embassy, and the sculpture was created by Andrei Petrov.

The actors Vasily Livanov and Vitaly Solomin, who played the characters of Conan Doyle in the film Igor Maslennikov, beloved by many since childhood, can easily discern the features of the Russian Holmes and Watson. The series was filmed in Riga for 7 years! It is not surprising that residents of the Latvian capital began to consider Sherlock Holmes as their fellow countryman and celebrate his birthday every year on January 4th.

Svetlana Verkhovskaya

Monument to Sherlock Holmes in London (London, UK) - description, history, location, reviews, photos and videos.

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Monuments literary characters- not that uncommon. In a Moscow courtyard Patriarch's Ponds For example, Behemoth and Koroviev are lying in wait for guests, Ostap Bender has chosen Elista for some reason, Doctor Aibolit has settled in Anapa. It’s easy to guess which book character’s statue was erected in September 1999 in the center of London - of course it’s great detective Sherlock Holmes.

Subway passengers ascending from Baker Street station towards Marylebone Road are greeted by a three-meter gray figure wearing a long cloak with a cape and the classic English “deer hunter’s hat” worn by Vasily Livanov in the brilliant film adaptation of Conan Doyle’s stories. The criminologist holds a pipe in his right hand, his eyes are closed, his thin face is thoughtful. Holmes is clearly solving one of his famous puzzles in his head. Sculptor John Doubleday managed to embody in bronze the vivid image of a crime fighter known throughout the world.

The statue is within walking distance of the Sherlock Holmes Museum. All you have to do is turn right, walk a short distance to the intersection with Baker Street, turn right again and take a leisurely three-minute walk to house number 221 b.

Practical information

Address: London, Marylebone Rd, 4.

How to get there: take the metro to Baker Street station.

Installed in 2007 in Moscow near the British Embassy in honor of the 120th anniversary of the publication of the first novel about the London detective by Arthur Conan Doyle.

There are many monuments to Sherlock Holmes - in Switzerland, Japan, Scotland and, of course, on Baker Street in London. Plaques mark iconic places associated with Watson, such as in Afghanistan, where the fictional hero was shot in the arm. Memorial plaques hang in the Criterion bar in Piccadilly, in the chemistry laboratory of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, where the heroes first met, in the vicinity of the Swiss Falls in Reichenbach. Since 1990, the address 221B finally appeared on Baker Street, which previously did not exist, which did not stop fans of the author of the deductive method from sending countless letters to him for more than a hundred years. Now a museum-apartment has been opened at this address, and the British government has declared the house an architectural monument.

In Russia, the famous couple of Conan Doyle's characters have always been the personification of an impeccable English style worthy of imitation. Their main features - a bright mind, elegant humor, self-irony, aristocracy, incorruptibility, ideal style - formed the standard image of a British gentleman. Historically, Russian-English friendship has developed best precisely because of mutual cultural interest, and the monument to Watson and Holmes at the British Embassy in Moscow is a symbol of dialogue between the two countries.

Anglo-Russian history

Mutual understanding between Russians and English over the centuries has been facilitated not only by literary images and cultural associations, but also by the similarity of views on some problems of world politics. Despite the fact that Russia and England more than once found themselves on opposite sides of the front, their military and state interests often coincided, and as a result, they repeatedly became political and economic allies. Since 1698, when Peter I visited the British Isles, a new era of diplomatic and trade relations between the two countries began. Following the trade agreement of 1736, England and Russia fought together in the Seven Years' War. Cooling under Catherine the Great, who was skeptical about the “American campaign” of George III, gave way to unity in the fight against the French Revolution (both England and Russia sent troops to France, unsuccessfully trying to restore the fallen monarchy), and then in the war against Napoleon. All this gave rise to a surge of Anglomania in Russian diplomatic circles and a passion for “everything English” in the high society of St. Petersburg.

But at the beginning XIX century Mutual sympathy was replaced by suspicion again. As soon as Alexander I returned from Europe, where he was celebrated as the conqueror of Napoleon, a Russophobic wave broke out in London due to the Russian suppression of the Polish uprising of 1830-31. The famous English call in the Crimean War “We will not give up Constantinople to the Russians!” speaks of a gigantic disagreement in the “Eastern Question,” which in those years became a stumbling block for the whole of Europe. It seemed that for the British, Russia was becoming a principle enemy. But only a few years passed, and the common enemy in the form of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the tour of the Russian Imperial Ballet in London, reconciled the two powers and dispelled the myth of a ruthless barbarian from the East threatening Europe. And the great tour of Nicholas II with his wife Alexandra Fedorovna across Europe in 1896 ended with a visit to Queen Victoria, Alexandra’s grandmother. As a result, according to the Anglo-Russian agreements of 1907, the powers became allies within the military-political bloc “Entente”, which united them during the First World War.

Russia and Britain are still the most important players and potential partners on the world stage. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, located opposite the British Embassy, are witnesses to this.

What to do at the monument

1. To make an important decision or find a way out of a difficult situation, you need to sit between two detectives and hold on to Watson’s notebook. You can't touch Sherlock Holmes's smoking pipe - according to Moscow tradition, this promises nothing but trouble.

2. You can stroll along the embassy building and appreciate the intellectual minimalism of the architectural project created under the leadership of Richard Burton. The main idea of the monument is the proximity of English and Russian cultures, expressed, for example, in the combination of traditional stone and wood with environmental materials used by English designers in the process of creating interiors. The grand opening of the building on May 17, 2000 was attended by Princess Anne of Great Britain. About the new building, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said: “It will become not only Britain’s window to Eastern Europe, but also Russia’s window to Britain.”

The British in Russia and about Russia

Until the 16th century, England knew nothing about the Moscow principality - instead of it, endless Tataria stretched out on the geographical maps of Europe. In August 1553, the only ship surviving from the English expedition, sent to the Arctic Ocean by King Edward VI, landed in St. Nicholas Bay, at the walls of the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery (later the city of Severodvinsk was founded in its place). This is how the British first set foot on the Russian coast. The captain of the ship Chancellor, delivered to Moscow, had with him a letter from Edward VI in several languages, in which the English monarch asks for permission to trade. Ivan IV found the proposal mutually beneficial and gave the go-ahead. The first English trading company, the Moscow Company, founded in 1555, had enormous privileges, which were curtailed only under Peter I. For the British, John granted chambers in Kitai-Gorod, next to the Kremlin, on the territory of which exclusively English laws were in effect.

Russian Anglomaniacs and Dandies

In the 19th century, Anglomania swept the capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburg and Moscow. From around the 1840s, it became not only fashionable to read Walter Scott and Dickens, but also to travel to the British Isles for no business purposes. Upon their return, Counts Pyotr Shuvalov, Mikhail Vorontsov, and the Golitsyn princes laid out regular English parks, decorated their estates with colonial British artifacts and gathered English important people in their salons. After the German Settlement in Moscow burned down in 1812, Anglican services were held in the house of the famous Anglophile Anna Golitsyna on Tverskaya. In those same years, noble youth, following Pushkin, loved to surprise secular society, imitating the English dandies Byron and Brummel, and some eccentrics, returning from fashionable London dressed in extravagant tailcoats and starched ties, turned away their boots and assumed a special English accent in their speech, pretending pretending to be foreigners, as M. Pylyaev mentions in his book about the Russian aristocracy, “Wonderful eccentrics and originals.”

The British in Moscow

The first Englishmen, merchants of the Moscow Company, began to settle in Moscow from the time of Ivan the Terrible. Under Alexei Mikhailovich, they were located in the German settlement. Since the era of Peter the Great, a British subject in the Russian Empire was no longer a rarity. An important event of the 19th century was the construction in Moscow of the Anglican Cathedral of St. Andrew (1878) in Voznesensky Lane. Already in our time, since the 1990s, Moscow for the British has again become one of the centers of attraction in eastern Europe. They are brought here by business, art and private life. At the beginning of the 10s of the 21st century, about 25,000 British people lived in Moscow, of which about 1,000 were students.