Coordinates	35°27′″N139°38′″N
{{infobox disease | name	Carbuncle | Image Carbuncle on buttok.JPG| Caption Carbuncle on buttock of a diabetic patient| DiseasesDB 29434 | ICD10 | ICD9 | ICDO | OMIM | MedlinePlus | eMedicineSubj | eMedicineTopic | MeshID D002270 | }}

A carbuncle () is an abscess larger than a boil, usually with one or more openings draining pus onto the skin. It is usually caused by bacterial infection, most commonly ''Staphylococcus aureus''. The infection is contagious and may spread to other areas of the body or other people. Because the condition is contagious, family members may develop carbuncles at the same time.

Causes

Often, the direct cause of a carbuncle cannot be determined. Things that make carbuncle infections more likely include friction from clothing or shaving, generally poor hygiene and weakening of immunity. For example, persons with diabetes and immune system diseases are more likely to develop staphylococcal infections.

Presentation

A carbuncle is made up of several skin boils. The infected mass is filled with fluid, pus, and dead tissue. Fluid may drain out of the carbuncle, but sometimes the mass is so deep that it cannot drain on its own. Carbuncles may develop anywhere, but they are most common on the back and the nape of the neck.

The carbuncle may be the size of a pea or as large as a golf ball. It may be red and irritated, and might hurt when touched. It may also grow very fast and have a white or yellow center. It may crust or spread to other skin areas. Sometimes, other symptoms may occur, such as fatigue, fever and a general discomfort or sick feeling. Itching may occur before the carbuncle develops.

Etymology

The word is believed to have originated from the Latin: ''carbunculus'', originally a small coal; diminutive of ''carbon-'', ''carbo'': charcoal or ember, but also a carbuncle stone, "precious stones of a red or fiery colour", usually garnets.

Treatment

Carbuncles usually must drain before they will heal. This most often occurs on its own in less than two weeks. Placing a warm moist cloth on the carbuncle and soaking the affected area several times each day helps it to drain, which speeds healing. Squeezing the carbuncle, or cutting it open without medical supervision can spread and worsen the infection.

Treatment is needed if the carbuncle lasts longer than two weeks, returns frequently, is located on the spine or the middle of the face, or occurs along with a fever or other symptoms. Treatment helps reduce complications related to an infection. A doctor may prescribe antibacterial soaps and antibiotics applied to the skin or taken by mouth. Deep or large lesions may need to be drained by a health professional. Proper excision, by cruciate incision, under strict aseptic conditions will treat the condition effectively.

Proper hygiene is very important to prevent the spread of infection. Hands should always be washed thoroughly, preferably with antibacterial soap, after touching a carbuncle. Washcloths and towels should not be shared or reused. Clothing, washcloths, towels, and sheets or other items that contact infected areas should be washed in very hot (preferably boiling) water. Bandages should be changed frequently and thrown away in a tightly-closed bag. If boils/carbuncles recur frequently, daily use of an antibacterial soap or cleanser containing triclosan, triclocarban or chlorhexidine, can suppress staph bacteria on the skin.

Monstrous carbuncle

In 1984 Charles, Prince of Wales famously described the proposed Sainsbury Wing extension to the National Gallery in London as a "monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend", a term now widely used to describe architecture, particularly modernist architecture, unsympathetic to its surroundings.

References

Category:Gross pathology

ca:Àntrax da:Karbunkel de:Karbunkel dv:ވިޔާއްދަ es:Ántrax eo:Karbunklo fa:کفگیرک fr:Anthrax staphylococcique hi:बहुछिद्रिल फोड़ा io:Karbunklo lt:Piktvotė nl:Karbonkel (geneeskunde) ja:よう ru:Карбункул sl:Karbunkel sv:Karbunkel uk:Карбункул (хвороба) zh:癰

Coordinates	35°27′″N139°38′″N
colour	#DEDEE9
name	Sherlock Holmes
series	Sherlock Holmes
first	''A Study in Scarlet''
creator	Arthur Conan Doyle
gender	Male
occupation	Consulting detective
family	Mycroft Holmes (brother)
nationality	British }}

Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases.

Holmes, who first appeared in publication in 1887, was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. The first story, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in ''Beeton's Christmas Annual'' in 1887 and the second, ''The Sign of the Four'', in ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'' in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in ''Strand Magazine'' in 1891; further series of short stories and two novels published in serial form appeared between then and 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1880 up to 1914.

All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson; two are narrated by Holmes himself ("The Blanched Soldier" and "The Lion's Mane") and two others are written in the third person ("The Mazarin Stone" and "His Last Bow"). In two stories ("The Musgrave Ritual" and "The ''Gloria Scott''"), Holmes tells Watson the main story from his memories, while Watson becomes the narrator of the frame story. The first and fourth novels, ''A Study in Scarlet'' and ''The Valley of Fear'', each include a long interval of omniscient narration recounting events unknown both to Holmes and to Watson.

Inspiration for the character of Holmes

Doyle said that the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations. Sir Henry Littlejohn, Lecturer on Forensic Medicine and Public Health at the Royal College of Surgeons, is also cited as a source for Holmes. Littlejohn served as Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health of Edinburgh, providing for Doyle a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime.

Life

Early life

Explicit details about Sherlock Holmes's life outside of the adventures recorded by Dr. Watson are few and far between in Conan Doyle's original stories; nevertheless, incidental details about his early life and extended families portray a loose biographical picture of the detective.

An estimate of Holmes' age in the story "His Last Bow" places his birth in 1854; the story is set in August 1914 and he is described as being 60 years of age. Commonly, the date is cited as 6 January. However, an argument for a later birthdate is posited by author Laurie R. King, based on two of Conan Doyle's stories: ''A Study in Scarlet'' and ''"The Gloria Scott" Adventure''. Certain details in ''"The Gloria Scott" Adventure'' indicate Holmes finished his second and final year at university in either 1880 or 1885. Watson's own account of his wounding in the Second Afghan War and subsequent return to England in ''A Study in Scarlet'' place his moving in with Holmes in either early 1881 or 1882. Together, these suggest Holmes left university in 1880; if he began university at the age of 17, his birth year would likely be 1861.

Holmes states that he first developed his methods of deduction while an undergraduate. The author Dorothy L. Sayers suggested that, given details in two of the Adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford and that "of all the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex (College) perhaps offered the greatest number of advantages to a man in Holmes’ position and, in default of more exact information, we may tentatively place him there".

His earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students. According to Holmes, it was an encounter with the father of one of his classmates that led him to take up detection as a profession, and he spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.

From 1881, Holmes was described as having lodgings at 221B, Baker Street, London, from where he runs his consulting detective service. 221B is an apartment up 17 steps, stated in an early manuscript to be at the "upper end" of the road. Until the arrival of Dr. Watson, Holmes worked alone, only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclass, including a host of informants and a group of street children he calls "the Baker Street Irregulars". The Irregulars appear in three stories: "A Study in Scarlet," "The Sign of the Four," and "The Adventure of the Crooked Man".

Little is said of Holmes's family. His parents were unmentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were "country squires". In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims that his great-uncle was Vernet, the French artist. His brother, Mycroft, seven years his senior, is a government official who appears in three stories and is mentioned in one other story. Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction, but he lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club, described as "a club for the most un-clubbable men in London".

Life with Dr. Watson

Holmes shares the majority of his professional years with his good friend and chronicler Dr. John H. Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage in 1887, and again after his wife's death; his residence is maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

Watson has two roles in Holmes's life. First, he gives practical assistance in the conduct of his cases; he is the detective's right-hand man, acting variously as look-out, decoy, accomplice and messenger. Second, he is Holmes's chronicler (his "Boswell" as Holmes refers to him). Most of the Holmes stories are frame narratives, written from Watson's point of view as summaries of the detective's most interesting cases. Holmes is often described as criticising Watson's writings as sensational and populist, suggesting that they neglect to accurately and objectively report the pure calculating "science" of his craft.

Nevertheless, Holmes's friendship with Watson is his most significant relationship. In several stories, Holmes's fondness for Watson—often hidden beneath his cold, intellectual exterior—is revealed. For instance, in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded in a confrontation with a villain; although the bullet wound proves to be "quite superficial", Watson is moved by Holmes's reaction:

In all, Holmes is described as being in active practice for 23 years, with Watson documenting his cases for 17 of them.

Retirement

In "His Last Bow", Holmes has retired to a small farm on the Sussex Downs in 1903–1904. Sussex Downs is another name for South Downs, the name of a range of chalk hills in Sussex, overlooking the English Channel. They are opposite to the North Downs, a parallel range stretching from Farnham in Surrey across the entire width of Kent. "Down" is from the Old English "dun," meaning a hill. Holmes specifically retired to a farm in the downs, 8 km (5 miles) from the town of Eastbourne as is chronicled by Watson in his preface to the series of stories entitled "His Last Bow." It is here where he takes up the hobby of beekeeping as his primary occupation, eventually producing a "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen". The story features Holmes and Watson coming out of retirement one last time to aid the war effort. Only one adventure, "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", which is narrated by Holmes as he pursues the case as an amateur, takes place during the detective's retirement. The details of his death are not known, but he lives on to this day through the records of his thrilling cases, and will always be remembered and regarded as the "World's Greatest Detective".

Habits and personality

Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. According to Watson, Holmes is an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In ''The Musgrave Ritual'', Watson describes Holmes thus:

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What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. Throughout the stories, Holmes would dive into his apparent mess of random papers and artefacts, only to retrieve precisely the specific document or eclectic item he was looking for.

Watson frequently makes note of Holmes's erratic eating habits. The detective is often described as starving himself at times of intense intellectual activity, such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", wherein, according to Watson:

His chronicler does not consider Holmes's habitual use of a pipe, or his less frequent use of cigarettes and cigars, a vice. Nor does Watson condemn Holmes's willingness to bend the truth or break the law on behalf of a client (e.g., lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses) when he feels it morally justifiable. Even so, it is obvious that Watson has stricter limits than Holmes, and occasionally berated Holmes for creating a "poisonous atmosphere" of tobacco smoke. Holmes himself references Watson's moderation in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", saying, "I think, Watson, that I shall resume that course of tobacco-poisoning which you have so often and so justly condemned". Watson also did not condone Holmes's plans when they manipulated innocent people, such as when he toyed with a young woman's heart in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton although it was done with noble intentions to save many other young women from the clutches of the villainous Milverton.

Holmes is portrayed as a patriot acting on behalf of the government in matters of national security in a number of stories. He also carries out counter-intelligence work in ''His Last Bow'', set at the beginning of the First World War. As shooting practice, the detective adorned the wall of his Baker Street lodgings with "VR" (''Victoria Regina'') in bullet pocks made by his pistol.

Holmes has an ego that at times borders on arrogant, albeit with justification; he draws pleasure from baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. He does not seek fame, however, and is usually content to allow the police to take public credit for his work. It's often only when Watson publishes his stories that Holmes's role in the case becomes apparent.

Holmes is pleased when he is recognised for having superior skills and responds to flattery, as Watson remarks, as a girl does to comments upon her beauty.

Holmes's demeanour is presented as dispassionate and cold. Yet when in the midst of an adventure, Holmes can sparkle with remarkable passion. He has a flair for showmanship and will prepare elaborate traps to capture and expose a culprit, often to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors.

Holmes is a loner and does not strive to make friends, although he values those that he has, and none higher than Watson. He attributes his solitary ways to his particular interests and his mopey disposition. In ''The Adventure of the'' Gloria Scott, he tells Watson that during two years at college, he made only one friend, Victor Trevor. Holmes says, "I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year;... my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all". He is similarly described in ''A Study in Scarlet'' as difficult to draw out by young Stamford.

Holmes' emotional state/mental health has been a topic of analysis for decades. At their first meeting in ''A Study in Scarlet'', the detective warns Watson that he gets "in the dumps at times" and doesn't open his "mouth for days on end". Many readers and literary experts have suggested Holmes showed signs of manic depressive psychosis, with moments of intense enthusiasm coupled with instances of indolent self absorption. Other modern readers have speculated that Holmes may have Asperger's syndrome based on his intense attention to details, lack of interest in interpersonal relationships and tendency to speak in long monologues. The detective's isolation and near-gynophobic distrust of women is said to suggest the desire to escape; Holmes "biographer" William Baring-Gould and others, including Nicholas Meyer, author of ''the Seven Percent Solution'', have implied a severe family trauma (i.e., the murder of Holmes' mother) may be the root cause.

Personal hygiene

Holmes is described in ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness. This in no way appears to hinder his intensely practical pursuit of his profession, however, and appears in contrast with statements that, in the first Holmes story, ''A Study in Scarlet'', his hands are discoloured with acid stains and Holmes uses drops of his own blood to conduct experiments in chemistry and forensics.

Use of drugs

Holmes occasionally uses addictive drugs, especially when lacking stimulating cases. He believes the use of cocaine stimulates his brain when it is not in use. He is a habitual user of cocaine, which he injects in a seven-per-cent solution using a special syringe that he keeps in a leather case. Holmes is also an occasional user of morphine but expressed strong disapproval on visiting an opium den. The 2002 movie ''Sherlock: Case of Evil'' depicts him using heroin, though that never appears in the original stories. All these drugs were legal in late 19th-century England. Both Watson and Holmes are serial tobacco users, including cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Holmes is expert at identifying tobacco-ash residues, having penned a monograph on the subject.

Dr. Watson strongly disapproves of his friend's cocaine habit, describing it as the detective's "only vice" and expressing concern over its possible effect on Holmes's mental health and superior intellect. In later stories, Watson claims to have "weaned" Holmes off drugs. Even so, according to his doctor friend, Holmes remains an addict whose habit is "not dead, but merely sleeping".

Financial affairs

Although he initially needed Watson to share the rent of his comfortable residence at 221B Baker Street, Watson reveals in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", when Holmes was living alone, that "I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms," suggesting he had developed a good income from his practice, although it is seldom revealed exactly how much he charges for his services. In "A Scandal in Bohemia", he is paid the staggering sum of one thousand pounds (300 in gold and 700 in notes) as advance payment for "present expenses". In "The Problem of Thor Bridge" he avers: "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale. I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether".

This is said in a context where a client is offering to double his fees; however, it is likely that rich clients provided Holmes a remuneration greatly in excess of his standard fee. For example, in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Holmes states that his services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia had left him with enough money to retire comfortably, while in "The Adventure of Black Peter", Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him, while he could devote weeks at a time to the cases of the most humble clients. Holmes also tells Watson, in "A Case of Identity", of a golden snuff box received from the King of Bohemia after "A Scandal in Bohemia" and a fabulous ring from the Dutch royal family; in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", Holmes receives an emerald tie-pin from Queen Victoria. Other mementos of Holmes's cases are a gold sovereign from Irene Adler ("A Scandal in Bohemia") and an autographed letter of thanks from the French President and a Legion of Honour for tracking down an assassin named Huret ("The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"). In "The Adventure of the Priory School", Holmes "rubs his hands with glee" when the Duke of Holdernesse notes the 5000 pound sterling sum, which surprises even Watson, and then pats the cheque, saying, "I am a poor man", an incident that could be dismissed as representative of Holmes's tendency toward sarcastic humour. Certainly, in the course of his career Holmes had worked for both the most powerful monarchs and governments of Europe (including his own) and various wealthy aristocrats and industrialists and had also been consulted by impoverished pawnbrokers and humble governesses on the lower rungs of society.

Holmes has been known to charge clients for his expenses, and to claim any reward that might be offered for the problem's solution: he says in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" that Miss Stoner may pay any expenses he may be put to, and requests that the bank in "The Red-Headed League" remunerate him for the money he spent solving the case. Holmes has his wealthy banker client in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" pay him for the costs of recovering the stolen gems and also claims the reward the banker had put for their recovery.

Relationships with women

The only woman to impress Holmes was Irene Adler, who according to Watson was always referred to by Holmes as "''the'' woman". Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term and even mentions her name in other cases. Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, appearing in person in only one, "A Scandal in Bohemia".

In one story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton," Holmes is engaged to be married, but only to gain information for his case. Although Holmes appears to show initial interest in some of his female clients (in particular, Violet Hunter in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"), Watson says he inevitably "manifested no further interest in the client when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems". Holmes finds their youth, beauty, and energy (and the cases they bring to him) invigorating, distinct from any romantic interest. These episodes show Holmes possesses a degree of charm; yet apart from the case of Adler, there is no indication of a serious or long-term interest. Watson states that Holmes has an "aversion to women" but "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]". Holmes states, "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind"; in fact, he finds "the motives of women... so inscrutable.... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes;... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin".

As Doyle remarked to muse Joseph Bell, "Holmes is as inhuman as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love". The only joy Holmes derives from the company of women is the problems they bring to him to solve. In ''The Sign of the Four'', Watson quotes Holmes as being "an automaton, a calculating machine", and Holmes is quoted as saying, "It is of the first importance not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money". This points to Holmes's lack of interest in relationships with women in general, and clients in particular, leading Watson to remark that "there is something positively inhuman in you at times". At the end of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", Holmes states: "I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act as our lawless lion-hunter had done". In the story, the explorer Dr Sterndale had killed the man who murdered his beloved, Brenda Tregennis, to exact a revenge which the law could not provide. Watson writes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs. Hudson is fond of Holmes in her own way, despite his bothersome eccentricities as a lodger, owing to his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women". Again in ''The Sign of the Four'', Watson quotes Holmes as saying, "I would not tell them too much. Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them". Watson notes that while he dislikes and distrusts them, he is nonetheless a "chivalrous opponent".

Methods of detection

Holmesian deduction

Holmes's primary intellectual detection method is induction, which Holmes rather inaccurately calls deduction. "From a drop of water", he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other". Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for "deduction". It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyse just what Holmes is doing when he performs his induction. "Holmesian deduction" appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences based on either straightforward practical principles—which are the result of careful inductive study, such as Holmes's study of different kinds of cigar ashes or inference to the best explanation. One quote often heard from Holmes is "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

Sherlock Holmes's straightforward practical principles are generally of the form, "If 'p', then 'q'," where 'p' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates. But there are also, as may be observed in the following example, intermediate principles. In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes deduces that Watson had got very wet lately and that he had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl". When Watson, in amazement, asks how Holmes knows this, Holmes answers:

In this case, Holmes employed several connected principles:

If leather on the side of a shoe is scored by several parallel cuts, it was caused by someone who scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud.

If a London doctor's shoes are scraped to remove crusted mud, the person who so scraped them is the doctor's servant girl.

If someone cuts a shoe while scraping it to remove encrusted mud, that person is clumsy and careless.

If someone's shoes had encrusted mud on them, then they are likely to have been worn by him in the rain, when it is likely he became very wet.

By applying such principles in an obvious way (using repeated applications of ''modus ponens''), Holmes is able to infer from his observation that "the sides of Watson's shoes are scored by several parallel cuts" that:

"Watson's servant girl is clumsy and careless" and "Watson has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather".

Deductive reasoning allows Holmes to impressively reveal a stranger's occupation, such as a Retired Sergeant of Marines in ''A Study in Scarlet''; a former ship's carpenter turned pawnbroker in "The Red-Headed League"; and a billiard-marker and a retired artillery NCO in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". Similarly, by studying inanimate objects, Holmes is able to make astonishingly detailed deductions about their owners, including Watson's pocket-watch in "The Sign of the Four" as well as a hat, a pipe, and a walking stick in other stories.

Yet Doyle is careful not to present Holmes as infallible—a central theme in "The Adventure of the Yellow Face". At the end of the tale a sobered Holmes tells Watson, “If it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you”.

Disguise

Holmes displays a strong aptitude for acting and disguise. In several stories, he adopts disguises to gather evidence while 'under cover' so convincing that even Watson fails to penetrate them, such as in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Empty House" and "A Scandal in Bohemia". In other adventures, Holmes feigns being wounded or ill to give effect to his case, or to incriminate those involved, as in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective".

Weapons and martial arts

;Pistols :Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them; in the case of Watson often his old service revolver. Watson describes these weapons as being used on seven occasions.

;Cane :Holmes, as a gentleman, often carries a stick or cane. He is described by Watson as an expert at singlestick and twice uses his cane as a weapon.

;Sword :In "A Study in Scarlet" Watson describes Holmes as an expert with a sword—although none of the stories have Holmes using a sword. It is mentioned in "Gloria Scott" that Holmes practised fencing.

;Riding crop :In several stories, Holmes appears equipped with a riding crop and in "A Case of Identity" comes close to thrashing a swindler with it. Using a "hunting crop", Holmes knocks a pistol from John Clay's hand in "The Red-Headed League". In "The Six Napoleons" it is described as his favourite weapon—he uses it to break open one of the plaster busts.

;Fist-fighting :Holmes is described as a formidable bare-knuckle fighter. In ''The Sign of the Four'', Holmes introduces himself to a prize-fighter as:

:Holmes engages in hand-to-hand combat with his adversaries on occasions throughout the stories, inevitably emerging the victor. It is mentioned also in "Gloria Scott" that Holmes trained as a boxer.

;Martial arts :In "The Adventure of the Empty House", Holmes recounts to Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his adversary to his death down the Reichenbach Falls. He states, "I have some knowledge, however, of ''baritsu,'' or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me". The name "baritsu" appears to be a reference to the real-life martial art of Bartitsu, which combined jujitsu with Holmes' canonical skills of boxing and cane fencing.

Knowledge and skills

In the first story, ''A Study in Scarlet'', something of Holmes's background is given. In early 1881, he is presented as an independent student of chemistry with a variety of very curious side interests, almost all of which turn out to be single-mindedly bent towards making him superior at solving crimes. (When he appears for the first time, he is crowing with delight at having invented a new method for detecting bloodstains; in other stories he indulges in recreational home-chemistry experiments, sometimes filling the rooms with foul-smelling vapours.) An early story, "The Adventure of the ''Gloria Scott''", presents more background on what influenced Holmes to become a detective: a college friend's father richly complimented his deductive skills. Holmes maintains strict adherence to scientific methods and focuses on logic and the powers of observation and deduction.

Holmes also makes use of phrenology, which was widely popular in Victorian times but now regarded as pseudo-scientific: In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", he infers from the large size of a man's hat that the owner is intelligent and intellectually inclined, on the grounds that “a man with so large a brain must have something in it”.

In ''A Study in Scarlet'', Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things. Dr. Watson subsequently assesses Holmes's abilities thus:

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Knowledge of Literature – nil.

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Knowledge of Philosophy – nil.

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Knowledge of Astronomy – nil.

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Knowledge of Politics – Feeble.

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Knowledge of Botany – Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.

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Knowledge of Geology – Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks, has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.

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Knowledge of Chemistry – Profound.

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Knowledge of Anatomy – Accurate, but unsystematic.

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Knowledge of Sensational Literature – Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.

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Plays the violin well.

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Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.

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Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ''A Study in Scarlet''

At the very end of ''A Study in Scarlet'' itself, it is shown that Holmes knows Latin and needs no translation of Roman epigrams in the original—though knowledge of the language would be of dubious direct utility for detective work; all university students were required to learn Latin at that time.

Later stories also contradict the list. Despite Holmes's supposed ignorance of politics, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he immediately recognises the true identity of the supposed "Count von Kramm". Regarding nonsensational literature, his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, even Goethe. He is able to quote from a letter of Flaubert to George Sand and in the original French.

Moreover, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" Watson reports that in November 1895 "Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus"—a most esoteric field, for which Holmes would have had to "clutter his memory" with an enormous amount of information which had absolutely nothing to do with crime-fighting—knowledge so extensive that his monograph was regarded as "the last word" on the subject. The later stories abandon the notion that Holmes did not want to know anything unless it had immediate relevance for his profession; in the second chapter of ''The Valley of Fear'', Holmes instead declares that "all knowledge comes useful to the detective", and near the end of "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" he describes himself as "an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles".

Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst. He relates to Watson, "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers". One such scheme is solved using frequency analysis in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Holmes's analysis of physical evidence is both scientific and precise. His methods include the use of latent prints such as footprints, hoof prints and bicycle tracks to identify actions at a crime scene (''A Study in Scarlet'', "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Priory School", ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'', "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"), the use of tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals ("The Adventure of the Resident Patient", ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''), the comparison of typewritten letters to expose a fraud ("A Case of Identity"), the use of gunpowder residue to expose two murderers ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"), bullet comparison from two crime scenes ("The Adventure of the Empty House"), analysis of small pieces of human remains to expose two murders (''The Adventure of the Cardboard Box'') and even an early use of fingerprints ("The Norwood Builder"). Holmes also demonstrates knowledge of psychology in "A Scandal in Bohemia", luring Irene Adler into betraying where she had hidden a photograph based on the "premise" that an unmarried woman will seek her most valuable possession in case of fire, whereas a married woman will grab her baby instead.

Despite the excitement of his life (or perhaps seeking to leave it behind), Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs to take up beekeeping ("The Second Stain") and wrote a book on the subject entitled "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen". His search for relaxation can also be seen in his love for music, notably in "The Red-Headed League", wherein Holmes takes an evening off from a case to listen to Pablo de Sarasate play violin.

He also enjoys vocal music, particularly Wagner ("The Adventure of the Red Circle").

The film ''Young Sherlock Holmes'' (1985), which speculates about Holmes's youthful adventures, shows Holmes as a brilliant secondary school student, being mentored simultaneously by an eccentric professor/inventor and his dedicated fencing instructor.

Influence

Forensic science

Sherlock Holmes remains a great inspiration for forensic science, especially for the way his acute study of a crime scene yields small clues as to the precise sequence of events. He makes great use of trace evidence such as shoe and tire impressions, as well as fingerprints, ballistics and handwriting analysis, now known as questioned document examination. Such evidence is used to test theories conceived by the police, for example, or by the investigator himself. All of the techniques advocated by Holmes later became reality, but were generally in their infancy at the time Conan Doyle was writing. In many of his reported cases, Holmes frequently complains of the way the crime scene has been contaminated by others, especially by the police, emphasising the critical importance of maintaining its integrity, a now well-known feature of crime scene examination.

Owing to the small scale of the trace evidence (such as tobacco ash, hair or fingerprints), he often uses a magnifying glass at the scene, and an optical microscope back at his lodgings in Baker Street. He uses analytical chemistry for blood residue analysis as well as toxicology examination and determination for poisons. Holmes seems to have maintained a small chemistry laboratory in his lodgings, presumably using simple wet chemical methods for detection of specific toxins, for example. Ballistics is used when spent bullets can be recovered, and their calibre measured and matched with a suspect murder weapon.

Holmes was also very perceptive of the dress and attitude of his clients and suspects, noting style and state of wear of their clothes, any contamination (such as clay on boots), their state of mind and physical condition in order to infer their origin and recent history. Skin marks such as tattoos could reveal much about their past history. He applied the same method to personal items such as walking sticks (famously in ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'') or hats (in the case of The Blue Carbuncle), with small details such as medallions, wear and contamination yielding vital indicators of their absent owners.

An omission from the stories is the use of forensic photography. Even before Holmes' time, high quality photography was used to record accident scenes, as in the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879, murders in 1888.

In 2002, the Royal Society of Chemistry bestowed an honorary fellowship of their organisation upon Sherlock Holmes, for his use of forensic science and analytical chemistry in popular literature, making him the only (as of 2010) fictional character to be thus honoured.

Role in the history of the detective story

Although Sherlock Holmes is not the original fiction detective (he was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq), his name has become a byword for the part. His stories also include several detective story characters such as the loyal but less intelligent assistant, a role for which Dr Watson has become the archetype. The investigating detective became a popular genre with many authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers after the demise of Holmes, with characters such as Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey. Forensic methods became less important than the psychology of the criminal, despite the strong growth in forensics in use by the police in the early 20th century.

Scientific literature

Sherlock Holmes has occasionally been used in the scientific literature. John Radford (1999) speculates on his intelligence. Using Conan Doyle’s stories as data, Radford applies three different methods to estimate Sherlock Holmes’s IQ, and concludes that his intelligence was very high indeed, estimated at approximately 190 points. Snyder (2004) examines Holmes’ methods in the light of the science and the criminology of the mid to late 19th century. Kempster (2006) compares neurologists’ skills with those displayed by Holmes. Finally, Didierjean and Gobet (2008) review the literature on the psychology of expertise by taking as model a fictional expert: Sherlock Holmes. They highlight aspects of Doyle’s books that are in line with what is currently known about expertise, aspects that are implausible, and aspects that suggest further research.

Legacy

Fan speculation

The fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Conan Doyle are termed the "canon" by Sherlock Holmes fans. Early scholars of the canon included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in New York, the latter having founded the Baker Street Irregulars, the first society devoted exclusively to the canon of Holmes, in 1934.

Writers have produced many pop culture references to Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, or characters from the stories in homage, to a greater or lesser degree. Such allusions can form a plot development, raise the intellectual level of the piece, or act as Easter eggs for an observant audience.

Some have been overt, introducing Holmes as a character in a new setting, or a more subtle allusion, such as making a logical character live in an apartment at number 221B. One well-known example of this is the character Gregory House on the show ''House M.D'', whose name and apartment number are both references to Holmes. Often the simplest reference is to dress anybody who does some kind of detective work in a deerstalker and cape.

However, throughout the entire novel series, Holmes is never explicitly described as wearing a "deerstalker hat". Holmes dons "his ear-flapped travelling cap" in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze". Sidney Paget first drew Holmes wearing the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" and subsequently in several other stories.

"Elementary, my dear Watson"

A third major reference is the oft-quoted but non-canonical catchphrase: "Elementary, my dear Watson". This phrase is never actually uttered by Holmes in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle. In the stories, Holmes often remarks that his logical conclusions are "elementary", in that he considers them to be simple and obvious. He also, on occasion, refers to Dr. Watson as "my dear Watson". The two fragments, however, never appear together. One of the closest examples to this phrase appears in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", when Holmes explains a deduction:

The first known use of this phrase was in the 1915 novel, ''Psmith Journalist'', by P. G. Wodehouse. It also appears at the very end of the 1929 film, ''The Return of Sherlock Holmes'', the first Sherlock Holmes sound film. William Gillette, who played Holmes on stage and radio, had previously used the similar phrase, ''Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow''. The phrase might owe its household familiarity to its use in Edith Meiser's scripts for ''The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' radio series, broadcast from 1939 to 1947.

The Great Hiatus

Holmes aficionados refer to the period from 1891 to 1894—the time between Holmes's disappearance and presumed death in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House"—as "the Great Hiatus". It is notable, though, that one later story ("The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge") is described as taking place in 1892.

Conan Doyle wrote the first set of stories over the course of a decade. Wanting to devote more time to his historical novels, he killed off Holmes in "The Final Problem," which appeared in print in 1893. After resisting public pressure for eight years, the author wrote ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'', which appeared in 1901, implicitly setting it before Holmes's "death" (some theorise that it actually took place after "The Return" but with Watson planting clues to an earlier date). The public, while pleased with the story, was not satisfied with a posthumous Holmes, and so Conan Doyle revived Holmes two years later. Many have speculated on his motives for bringing Holmes back to life, notably writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who wrote an essay on the subject in the 1970s entitled "The Great Man Takes a Walk". The actual reasons are not known, other than the obvious: publishers offered to pay generously. For whatever reason, Conan Doyle continued to write Holmes stories for a quarter-century longer.

Some writers have come up with other explanations for the hiatus. In Meyer's novel ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'', the hiatus is depicted as a secret sabbatical following Holmes's treatment for cocaine addiction at the hands of Sigmund Freud, and presents Holmes making the light-hearted suggestion that Watson write a fictitious account claiming he had been killed by Moriarty, saying of the public: "They'll never believe you in any case".

In his memoirs, Conan Doyle quotes a reader, who judged the later stories inferior to the earlier ones, to the effect that when Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, he may not have been killed, but was never quite the same man. The differences in the pre- and post-Hiatus Holmes have in fact created speculation among those who play "The Great Game" (making believe Sherlock Holmes was a historical person). Among the more fanciful theories, the story "The Case of the Detective's Smile" by Mark Bourne, published in the anthology ''Sherlock Holmes in Orbit'', posits that one of the places Holmes visited during his hiatus was Alice's Wonderland. While there, he solved the case of the stolen tarts, and his experiences there contributed to his kicking the cocaine addiction.

Societies

In 1934, the Sherlock Holmes Society, in London, and the Baker Street Irregulars, in New York were founded. Both are still active (though the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 to be resuscitated only in 1951). The London-based society is one of many worldwide who arrange visits to the scenes of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, such as the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps.

The two initial societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more Holmesians circles, first of all in America (where they are called "scion societies"—offshoots—of the Baker Street Irregulars), then in England and Denmark. Nowadays, there are Sherlockian societies in many countries, such as India and Japan.

Museums

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sherlock Holmes's sitting-room was reconstructed as the masterpiece of a Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, displaying a unique collection of original material. After the 1951 exhibition closed, items were transferred to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London, and to the Conan Doyle Collection in Lucens (Switzerland). Both exhibitions, each including its own Baker Street Sitting-Room reconstruction, are still open to the public. In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened in Baker Street London and the following year in Meiringen, Switzerland another museum opened; naturally, they include less historical material about Conan Doyle than about Sherlock Holmes himself. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character. A private collection of Conan Doyle is also housed in the Portsmouth City Museum which has a permanent exhibit, due to his importance in the city where he lived and worked for many years.

Adaptations and derived works

The enduring popularity of Sherlock Holmes has led to hundreds of works based on the character – both adaptations into other media and original stories. The copyright in all of Conan Doyle's works expired in the United Kingdom in 2000 (1980 in Canada and Australasia) and they are therefore in the public domain throughout most of the world (where the expiry term is 50 or 70 years following the year of death). All works published in the United States prior to 1923 are in the public domain; this includes all Sherlock Holmes stories with the exception of some of the stories contained within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. For works published after 1923 but before 1963, if the copyright was registered, its term lasts for 95 years. The Conan Doyle heirs registered the copyright to ''The Case Book'' (published in the USA after 1923) in 1981.

Stage and screen adaptations

The ''Guinness World Records'' has consistently listed Sherlock Holmes as the "most portrayed movie character" with 75 actors playing the part in over 211 films. Holmes' first screen appearance was in the Mutoscope film ''Sherlock Holmes Baffled'' in 1900, albeit in a barely-recognisable form.

William Gillette’s 1899 play ''Sherlock Holmes, or The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner'' was a synthesis of several stories by Doyle, mostly based on ''A Scandal in Bohemia'' adding love interest, with the Holmes-Moriarty exchange from ''The Final Problem'', as well as elements from ''The Copper Beeches'' and ''A Study in Scarlet''. By 1916, Harry Arthur Saintsbury had played Holmes on stage more than a thousand times. This play formed the basis for Gillette's 1916 motion picture, ''Sherlock Holmes''.

In a 1924 comedy film "Sherlock Jr." Buster Keaton's character longs to be a detective.

Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes, alongside Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson, in fourteen US films (two for 20th Century Fox and a dozen for Universal Pictures) from 1939 to 1946, as well as a number of radio plays. It is these films that produced the iconic though noncanonical line, "Elementary, my dear Watson".

Ronald Howard starred in 39 episodes of the ''Sherlock Holmes'' 1954 American TV series with Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. The storylines deviated from the books of Conan Doyle, changing characters and other details.

Fritz Weaver appeared as Sherlock Holmes in the musical ''Baker Street'', which ran on Broadway between 16 February and 14 November 1965. Peter Sallis portrayed Dr. Watson, Inga Swenson appeared as The Woman, Irene Adler, and Martin Gabel played Moriarty. Virginia Vestoff, Tommy Tune, and Christopher Walken were also members of the original cast.

In ''The Return Of Sherlock Holmes'', a TV-Movie aired in 1987, Margaret Colin stars as Dr. Watson's great-granddaughter Jane Watson, a Boston private eye, who stumbles upon Sherlock Holmes' (played by Michael Pennington) body in frozen suspension and restores the Victorian sleuth to life in the 1980s. The film was intended as a pilot for a TV series which never materialised. A similar plot line was used in ''Sherlock Holmes Returns: 1994 Baker Street'' where Dr Amy Winslow (played by Debrah Farentino) discovers Sherlock Holmes frozen in the cellar of house in San Francisco owned by a descendant of Mrs Hudson. Holmes (played by Anthony Higgins) froze himself in the hopes that crimes in the future would be less dull. He discovers that consulting detectives have been replaced by the police department's forensic science lab and that the Moriarty family are still the Napoleon's of crime.

Two episodes of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' feature Sherlock Holmes. In episode No. 29 ("Elementary, Dear Data") the character of Data, played by Brent Spiner, pretends he is Sherlock to Geordi's Dr. Watson in a holodeck experience. In episode No. 138 ("Ship in a Bottle") archvillain Dr. Moriarty seems to escape from the holodeck into the Enterprise proper.

Jeremy Brett is generally considered the definitive Holmes, having played the role in four series of ''Sherlock Holmes'', created by John Hawkesworth for Britain's Granada Television, from 1984 through to 1994, as well as depicting Holmes on stage. Brett's Dr Watson was played by David Burke (pre-hiatus) and Edward Hardwicke (post-hiatus) in the series. Jeremy Brett wished to be the best Sherlock Holmes the world had ever seen and conducted extensive research into the character and the author that created him. He strove to bring passion and life to the role and in his obituary it was said, "Mr. Brett was regarded as the quintessential Holmes: breathtakingly analytical, given to outrageous disguises and the blackest moods and relentless in his enthusiasm for solving the most intricate crimes."

Nicol Williamson portrayed Holmes in ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'' with Robert Duvall playing Watson and featuring Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud. The 1976 adaption was written by Nicholas Meyer from his 1974 book of the same name, and directed by Herbert Ross.

Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television broadcast a series of five made-for-TV films in a total of eleven parts, ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson'', starring Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov's portrayal of Holmes is widely considered canonical. Holmes museum in London, Baker St., 221B, has the portrait of Livanov depicting Holmes himself.

In 2002 made-for-television movie ''Sherlock: Case of Evil'', James D'Arcy starred as Holmes in his 20s. The story noticeably departs from the style and backstory of the canon and D'Arcy's portrayal of Holmes is slightly different from prior incarnations of the character, psychologically disturbed, an absinthe addicted, a heavy drinker and a ladies' man.

The Fox television series ''House'' contains numerous similarities and references to Holmes. Show creator David Shore has acknowledged this "subtle homage".

In the 2009 film ''Sherlock Holmes'', based on a story by Lionel Wigram and images by John Watkiss, directed by Guy Ritchie, the role of Holmes is performed by Robert Downey, Jr. with Jude Law portraying Watson. It is a reinterpretation which heavily focuses on Holmes's more anti-social personality traits as an unkempt eccentric with a brilliant analytical mind and formidable martial abilities, making this the most cynical incarnation of Holmes. However, with the exception of missing Holmes's 'catlike love of personal cleanliness', many critics have lauded the film as one of the most faithful to Doyle's canon. Robert Downey Jr. won the Golden Globe Award for his portrayal. Downey Jr. will return in the 2011 sequel ''Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows''.

Independent film company The Asylum released the direct-to-DVD film ''Sherlock Holmes'' in January 2010. In the film, Holmes and Watson battle a criminal mastermind dubbed "Spring-Heeled Jack", who controls several mechanical creatures to commit crimes across London. Holmes (Ben Syder) is portrayed as considerably younger than most actors who have played him, and his disapproval of Scotland Yard is undertoned, though things like his drug additction remain mostly unchanged. The film features a brother of Holmes's called Thorpe, who was invented by the producers of the film out of creative liberty. His companion Watson is played by ''Torchwood'' actor Gareth David-Lloyd.

In March 2010 Youtuber "Ross K" (Ross K Foad) created No Place Like Holmes, a web drama comedy show based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. It is considered to be the only ongoing Sherlock Holmes web show. It focuses on the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson following an encounter with a malicious demonic Sir Hugo Baskerville, who freezes them in a time spell only for them to eventually re-emerge in the present day. Unlike the BBC Sherlock, this Holmes does not embrace technology or modern-day devices and remains the Victorian gentleman he has always been, dressing the same and holding the same values he did over 100 years ago. There is also a spin-off which takes place in 1891–1894 covering the Great Hiatus years where Sherlock is still on the run from Moriarty's right-hand men following the events of the Final Problem.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays a modern-day version of the detective in the BBC One TV series ''Sherlock'', which premiered on 25 July 2010. The series changes the books' original Victorian setting to the shady and violent present-day London. The show was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, best-known as writers for the BBC television series ''Doctor Who''. Says Moffat, "Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes – and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters."

Cumberbatch's Holmes was described by the BBC as

brilliant, aloof and almost entirely lacking in social graces. Sherlock is a unique young man with a mind like a 'racing engine'. Without problems to solve, it will tear itself to pieces. And the more bizarre and baffling the problems the better. He has set himself up as the world's only consulting detective, whom the police grudgingly accept as their superior.

He also uses modern technology, such as texting and internet blogging, to solve the crimes, and in a nod towards changing social attitudes and broadcasting regulations, he has replaced his pipe with multiple nicotine patches.

Related and derivative works

In addition to the Sherlock Holmes corpus, Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special" (1898) features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" clearly intended to be identified as Holmes by his readers. His explanation for a baffling disappearance, argued in Holmes's characteristic style, turns out to be quite wrong—evidently Conan Doyle was not above poking fun at his own hero. A short story by Conan Doyle using the same idea is "The Man with the Watches". Another example of Conan Doyle's humour is "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924), a parody of the frequent Watson-Holmes breakfast table scenes. A further (and earlier) parody by Conan Doyle is "The Field Bazaar". He also wrote other material, especially plays, featuring Holmes. Many of these are collected in ''Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha'' edited by Jack Tracy, ''The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' edited by Peter Haining and ''The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes'' compiled by Richard Lancelyn Green.

In 1907, Sherlock Holmes began featuring in a series of German booklets. Among the writers was Theo van Blankensee. Watson had been replaced by a 19 year old assistant from the street, among his ''Baker Street Irregulars'', with the name Harry Taxon, and Mrs. Hudson had been replaced by one Mrs. Bonnet. From number 10 the series changed its name to "Aus den Geheimakten des Welt-Detektivs". The French edition changed its name from "Les Dossiers Secrets de Sherlock Holmes" to "Les Dossiers du Roi des Detectives".

Sherlock Holmes's abilities as both a good fighter and as an excellent logician have been a boon to other authors who have lifted his name, or details of his exploits, for their plots. These range from Holmes as a cocaine addict, whose drug-fuelled fantasies lead him to cast an innocent Professor Moriarty as a super villain (''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution''), to science-fiction plots involving him being re-animated after death to fight crime in the future (''Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century'').

Some authors have supplied stories to fit the tantalising references in the canon to unpublished cases (e.g. "The giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared" in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"), notably ''The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes'' by Conan Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle with John Dickson Carr, and ''The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' by Ken Greenwald, based rather closely on episodes of the 1945 Sherlock Holmes radio show that starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and for which scripts were written by Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher. Others have used different characters from the stories as their own detective, e.g. Mycroft Holmes in ''Enter the Lion'' by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright (1979) or Dr James Mortimer (from ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'') in books by Gerard Williams.

Laurie R. King recreates Sherlock Holmes in her Mary Russell series (starting with ''The Beekeeper's Apprentice''), set during the First World War and the 1920s. Her Holmes is (semi)retired in Sussex, where he is literally stumbled over by a teenage American girl. Recognising a kindred spirit, he gradually trains her as his apprentice. As of 2009 the series includes nine novels and a novella tie-in with a book from King's present-time Kate Martinelli series, ''The Art of Detection''.

Carole Nelson Douglas' series, the Irene Adler Adventures, is based on the character from Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia". The first book, ''Good Night, Mr. Holmes'', retells that tale from Irene's point of view. The series is narrated by Adler's companion, Penelope Huxleigh, in a role similar to that of Dr. Watson.

The film ''They Might Be Giants'' is a 1971 romantic comedy based on the 1961 play of the same name (both written by James Goldman) in which the character Justin Playfair, played by George C. Scott, is convinced he is Sherlock Holmes, and manages to convince many others of same, including the psychiatrist Dr. Watson, played by Joanne Woodward, who is assigned to evaluate him so he can be committed to a mental institution.

The film ''Young Sherlock Holmes'' (1985) explores adventures of Holmes and Watson as boarding school pupils.

The Japanese anime series "Detective Conan", also called "Case Closed" in English, is an homage to Doyle's work. The 2002 film ''The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire'' is loosely based on Doyle's story "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire".

In the 1980s Ben Kingsley played Dr. Watson in ''Without a Clue''. Dr. Watson hired an actor to be Sherlock Holmes (Michael Caine) because the cases he has been writing about are his own. Moriarty is said to know that Sherlock Holmes is an idiot.

The novel ''A Dog About Town'' by J. F. Englert makes reference to Sherlock Holmes, comparing the black Labrador retriever narrator, Randolph, to Doyle's detective as well as naming a fictitious spirit guide after him.

''The Final Solution'' is a 2004 novel by Michael Chabon. The story, set in 1944, revolves around an 89-year-old long-retired detective who may or may not be Sherlock Holmes but is always called just "the old man", now interested mostly in beekeeping, and his quest to find a missing parrot, the only friend of a mute Jewish boy. The title references both Doyle's story "The Final Problem" and the Final Solution, the Nazis' plan for the genocide of the Jewish people.

In 2006, a southern California "vaudeville-nouveau" group known as Sound & Fury began performing a theatre in the round parody show entitled "Sherlock Holmes & The Saline Solution" which depicts Holmes as a bumbling figure guided by a slightly less clueless Watson. The show ran in Los Angeles as well as the Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals through 2009.

In a novella "The Prisoner of the Tower, or A Short But Beautiful Journey of Three Wise Men" by Boris Akunin published in 2008 in Russia as the conclusion of "Jade Rosary Beads" book, Sherlock Holmes and Erast Fandorin oppose Arsène Lupin on 31 December 1899.

In June 2010 it was announced that Franklin Watts books, a part of Hachette Children's Books are to release a series of four children's graphic novels by writer Tony Lee and artist Dan Boultwood in spring 2011 based around the Baker Street Irregulars during the three years that Sherlock Holmes was believed dead, between The Adventure of the Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House. Although not specifying whether Sherlock Holmes actually appears in the books, the early reports include appearances by Doctor Watson, Inspector Lestrade and Irene Adler.

On 17 January 2011, it was announced that the Conan Doyle estate had commissioned Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider novels, The Power of Five and TV's ''Foyle's War'', to write a brand new, authorised Sherlock Holmes novel to be published by Orion Books in September 2011. "The content of the new tale – and indeed the title – remain a closely guarded secret."

The original stories

The original Sherlock Holmes stories consist of fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Novels

''A Study in Scarlet'' (published 1887, in ''Beeton's Christmas Annual'')

''The Sign of the Four'' (published 1890, ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'')

''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' (serialised 1901–1902 in ''The Strand'')

''The Valley of Fear'' (serialised 1914–1915 in ''The Strand'')

Short stories

''For more detail see List of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories''.

The short stories, originally published in periodicals, were later gathered into five anthologies:

''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1891–1892 in ''The Strand'')

''The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1892–1893 in ''The Strand'' as further episodes of the ''Adventures'')

''The Return of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1903–1904 in ''The Strand'')

''The Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (including His Last Bow) '' (contains stories published 1908–1913 and 1917)

''The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1921–1927)

See also

"Holmes-ian" Detection:

*Forensic chemistry

*Forensic engineering

*HOLMES2 (police computer system)

List of people who have played Sherlock Holmes

List of Holmesian studies

Other Arthur Conan Doyle characters:

*Professor Challenger

''Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes

*Games:

*''Sherlock'' (1984) (Philip Mitchell) (PC text adventure)

*''221B Baker Street'' (1987) (Datasoft) (PC and Mac)

*''Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels'' (1988) (Infocom)

*''Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective'' (1991) (ICOM Simulations)

*''Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. II'' (1992) (ICOM Simulations)

*''Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. III'' (1993) (ICOM Simulations)

*''The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel'' (1992) (Electronic Arts) (PC)

*''The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo'' (1996) (Electronic Arts) (PC)

*''Sherlock Holmes'' series: (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy'' (2002) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: Secret of the Silver Earring'' (2004) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened'' (2006) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes versus Arsène Lupin'' (2007) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet'' (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper'' (2009) (Frogwares) (PC)(X360)

References

Further reading

Fenoli Marc, Qui a tué Sherlock Holmes ? [Who shot Sherlock Holmes ?], Review L’Alpe 45, Glénat-Musée Dauphinois, Grenoble-France, 2009. ISBN 978-2-7234-6902-9

Lieboe, Eli. ''Doctor Joe Bell: Model for Sherlock Holmes''. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982; Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87972-198-5

External links

The Ocular Helmsman A Vade Mecum Upon the Personal Effects & Environs of Mssrs. Sherlock Holmes & John H. Watson of 221B Baker Street for the Victorian Layman (sic)

For the Heirs to Holmes, a Tangled Web

The Sherlock Holmes Museum 221b Baker Street, London England.

The Sherlock Holmes Society of London London society founded 1951

Sherlockian Major Sherlock Holmes reference with Original Stories, Pictures, articles and links to other holmesian websites.

Baker Street Dozen Sherlock Holmes in Books, Film and Media

Bert Coules' website (BBC Radio 4 canonical and original stories, 1989–2004)

Discovering Sherlock Holmes at Stanford University

Sherlock Holmes Special Collections

The Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Special Collections and Rare Books

Edward Winter, Chess and Sherlock Holmes

Mostly-Victorian.com original Sherlock Holmes tales from ''The Strand''

Wall Street Journal on Sherlock Holmes

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Coordinates	35°27′″N139°38′″N
name	Prince Charles
title	Prince of Wales; Duke of Cornwall; Duke of Rothesay (more)
imgw	220
spouses	Diana, Princess of Wales(m. 1981, div. 1996)Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall(m. 2005)
issue	Prince William, Duke of CambridgePrince Harry of Wales
full name	Charles Philip Arthur George |groupfn |namesur}}

| house = House of Windsor | father = Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh | mother = Elizabeth II | birth_date = November 14, 1948 | birth_place = Buckingham Palace, London, United Kingdom | date of christening = 15 December 1948 | place of christening = Buckingham Palace, London | occupation = | religion = Church of England }}

Prince Charles, Prince of Wales (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is the heir apparent and eldest son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Since 1958 his major title has been ''His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales''. In Scotland he is additionally known as ''The Duke of Rothesay.'' He is the longest-serving heir apparent in British history. Until 22 April 2011 Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) had been the longest serving heir apparent, for a period of 59 years 74 days. However, Prince Edward became heir apparent on his birth, 4 years into his mother's (Queen Victoria) reign, whereas Prince Charles was three years old at his mother's ascension and thus has been heir apparent for all of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.

Charles was educated at Cheam and Gordonstoun Schools, which his father, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, had attended as a child, as well as the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School, Victoria, Australia, situated near Mansfield in the rugged Victorian Alps. After earning a bachelor of arts degree from Trinity College, Cambridge, Charles served a tour of duty with the Royal Navy in 1971–76. He married Lady Diana Spencer before an enormous worldwide television audience in 1981. They had two sons, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge in 1982 and Prince Harry of Wales in 1984. The couple separated in 1992 following tabloid allegations concerning their relationship. They divorced in 1996 after Diana publicly accused Charles of having an affair with Camilla Parker Bowles, and Charles admitted adultery on television. Diana died in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. In 2005, after a lengthy continued association, the Prince married Camilla, who uses the title Duchess of Cornwall.

The prince is well-known for his charity work and sponsors The Prince's Trust, The Prince's Regeneration Trust, and the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment, among other charities. He has been outspoken concerning architecture and the conservation of old buildings and has produced a book on the subject called ''A Vision of Britain'' (1989). He has also promoted herbal and other alternative medical treatment.

Early life

Charles was born at Buckingham Palace on 14 November 1948 at 9.14 pm (GMT), the first child of then Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and first grandchild of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Baptised in the palace's Music Room on 15 December 1948, using water from the River Jordan, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, the Prince's godparents were: the King (his maternal grandfather); the King of Norway (his cousin, for whom the Earl of Athlone stood proxy); Queen Mary (his maternal great-grandmother); the Princess Margaret (his maternal aunt); Prince George of Greece (his paternal granduncle, for whom the Duke of Edinburgh stood proxy); the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven (his paternal great-grandmother); the Lady Brabourne (his cousin); and the Hon David Bowes-Lyon (his maternal great-uncle). By letters patent of Charles' great-grandfather, King George V, the titles of a British prince or princess, and the style ''Royal Highness'', were only to be conferred on male-line children and grandchildren of the sovereign, as well as the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. However, on 22 October 1948, George VI issued new letters patent granting these honours to any children of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip; otherwise, Charles would have merely taken his father's title, and been titled by courtesy as Earl of Merioneth. In this way the children of the heiress presumptive had a royal and princely status.

When Charles was aged three his mother's accession as Queen Elizabeth II, immediately made him the heir apparent to the then seven countries over which she now reigned. He was ''ipso facto'' elevated to the rank of Duke of Cornwall (by a charter of King Edward III that gave said title to the sovereign's eldest son), and, in the Scottish peerage, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. Though he moved to first in line to the throne in the United Kingdom order of precedence he is third, after his parents, and is typically fourth or fifth in other realms' precedence orders, following his mother, the relevant vice-regal representative(s), and his father. Charles attended his mother's coronation at Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953, seated alongside his grandmother and aunt. As is customary for royal offspring, a governess, Catherine Peebles, was appointed and undertook his education between the ages of 5 and 8. Buckingham Palace announced in 1955 that Charles would attend school rather than have a private tutor, making him the first heir apparent ever to be educated in that manner.

Youth

Education

Charles first attended Hill House School in West London, receiving non-preferential treatment from the school's founder and then head, Stuart Townend, who advised the Queen to have Charles train in football, as the boys at Hill House were never deferential to anyone on the football field. The Prince then attended his father's former school, the Cheam Preparatory School in Berkshire, England; and was finally moved to Gordonstoun, in the north-east of Scotland. Reportedly the Prince despised his time at the latter school – "Colditz in kilts", as Charles put it – though he did spend two of his terms at the Timbertop campus of Geelong Grammar School in Geelong, Australia, during which time he visited Papua New Guinea on a history trip with his tutor, Michael Collins Persse. Upon his return to Gordonstoun, Charles emulated his father in becoming Head Boy, and left in 1967 with two A Levels in History and French.

Tradition was broken again when Charles proceeded straight from secondary school into university, as opposed to joining the Armed Forces. On the recommendation of Robin Woods, Dean of Windsor, and despite only gaining grades of B and C in his A Levels, the Prince was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read anthropology, archaeology, and history, tutored by Canadian-born Professor John Coles. He graduated with a 2:2 Bachelor of Arts on 23 June 1970, the third Royal Family member to earn a university degree. On 2 August 1975 he was subsequently awarded a Master of Arts Degree from Cambridge, per the university's tradition. During his tertiary, Charles also attended the Old College (part of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth), studying the Welsh language and Welsh history. He is the first Prince of Wales born outside of Wales ever to attempt to learn the language of the principality.

Created Prince of Wales

Charles was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on 26 July 1958, though his investiture as such was not conducted until 1 July 1969, wherein he was crowned by his mother in a televised ceremony held at Caernarfon Castle, and gave his replies and speech in both Welsh and English. The following year he took his seat in the House of Lords, and later in the decade became the first member of the Royal Family since King George I to attend a British Cabinet meeting, having been invited by Prime Minister James Callaghan so that the Prince might see the workings of the British government and Cabinet at first hand. Charles also began to take on more public duties, founding his The Prince's Trust in 1976, and travelling to the United States in 1981.

Around the same time the Prince expressed an interest in serving as Governor-General of Australia; Commander Michael Parker explained: "The idea behind the appointment was for him to put a foot on the ladder of monarchy, or being the future King and start learning the trade." However, because of a combination of nationalist feeling in Australia and the dismissal of the government by the Governor-General in 1975, nothing came of the proposal. Charles accepted the decision of the Australian ministers, if not without some regret; he reportedly stated: "What are you supposed to think when you are prepared to do something to help and you are told you are not wanted?" Conversely, Tom Gallagher wrote that Charles had been offered the Romanian throne by monarchists in that country; an offer that was reportedly turned down.

The Prince is at present the oldest man to hold the title of Prince of Wales since it became the title granted to the heir apparent. He is also the oldest and longest-serving heir apparent in Commonwealth realms' history and the third longest serving Prince of Wales in British history behind Edward VII and George IV, whom he will pass on 10 October 2017 if he is still Prince of Wales on that date. If he ascends to the throne after 18 September 2013, Charles would be the oldest monarch of the United Kingdom to do so; only William IV was older when he became monarch than Charles is now.

Military training and career

Following in the tradition of Princes of Wales before him, Charles spent time in the navy and air force. After Royal Air Force training that he requested and received during his second year at Cambridge, on 8 March 1971 the Prince flew himself to the Royal Air Force College Cranwell to train as a jet pilot. After the passing out parade in September of that year, he then embarked on a naval career, enrolling in a six–week course at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth and then serving on the guided missile destroyer (1971–1972) and the frigates (1972–1973) and (1974). Charles also qualified as a helicopter pilot at RNAS Yeovilton in 1974, just prior to joining 845 Naval Air Squadron, operating from , and on 9 February 1976 the Prince took command of the coastal minehunter for his last nine months in the navy. Prince Charles learned to fly on a Chipmunk basic pilot trainer, a BAC Jet Provost jet trainer, and a Beagle Basset multi-engined trainer, he then regularly flew the Hawker Siddeley Andover, Westland Wessex and BAe 146 aircraft of The Queen's Flight.

Early romances

Prince Charles' love life was always the subject of speculation and press fodder. In his youth, he was linked to a number of women, including Georgiana Russell, daughter of the British Ambassador to Spain; Lady Jane Wellesley; Davina Sheffield; Fiona Watson, a model; Susan George; Lady Sarah Spencer; Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg; Dale, Baroness Tryon; Janet Jenkins; and Jane Ward. Not only is Charles the heir apparent to the thrones of the Commonwealth realms, a marriage was also expected to raise future monarchs. Consequently his choice of consort was going to create immense popular interest. In particular the reputation of the bride was going to be a major consideration, in addition to his mother's approval under the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Under this Act marriage to a Roman Catholic would automatically debar him and the marriage's Catholic issue from succession.

Charles was given written advice on dating and the selection of a future consort from his father's "Uncle Dickie", Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma: "In a case like yours, the man should sow his wild oats and have as many affairs as he can before settling down, but for a wife he should choose a suitable, attractive, and sweet-charactered girl before she has met anyone else she might fall for... It is disturbing for women to have experiences if they have to remain on a pedestal after marriage." Mountbatten had a unique qualification for offering advice to this particular heir to the throne: he had invited George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and their daughters to visit Dartmouth Royal Naval College on 22 July 1939, having also detailed Cadet Prince Philip of Greece to keep the young princesses company, arranging the first documented meeting of Charles' future parents. In early 1974, Mountbatten began corresponding with Elizabeth and Philip's eldest son about a potential marriage to Mountbatten's granddaughter, Hon. Amanda Knatchbull (b. 26 June 1957), and recommended that the 25-year-old prince get done with his bachelor's experimentation. Charles dutifully wrote to Amanda's mother, Lady Brabourne (who was also his godmother), about his interest in her daughter, to which she replied approvingly, though suggesting that a courtship was premature.

This did not daunt Mountbatten, who, four years later, obtained an invitation for himself and Amanda to accompany Charles on his 1980 tour of India. Both fathers, however, objected; Philip complaining that the Prince of Wales would be eclipsed by his famous uncle (who had served as the last British Viceroy and first Governor-General of India), while Lord Brabourne warned that a joint visit would rivet media attention on the cousins before they could decide on becoming a couple, thereby potentially dashing the very prospect for which Mountbatten hoped. However, before Charles was to depart alone for India, Mountbatten was killed in an IRA murder during August 1979. When Charles returned, he proposed to Amanda. However, in addition to her grandfather, she had lost her paternal grandmother and youngest brother Nicholas in the attack and now recoiled from the prospect of becoming a core member of the Royal Family. In June 1980 Charles officially turned down Chevening House, placed at his disposal since 1974, as his future residence. Chevening, a stately home in Kent, was bequeathed, along with an endowment, to the Crown by the last Earl Stanhope, Amanda's childless great-uncle, in the hope that Charles would eventually occupy it.

First marriage

thumb|TRH The Prince and [[Diana, Princess of Wales|The Princess of Wales with Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in November 1985]] Although Charles first met Lady Diana Frances Spencer in 1977—while visiting Diana's home, Althorp, as the companion of her elder sister, Sarah—he did not consider her romantically until the summer of 1980. While sitting together on a bale of hay at a friend's barbecue in July he mentioned Mountbatten's death, to which Diana replied that Charles had looked forlorn and in need of care during his uncle's funeral. Soon, according to Charles' chosen biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby, "without any apparent surge in feeling, he began to think seriously of her as a potential bride." She accompanied the Prince on visits to Balmoral and Sandringham, eliciting enthusiastic responses from most of the Royal Family.

Although the Queen offered Charles no direct counsel, his cousin Norton Knatchbull (Amanda's eldest brother) and his wife, Penny, did. But Charles was angered by their objections that he did not seem in love with Diana and that she seemed too awestruck by his position. Meanwhile, the couple continued dating, amidst constant press speculation and paparazzi coverage. When Prince Philip told him that the intrusive media attention would injure her reputation if he did not come to a decision about marrying her soon, and realising that Diana met the Mountbatten criteria (and, apparently, the public's) for a proper royal bride, Charles construed his father's advice as a warning to proceed without further delay.

Engagement and wedding to Diana

Prince Charles proposed to Lady Diana Spencer in February 1981, she accepted, and when he asked her father for her hand, he consented. After the British and Canadian privy councils gave their approval for the union (which was sought as the couple was expected to produce an heir to those countries' thrones), the Queen-in-Council gave the legally required assent, and, 29 July, Charles and Diana were married at St Paul's Cathedral, before 3,500 invited guests and an estimated worldwide television audience of 750 million people. All of the Queen's Governors-General, as well as Europe's crowned heads, attended (save for King Juan Carlos I of Spain, who was advised not to attend because the newlyweds' honeymoon would involve a stop over in the disputed territory of Gibraltar). Most of Europe's elected heads of state were also amongst the guests, with the exceptions of the President of Greece, Constantine Karamanlis (who declined because Greece's exiled monarch, Constantine II, a kinsman and friend of the bridegroom, had been invited as "King of the Hellenes"), and the President of Ireland, Patrick Hillery (who was advised by Taoiseach Charles Haughey not to attend because of the dispute over the status of Northern Ireland). right|thumb|TRH The Prince and The Princess of Wales with Sandro Pertini The couple made their homes at Highgrove House, near Tetbury, and Kensington Palace. Almost immediately, the new Princess of Wales became a star attraction, chased by the paparazzi, and her every move followed by millions through the mass media. The couple had two children: Princes William (born 21 June 1982) and Henry (known as "Harry") (born 15 September 1984). Charles set precedent by being the first royal father to be present at his children's births. Persistent suggestions have been made that the father of Harry is not Charles but James Hewitt with whom Diana had an affair. These suggestions have been based on a physical similarity between Hewitt and Harry. However Hewitt stated to the press in 2002 that Harry had already been born by the time the affair between him and Diana began.

Separation and divorce

The union between the Prince and Princess of Wales soon became troubled; within five years, the "fairytale" marriage was on the brink of collapse. The continued presence of Camilla Parker-Bowles in events and circumstances that also involved the royal couple became intolerable to Diana. Allies of Charles who spoke both publicly and off the record against Diana alleged that she was unstable and temperamental; one by one, she apparently secured the dismissal of many of Charles' long-standing staff members and fell out with his friends, as well as members of her own family– her father, mother, and brother– as well as members of the Royal Family, such as Sarah, Duchess of York. To the Palace's regret, the Princess sought counsel outside generally accepted sources of royal advice. In response to the succour sought by the Prince, Diana responded in kind. Charles, however, was also blamed for the marital troubles, as he resumed his adulterous affair with Parker-Bowles. Though they remained a couple in public, Charles and Diana had effectively separated by the late 1980s, the Prince living in Highgrove and the Princess at Kensington Palace. Their increased periods apart and obvious discomfort in each other's presence began to be noticed by the media, and this, plus evidence and recriminations of infidelity, were broadcast in tabloids and the news. By 1992, the marriage was over in all but name; in December of that year, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, John Major, announced in the British parliament the Prince and Princess' formal separation, after which the media began to take sides, starting what came to be known as the ''War of the Waleses''. In October 1993, Princess Diana wrote to a friend that she believed her husband was now in love with Tiggy Legge-Bourke and wanted to marry her. The marriage of Charles and Diana was formally ended in divorce on 28 August 1996.

On 31 August 1997, a year after the Prince and Princess divorced, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris, along with her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul. The Prince of Wales overruled the palace protocol experts– who argued that as Princess Diana was no longer a member of the Royal Family, the responsibility for her funeral arrangements belonged to her blood relatives, the Spencers– and flew to Paris, with Princess Diana's sisters, to accompany his ex-wife's body home. He also insisted that, as the mother of the presumed future king (her son William), she be given a formal royal funeral; a new category of formal funeral was especially created for her.

Second marriage

In 1993 the British tabloids came into the possession of recordings of a 1989 telephone conversation allegedly between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles, in which Charles expressed regret for the indignities she had endured because of her relationship with him, and which revealed graphic expressions of a physical intimacy between the two.

Engagement and wedding to Camilla

Clarence House announced on 10 February 2005 that Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles were engaged; the Prince presented her with an engagement ring that had belonged to his grandmother. In a Privy Council meeting on 2 March, the Queen's consent to the marriage (as required by the Royal Marriages Act 1772) was recorded. In Canada, however, the Department of Justice announced its decision that the Queen's Privy Council for Canada was not required to meet to give its consent to the marriage, as the union would not result in offspring and thus would have no impact on the succession to the Canadian throne.

The marriage was to have been on 8 April of that year, and was to take place in a civil ceremony at Windsor Castle, with a subsequent religious blessing at St George's Chapel. But, because the conduct of a civil marriage at Windsor Castle would oblige the venue thereafter to be available to anyone wishing to be married there, the location was changed to the Windsor Guildhall. On 4 April it was announced that the marriage would be delayed by one day to allow for the Prince of Wales and some of the invited dignitaries to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Charles' parents did not attend the marriage ceremony; the Queen's reluctance to attend arising from her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh did, however, attend the service of blessing, and held a reception for the newlyweds at Windsor Castle, afterwards.

Act of Penitence

A unique feature during the Blessing of Charles and Camilla's marriage by the Archbishop of Canterbury was the inclusion of the strongest act of penitence from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The royal couple led the congregation in declaring:

We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, have committed by word, thought and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.

Legality of civil wedding

The wedding made Charles the first member of the Royal Family to have a civil, rather than religious, wedding in England. Official documents had been published by BBC that stated such a marriage was illegal, though these were dismissed by Clarence House, and explained to be obsolete by the sitting government.

Personal interests

In his years as heir apparent, the Prince of Wales has taken on a wide array of interests and activities, and devoted his time and effort to charity work and collaborating with local communities. Since founding The Prince's Trust, he established fifteen more charitable organisations, and now serves as president of all of those, plus two others; together, these form a loose alliance called ''The Prince's Charities'', which claim to raise over £110 million annually. Charles is also patron of over 350 other charities and organisations, and carries out duties related to these throughout the Commonwealth realms; for example, he uses his tours of Canada as a way to help draw attention to youth, the disabled, the environment, the arts, medicine, the elderly, heritage conservation, and education. The Prince was described by his ex-private secretary as a dissident who works against majority political opinions. Jonathan Dimbleby has reported that the Prince "has accumulated a number of certainties about the state of the world and does not relish contradiction."

The built environment

The Prince of Wales has frequently shared his views on architecture and urban planning in public forums, claiming to "care deeply about issues such as the environment, architecture, inner-city renewal, and the quality of life." He is known to be an advocate of neo-traditional ideas, such as those of Christopher Alexander and Leon Krier, which were illustrated in his 1984 attack on the British architectural community in a speech given to the Royal Institute of British Architects, describing a proposed extension to the National Gallery in London as a "monstrous carbuncle". Charles also published a book and created a documentary entitled ''A Vision of Britain'', which critiqued some aspects of modern architecture. Despite criticism from the professional architectural press, the Prince has continued to put forward his views, stressing traditional urbanism, the need for human scale, and the restoration of historic buildings as an integrated element of new development and sustainable design. Two of the Charles' charities in particular forward his theories on design: The Prince's Regeneration Trust (formed by a merger of Regeneration Through Heritage and the Phoenix Trust in 2006) and The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment (which absorbed The Prince of Wales's Institute of Architecture in 2001). Further, the village of Poundbury was created at the instigation of Prince Charles, with a master plan by Leon Krier.

Charles assisted with the establishment of a National Trust for the built environment in Canada, after lamenting, in 1996, the unbridled destruction of many of the country's historic urban cores. He offered his assistance to the Department of Canadian Heritage in the creation of a trust modelled on the British variant, and, with the passing of the 2007 federal budget by his mother's representative in Canada, a Canadian national trust was finally fully implemented. In 1999, the Prince also agreed to offer the use of his title to the Prince of Wales Prize for Municipal Heritage Leadership, awarded by the Heritage Canada Foundation to municipal governments that have shown sustained commitment to the conservation of historic places. Charles has also been the recipient of awards for his efforts in regard to architecture, such as the National Building Museum's Vincent Scully Prize he received in 2005, while visiting the United States and touring southern Mississippi and New Orleans to survey the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina; he donated $25,000 of the prize money to help restore communities damaged by the storm.

Starting in 1997 the Prince of Wales also visited Romania to view and draw attention to some of the destruction caused during the Communist rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, particularly Orthodox monasteries and Saxon villages of Transylvania, where he purchased a house. Charles also became patron of two Romanian built environment organisations: the Mihai Eminescu Trust and the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture, and Urbanism, an advocate of architecture that respects cultural tradition and identity. Charles also has “a deep understanding of Islamic art and architecture”, and has been involved in the construction of a building and garden at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies which combine Islamic and Oxford architectural styles.

Charles' involvement in architecture has also attracted controversy, especially his personal intervention to redesign projects whose architectural style or approach he has disagreed with. He has been especially opposed to styles such as modernism and functionalism. Richard Rogers, recipient of the Pritzker Prize and Stirling Prize, has described the Prince's personal intervention in projects as "an abuse of power" and "unconstitutional". In 2009 Charles wrote a letter to the Qatari royal family, the developers of the Chelsea Barracks site to be designed by Rogers, that suggested his design was "unsuitable". Subsequently, Rogers was removed from the project and The Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment was appointed to propose an alternative. Rogers has also claimed the Prince intervened to stop his designs for the Royal Opera House and Paternoster Square.

Charles' personal interventions have attracted critique from prominent members of the architectural community. Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Jacques Herzog, Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, and Frank Gehry among others wrote a letter to The Sunday Times to this effect; each is a recipient of the Pritzker Prize. They wrote that "private comments" and "behind-the-scenes lobbying" by the Prince counteracted the "open and democratic planning process" in the case of the Chelsea Barracks project. Similarly, Piers Gough CBE and other architects wrote a letter encouraging colleagues to boycott Charles' address to the Royal Institute of British Architects, with Gough calling Charles' views on architecture "elitist".

The natural environment

Since the early 1980s, Charles has taken a keen interest in environmental issues, taking a leadership role in promoting environmentally sensitive thinking. Upon his moving into his Highgrove estate, he became increasingly focused on organic farming, an attention that culminated in the 1990 launch of his own organic brand: Duchy Originals, which now sells more than 200 different sustainably produced products, from food to garden furniture, the profits from which (£6 million, as of 2008) are donated to The Prince's Charities. Documenting this work on his estate, Charles co-authored (with Charles Clover, environment editor of the ''Daily Telegraph'') ''Highgrove: An Experiment in Organic Gardening and Farming'', published in 1993, and offers his patronage to Garden Organic. Along similar lines, the Prince of Wales became involved with farming and various industries within it, regularly meeting with farmers to discuss their trade; though the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic in England prevented Charles from visiting farmers in Saskatchewan, organic farmers there came to meet him at the Assiniboia town hall. In 2004, he also founded the Mutton Renaissance Campaign, which aims to support British sheep farmers and make mutton more attractive to Britons. His organic farming efforts, however, attracted media criticism: According to ''The Independent'' in October 2006 "...the story of Duchy Originals has involved compromises and ethical blips, wedded to a determined merchandising programme." and, in February 2007, Duchy products themselves came under attack, with the tabloid ''Daily Mail'' claiming that the food was "unhealthier than Big Macs." In 2007, Charles also launched The Prince's May Day Network, which encourages businesses to take action on climate change.

An announcement was made by Clarence House in December 2006 that the Prince of Wales would make his household's travel arrangements more eco-friendly and, in 2007, Charles published in his annual accounts the details of his own carbon footprint, as well as targets for reducing his household's carbon emissions. That same year, he received the 10th annual Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Harvard Medical School's Center for Health and the Global Environment, the director of which, Eric Chivian, stated: "For decades the Prince of Wales has been a champion of the natural world... He has been a world leader in efforts to improve energy efficiency and in reducing the discharge of toxic substances on land, and into the air and the oceans". However, Charles' travel by commercial airliner to the United States to attend the award ceremony drew criticism from some environmental activists, such as the Plane climate change action group's campaigner Joss Garman, and in April 2009 he faced similar criticisms for chartering a private jet for a five day tour of Europe to promote environmental issues.

The Prince gave a speech to the European Parliament on 14 February 2008, in which he called for European Union leadership in the war against climate change. During the standing ovation that followed, Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), was the only MEP to remain seated and went on to describe Charles's advisers as "naive and foolish at best." Farage continued: "How can somebody like Prince Charles be allowed to come to the European Parliament at this time to announce he thinks it should have more powers? It would have been better for the country he wants to rule one day if he had stayed home and tried to persuade Gordon Brown to give the people the promised referendum [on the Treaty of Lisbon]."

The Prince gave a speech to the Low Carbon Prosperity Summit in a European Parliament chamber on 9 February 2011, in which he lashed out at climate change skeptics. He said they are playing "a reckless game of roulette" with the planet's future and are having a "corrosive effect" on public opinion. He also spoke about the need to protect fisheries, the Amazon rain forest and about making low-carbon emissions affordable and competitive.

Philosophies and religious beliefs

Sir Laurens van der Post became a friend of Charles in 1977, a relationship which led him to be dubbed the "guru to Prince Charles", and made godfather to Charles' son, Prince William. From him, the Prince of Wales developed a focus on philosophy, especially that of Asian and Middle Eastern nations, and New Age theology, praising Kabbalistic artworks, and penning a memorial for Kathleen Raine, the Neoplatonist poet, who died in 2003.

The Prince is known to attend services at several different Anglican churches near his home at Highgrove, Gloucestershire and is known to regularly worship at Crathie Kirk when staying at Balmoral Castle. In 2000, he was appointed as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

The Prince of Wales also travels (amidst some secrecy) each year to Mount Athos to spend time in the Orthodox monasteries there, as well as in Romania, demonstrating his interest in Orthodox Christianity. Along with his father, who was born and raised as Greek Orthodox, Charles is patron of The Friends of Mount Athos, as well as the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies. It is also believed that Prince Charles has an Orthodox icon corner in his house where he keeps the majority of his Orthodox icons. None of this is surprising, as Prince Charles' father was raised Greek Orthodox, but converted before marrying the future Queen Elizabeth II. It is reported that in more recent years, even his father, Prince Philip has joined him in occasional retreats to the peninsula.

Charles is also patron of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford.

Alternative medicine

Charles has demonstrated an interest in alternative medicine, and his promotion of it has caused controversy. In 2004, Charles' Foundation for Integrated Health divided the scientific and medical community over its campaign encouraging general practitioners to offer herbal and other alternative treatments to National Health Service patients, and in May 2006, Charles made a speech to an audience of health ministers from various countries at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, urging them to develop a plan for integrating conventional and alternative medicine and argued for homeopathy.

In April 2008 ''The Times'' published a letter from Edzard Ernst, Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, that asked the Prince's Foundation to recall two guides promoting "alternative medicine", saying: "the majority of alternative therapies appear to be clinically ineffective, and many are downright dangerous." A speaker for the foundation countered the criticism by stating: "We entirely reject the accusation that our online publication ''Complementary Healthcare: A Guide'' contains any misleading or inaccurate claims about the benefits of complementary therapies. On the contrary, it treats people as adults and takes a responsible approach by encouraging people to look at reliable sources of information... so that they can make informed decisions. The foundation does not promote complementary therapies." Ernst has recently published a book with science writer Simon Singh condemning alternative medicine called ''Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial''. The book is ironically dedicated to "HRH the Prince of Wales" and the last chapter is very critical of his advocacy of "complementary" and "alternative" treatments.

The Prince's Duchy Originals produce a variety of CAM products including a “Detox Tincture” that Professor Edzard Ernst has denounced as "financially exploiting the vulnerable" and "outright quackery". In May 2009, the Advertising Standards Authority criticised an email that Duchy Originals had sent out to advertise its Echina-Relief, Hyperi-Lift and Detox Tinctures products saying it was misleading. The Prince personally wrote at least seven letters to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) shortly before they relaxed the rules governing labelling of such herbal products, a move that has been widely condemned by scientists and medical bodies.

On 31 October 2009 it was reported that Prince Charles had personally lobbied Health Secretary Andy Burnham regarding greater provision of alternative treatments in the NHS.

In 2010, following accounting irregularities noted by the auditor, two former officials at the Prince's Foundation were arrested for fraud believed to total £300,000. Four days after the arrests, the FIH announced that it would close, claiming that it "has achieved its key objective of promoting the use of integrated health." The charity's finance director, accountant George Gray, was convicted of theft totalling £253,000 and sentenced to three years in prison. The Prince's Foundation was re-branded and re-launched in late 2010 as the ''College of Medicine.'' It continues to act as an alternative medicine lobby group.

Humanitarian issues

The plight of various peoples has been a target of Charles' efforts, predominantly the long-term unemployed, people who have been in trouble with the law, people who are in difficulty at school, and people who have been in care. The Prince's Trust is the main outlet through which Charles works with young people, offering loans to groups, business people, and others who have had difficulty receiving outside support. Fundraising concerts are regularly held in benefit of the trust, with leading pop, rock, and classical musicians taking part. In Canada, Charles has also supported humanitarian projects, taking part, along with his two sons, in the ceremonies marking the 1998 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and helping to launch the Canadian Youth Business Foundation in Saskatchewan in 2001, when he also visited Scott Collegiate, an inner-city school in Regina.

After spending time in the Northwest Territories in 1975, Charles formed a special interest in the Canadian north, as well as Canada's Aboriginal Peoples, the leaders of which he met and sometimes took time to walk and meditate with. Reflecting this association, the Prince of Wales has been conferred with special titles from First Nations communities: in 1996 Cree and Ojibway students in Winnipeg named the Prince ''Leading Star'', and in 2001 he was dubbed ''Pisimwa Kamiwohkitahpamikohk'', or "the sun looks at him in a good way", during his first visit to the province of Saskatchewan. He was also one of the first world leaders to express strong concerns about the human rights record of Nicolae Ceauşescu, initiating objections in the international arena, and subsequently supported the FARA Foundation, which runs Romanian orphanages.

Charles attended the Bilderberg Group conference in 1986 specifically to attend a debate on the South African economic crisis.

An example of his concern for humanitarian issues has been his recent (2011) launch of his Pakistan Recovery Fund which aims to raise a minimum of £2million towards health, education, reconstruction and livelihood projects.

Hobbies and sports

Since his youth the Prince was an avid player of polo, as a part of competitive teams until 1992, and strictly for charity from then until 2005, after which he ceased to participate because of two notable injuries he suffered during play: in 1990 he broke his arm, and in 2001 was briefly unconscious after a fall. Charles also frequently took part in fox hunting, before the sport was banned in the United Kingdom in 2005. By the late 1990s, as opposition to the activity was growing, the Prince of Wales' participation in this activity was viewed as a "political statement" by those opposed to it, such as the League Against Cruel Sports, which launched the attack against Charles after he took his sons on the Beaufort Hunt in 1999, at a time when the government was trying to ban the hunting of foxes with hounds. The Prince has also been a keen salmon angler since youth, and a supporter of Orri Vigfússon's efforts to protect the North Atlantic Salmon. Charles has frequently fished the River Dee in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, while he claims his most special angling memories are from his time in Vopnafjörður, Iceland.

Charles has also pursued the visual arts, focusing on watercolour, and exhibiting and selling a number of his paintings, as well as publishing books on the subject. In university he dabbled in acting, appearing in amateur productions of a comedic nature, an enjoyment of which continued later into the Prince's life, as evidenced by his organising of a comedy gala to celebrate his 60th birthday. He also has an interest in illusionism, becoming a member of The Magic Circle after passing his audition by performing the cups and balls effect. The Prince acts today as patron of a number of theatres, acting troupes, and orchestral ensembles, including the Regina Symphony Orchestra, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, and is reportedly a fan of Canadian singer and song writer Leonard Cohen. He is also a collector of automobiles, particularly the British marque Aston Martin, having acquired numerous models and such tight connections with the brand–being a frequent visitor to the factory and its service department, and a guest of honour at most of the company's special launch events– that special ''Prince of Wales'' edition Aston Martins have been created on occasion.

Charles is a supporter of Burnley Football Club.

Official duties

As Prince of Wales, Prince Charles undertakes a number of official duties on behalf of his mother, in her role as sovereign of any of the Commonwealth realms. He will frequently stand in for the Queen at the funerals of foreign dignitaries (which the Queen customarily does not attend), and at investitures into British orders. It was when he attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II that Charles caused controversy: when shaking hands with other guests, Charles was surprised to find himself shaking that of Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, who had been seated next to the Prince. Charles' office subsequently released a statement saying: "The Prince of Wales was caught by surprise and not in a position to avoid shaking Mr. Mugabe's hand. The Prince finds the current Zimbabwean regime abhorrent. He has supported the Zimbabwe Defence and Aid Fund which works with those being oppressed by the regime. The Prince also recently met Pius Ncube, the Archbishop of Bulawayo, an outspoken critic of the government."

Both Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall travel abroad on behalf of the United Kingdom. The Prince has been regarded as an effective advocate of the country, with his visit to the Republic of Ireland, where he delivered a personally researched and written speech on Anglo-Irish affairs that was warmly received by Irish politicians and the media, being cited as an example. His service to the Canadian Armed Forces permits him to be informed of troop activities, and allows him to visit these troops while in Canada or overseas, taking part in ceremonial occasions. For instance, in 2001, the Prince placed a specially commissioned wreath, made from vegetation taken from French battlefields, at the Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and in 1981 he became the patron of the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum.

Prince Charles makes regular tours of Wales, going there for a week of engagements each summer, attending important national occasions, such as opening the Senedd. In 2000, Charles revived the tradition of the Prince of Wales having an official harpist, in order to foster Welsh talent at playing the harp, the national instrument of Wales. He and the Duchess of Cornwall also spend one week each year in Scotland, where the Prince is patron of a number of Scottish organisations.

Prince Charles is a Director of "The Royal Collection Trust". and an Assistant of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights.

On 27 March 2011 Prince Charles attended in the Christchurch memorial service at Westminster Abbey for acknowledging the generosity, sympathy and support New Zealand has received from the United Kingdom since the earthquake hit.

Media

Sometimes referred to as ''Chazza'' (along the lines of ''Gazza'', ''Hezza'', and similar coinages), and parodied, such as on ''Spitting Image'', and by Craig Ferguson—in a segment known as ''The Rather Late Programme with Prince Charles''—on ''The Late Late Show'', Prince Charles has been a focus of the world media since his birth, attention that increased as he matured. Prior to his first marriage, he was presented as the world's most eligible bachelor on the cover of ''Time'', and his various affairs and exploits were followed and reported. With his marriage to Diana the attention increased, though predominantly towards a Princess of Wales, who became a star attraction, chased by the paparazzi, and her every move (including every change in hairstyle) closely followed by millions. As their relationship began to deteriorate, Diana began to use the media to her advantage, and became closely involved in placing stories about the royal marriage in the press, thenceforth splitting the media's support, with Charles having ''The Mirror'' and the ''Telegraph'' on his side.

In their quest to gain ever more stories on a Prince of Wales, the media breached Charles' privacy on a number of occasions. In 2006, the Prince filed a court case against the ''Mail on Sunday'', after excerpts of his personal journals were published, revealing his opinions on matters, such as the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997, in which Charles described the Chinese government officials as "appalling old waxworks." Others have used their past connections with the Prince to profit from the media, such as when an ex-member of Charles' household took to the press an internal memo in which Charles commented on ambition and opportunity, and which was widely interpreted as blaming meritocracy for creating a combative atmosphere in society. In retort, Charles stated: "In my view, it is just as great an achievement to be a plumber or a bricklayer as it is to be a lawyer or a doctor," and the memo was cited in Lynne Truss' critique of British manners, ''Talk to the Hand'', as a valid observation on how the positive motivational impact of meritocracy might be balanced against the negative impact of a competitive society.

Overall, Charles developed a dislike for the popular press, which was accidentally revealed when his comments to his son, William, during a press photo-call in 2005 was caught on a nearby microphone: "I hate doing this... These bloody people," and about the BBC's royal reporter, Nicholas Witchell, in particular: "I can't bear that man. I mean, he's so awful, he really is."

The Prince of Wales though has appeared as himself on a number of occasions in continuing series. In 1984 he read his children's book, ''The Old Man of Lochnagar'', on the BBC's ''Jackanory'' programme. The UK soap opera ''Coronation Street'' featured an appearance by Charles during the show's 40th anniversary in 2000, as did the New Zealand adult cartoon series ''bro'Town'' (2005), after he attended a performance by the show's creators during a tour of the country. He reportedly turned down an invitation to appear in a cameo role in an episode of ''Doctor Who''. Charles also continues to give interviews, such as that which was conducted by Ant & Dec for the 30th anniversary of The Prince's Trust in 2006.

Residences

Clarence House, the former London residence of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, is the Prince of Wales' current official residence. Previously, he resided in an apartment at St James's Palace. Charles also holds a private estate in Gloucestershire, Highgrove House, and one in Scotland, the Birkhall estate near Balmoral Castle and also previously owned by the Queen Mother. Upon the occasion of his marriage to Diana, Charles had reduced his voluntary tax contribution from the profits generated by the Duchy of Cornwall from 50% to 25%.

In 2007 the Prince purchased a 192–acre (150 acres of grazing and parkland, and of woodland) property in Carmarthenshire, and applied for permission to convert the farm into a Welsh home for him and the Duchess of Cornwall, to be rented out as holiday flats when the royal couple is not in residence. Though neighbours said the proposed alterations flouted local planning regulations, the application was put on hold while a report was drafted on how the alterations would affect the local bat population. Charles and Camilla took residence at the new property, called ''Llwynywermod'', in June 2008.

In 2006 the Prince bought a house in the village of Viscri in south-eastern Transylvania, one of the Saxon villages with fortified churches in Transylvania designated in 1993 as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO; in 2008 he bought another house in the village of Valea Zălanului / Zalánpatak in the Székely Land region of Transylvania, a 16th century village probably founded by one of the Prince's Transylvanian ancestors. Both properties are rented out as guest houses when the Prince is not in residence.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Titles and styles

Charles has held a number of titles throughout his life, as the grandson of the monarch, the son of the monarch and, later, honoured in his own right with princely and noble titles. When in conversation with the Prince of Wales, the practice is to initially address him as ''Your Royal Highness'' and thereafter as ''Sir''.

There has been speculation as to what regnal name the Prince will choose upon his succession to the throne. If he keeps his current first name, he will be known as ''Charles III''. However, it was reported in 2005 that Charles has suggested he may choose to reign as ''George VII'' in honour of his maternal grandfather, and to avoid association with the Stuart kings Charles I (who was beheaded) and Charles II (who was known for his playboy lifestyle), as well as to be sensitive to the memory of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was called "Charles III" by his supporters. Charles' office immediately denied this report.

Honours and honorary military appointments

Charles' first honorary appointment was as Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Regiment of Wales in 1969; since that time, the Prince has also been installed as Colonel-in-Chief, Colonel, Honorary Air Commodore, Air Commodore-in-Chief, Deputy Colonel-in-Chief, Royal Honorary Colonel, Royal Colonel, and Honorary Commodore of at least 36 military formations throughout the Commonwealth. He is also the commander of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, which is the only foreign regiment in the British army.

Charles has also been the recipient of a number of honours and awards from various countries. He has been inducted into eight orders and received five decorations from amongst the Commonwealth realms, and has been the recipient of 17 different appointments and decorations by foreign states, as well as nine honorary degrees from universities in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Arms

Bannerimage	Prince of Wales Standard.svg
Notes	The Prince's own coat of arms are the escutcheon of the arms of the sovereign in right of the United Kingdom with a label for difference. The version used everywhere but Scotland is listed here. Within Scotland, the arms of the Duke of Rothesay, which quarters the arms of the Great Steward and of the Lords of the Isles, placing the arms of the heir apparent to the Scots throne on an inescutcheon in the centre, are used.
Adopted	1911
Crest	Upon the Royal helm the imperial crown Proper, thereon a lion statant gardant Or crowned with the crown of the Prince of Wales
Escutcheon	Quarterly 1st and 4th gules three lions passant guardant in pale or armed and langed azure 2nd or a lion rampant gules armed and langued azure within a double tressure flory counterflory of the second 3rd azure a harp or stringed argent overall an escutcheon of Royal Badge of Wales.
Supporters	Dexter a lion rampant gardant Or imperially crowned Proper, sinister a unicorn Argent, armed, crined and unguled Or, gorged with a coronet Or composed of crosses patée and fleurs de lis a chain affixed thereto passing between the forelegs and reflexed over the back also Or
Motto	ICH DIEN''(German: I serve)''
Orders	The Order of the Garter ribbon.HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE''(French: Shame be to him who thinks evil of it)''
Other elements	The whole differenced by a plain Label of three points Argent, as the eldest child of the sovereign.
Banner	The banners used by the Prince vary depending upon location. Apart from the exceptions below, the Royal Standard of the United Kingdom is used, differenced as in his arms with a label of three points argent, and the escutcheon of the arms of the Principality of Wales in the centre. This is the standard that is used outside the United Kingdom by the prince and also that used throughout the entire United Kingdom when the prince is acting in an official capacity associated with the UK Armed Forces. 30px In Wales the banner is based upon the Coat of Arms of the Principality of Wales, (the historic arms of the Kingdom of Gwynedd), which consist of four quadrants, the first and fourth with a red lion on a gold field, and the second and third with a gold lion on a red field. Superimposed is an escutcheon vert bearing the single-arched crown of the Prince of Wales. 30px In Scotland the personal banner used since 1974 is based upon three ancient Scottish titles: Duke of Rothesay, (The heir apparent to the King of Scots), High Steward of Scotland and Lord of the Isles. The flag is divided into four quadrants as per the arms of the Chief of Clan Stewart of Appin; the first and fourth quadrants comprise a gold field with a blue and silver checkered band in the centre; the second and third quadrants displaying a black galley on a silver field. The arms are differenced from those of Appin by the addition of an inescutcheon bearing the tressured lion rampant of Scotland; defaced by a plain label of three points Azure to indicate the heir apparent. 45px Also used in Scotland is a standard, ''viz'' the Royal Standard of Scotland, again defaced with a label of three points Azure to indicate the heir apparent. 40px In Cornwall, the banner is "sable fifteen bezants Or", that is, a black field bearing fifteen gold coins, which Prince Charles uses in his capacity as Duke of Cornwall. 50px The Prince of Wales also holds a personal heraldic banner for Canada, consisting of the shield of the Canadian Royal Arms defaced with both a blue roundel surrounded by a wreath of gold maple leaves, within which is a depiction of the Prince of Wales' feathers, and a white label of three points.
Badge	Three ostrich feathers encircled by a gold coronet
Symbolism	As with the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom. The first and fourth quarters are the arms of England, the second of Scotland, the third of Ireland.
Previous versions	}}

Ancestry

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Due to the insistence of the royal family to remain to be called Windsor, Charles is a member of the House of Windsor, a cadet branch of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (also known simply as the House of Glücksburg), a branch of the House of Oldenburg, ultimately descended from Elimar I, Count of Oldenburg. The male-line descendants of the Queen Elizabeth II are distinct from other members of the House of Windsor, who are descended in male line from the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Issue

29 April 2011 15 September 1984

style="background:#708090;"	Name !! style="background:#708090;">Birth !! style="background:#708090;" colspan="2"	Marriage	Issue
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge	21 June 1982	|	Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge>Catherine Middleton
Prince Harry of Wales	|

See also

Charles, Prince of Wales bibliography

Notes

References

Bibliography

External links

Official website of HRH The Prince of Wales

Official Duchy of Cornwall Cottages website

Monarchy Wales – leading campaign organisation

Military Career

Prince Charles as a Young Bachelor – slideshow by ''Life magazine''

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – House of Windsor

Family Ties to the Royal Wedding 9 April 2005

Official website of 'The Prince's Trust'

View an image of an official portrait of Prince Charles by David Griffiths

The Prince's Official Canadian Visit (2001)

"Saskatchewan Honours Future King" (2001)

Significance of Treaties Reaffirmed Through Historic Royal Visit (2001)

View clip from Prince Charles interview by David Frost in 1969

Sympathetic appraisal of the Prince's contributions to architecture

The Prince of Wales brushes up on first aid skills

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