Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Historical portrait of the British novelist and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). Doyle is most famous for the creation of Sherlock Holmes, the best-known detective in literature. He trained as a physician in his native Scotland and became a full-time writer in 1891. By 1920 he was one of the most highly-paid writers in the world. He was also a war journalist, reporting on the 1899-1902 Boer War in South Africa. After the death of his son in the First World War he became heavily involved in spiritualistic matters. He was known to use paid mediums to contact the spirit world and he believed in the existence of fairies.