Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Broadcaster and writer Gyles Brandreth nominates Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as his "Great Life".

Matthew Parris chairs, assisted by biographer Andrew Lycett.

Conan Doyle is best known as the creator of the pipe smoking, deerstalker wearing, Sherlock Holmes.

Yet this irritated him, and he tried to kill off the great detective, only to bring him back by popular demand.

But Conan Doyle was a footballer, cricketer, skier, a campaigner against the Belgian atrocities in the Congo, and most startlingly, a practising spiritualist who also believed in fairies.

The paradox of Conan Doyle's life was that, having invented the most rational, cerebral fictional character of all time, he himself embraced superstition and behaved in ways that caused even his allies to despair of his credulity.

Producer Jolyon Jenkins

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2013.