I was born in the Lake District of Cumbria, in
the United Kingdom. In 1969 my parents
emigrated to Perth, in Western Australia,
taking me and my two younger brothers with
them. After two years in High School I
then studied Mathematics and Philosophy at
the University of W.A., it was there that
I started dabbling with computers, and
and being involved in theatre and sound
production, & met my wife Antoinette.
I am now a retired I.T. expert (Operating
Systems and Databases). I'm multi-lingual
(knowing English, French, German, and
Spanish the latter three now largely
forgotten), a polymath, a keen cook, a
painter, a gardener, a cryptolexicographer
(but not of the Times of London calibre),
and an avid traveler (having circumnavigated
the globe, visited Antarctica, and spent
more than six months in Central and South
America. As a musician I am also an
accomplished composer and player (recorder,
French horn, clarinet, organ, autoharp, and
I'm now teaching myself to play the electric
guitar - a Strat), but most recently my
expertise is with a CD or MP3 player!
I live on a 2.1 hectare (a little more than 5
acres) property in a rural region bordering onto
the metropolitan area of Perth. Here my wife
Antoinette and I grow vegetables, tend an
orchard of more than two dozen fruit and
nut trees, and we raise chickens for eggs.
Brilliantly coloured parrots (Redcaps and
Ringnecks: a pestilence to the fruit trees),
rabbits (there are several warrens on the
property) and rabbit-sized marsupials
(Quendas, perhaps better known by their
European given name of Bandicoot) visit
us daily. In the southern spring vibrantly
irridescent blue wrens abound.
I make cheeses, fruit and grape wines,
sausages, and paint when I am not writing
Sherlock Holmes stories on one of my three
Linux computers. The rich and famous
company in Redmond has had nothing to do
with the creation of these stories:
LibreOffice on LINUX was used.
I started writing in 2009 with the story of the
"Scotched, Soused, and Strung Scotsman" after
being put under considerable pressure to write
a story by two old school friends, Christopher
and David. The other David has since published
two short stories of Sherlock Holmes that are
humourous and very ex-canonical, whereas my
collections are as strictly canonical as can be
(given that Conan Doyle made many serious
errors in his chronology) and that I have
added elements of my own to the history.
When halfway through writing the 'Scotsman'
story, I created a 'chronology' to fit
together all of the published Conan Doyle
tales. This includes a credible pseudo-history
commencing in 1810 with the birth of Holmes's
father, the lives of Holmes and Watson before
their fateful meeting in 1881, Watson's two
marriages, and through to (and beyond) Holmes
supposed 'retirement' in 1903. This 'history'
has been revised repeatedly over the years,
it is included in Volume II - and has been
revised yet again (and again!) and the most
recent version is always available on this
web-site.
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This page was created by the author using Linux MINT (c) 2013 - 2023 David B. Beckwith.