On 1 December 1893, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) delivered a lecture entitled “Facts about Fiction” in the hall of the Watt Institute in Greenock. He had been invited by Greenock Philosophical Society whose president at the time was Robert Caird (1852-1915).
There was a large audience to hear the author’s “brilliant and masterly” talk which “… was devoted to the younger novelists, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Olive Schreiner, J M Barrie “Q”, Rudyard Kipling, Jerome K Jerome, and others …”. ("Q" seems to refer to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch - click on link for more information.)
Conan Doyle, born in Edinburgh in 1859, was described in the Greenock Telegraph as “… a tall, dark-haired, heavy-built, and firmly knit, yet withal pleasant-faced and manly-looking literary Philistine”! He is best known for his famous detective Sherlock Holmes, but produced many other works in his career. He was knighted in 1902.
Arthur Conan Doyle was just one of the many famous and important people of their day who were guests of the Greenock Philosophical Society who are still holding regular meetings in the Watt Institution in Greenock.
