Doyle, Arthur Conan

Scottish author with Irish ancestry, born in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, worked as a civil servant, but was also a painter and illustrator. He was sickly, become seriously alcoholic over the years and was admitted into psychiatric care in 1885. He died in 1893. It was Arthur’s mother, Mary, born Foley, who instead held the family together, struggling to give her son a good education. The family were practising Catholics, but he abandoned religion when still young and considered himself agnostic.