My friend Kelvin Jones, who has died aged 75, was a prolific writer on Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle.
He produced more than 20 works that dealt with both figures, including a trilogy about the sleuth entitled The Peculiar Persecution of Sherlock Holmes (2019) and a study of Conan Doyle’s interest in spiritualism, as well as his own crime novels and murder mysteries and a number of studies of folklore.
Kelvin was born in Sydenham, south-east London, where his Welsh father, Emrys, served as a police officer. Kelvin went to the local grammar school.
I first met him as a student when we were both studying English at Warwick University in 1967. There Kelvin formed a songwriting and performing duo called Lennie and Grego with another English undergraduate, Brian Rapkin, and for three years they entertained us all with comic takes on student life and their own peculiar obsessions – for Kelvin, it was Aleister Crowley and Victoriana.
They made three vinyl records, one of which, Dreams of the Blue Beast (1970), celebrated Brian’s acquisition of an old harmonium. This provided the perfect accompaniment to Kelvin’s resonant bass voice in several Victorian-style elegies, written in elegant quatrains.
After university he went to Avery Hill Teacher Training College in Eltham, south-east London, and worked as an English teacher and as a librarian in schools in Cornwall and Norfolk – until his career was cut short by severe depression.
He spent the rest of his life concentrating on his writing, particularly on Sherlock Holmes. Having moved to Cornwall with his wife, Deborah, an artist whom he married in 1971, he also became fascinated by Cornish folklore, the supernatural and witchcraft, and produced various works on those subjects. In addition he wrote occult murder mysteries with Deborah, and some books for children.
Kelvin was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2008 but carried on with his writing, and at his death was in the middle of another volume on Cornish witchcraft, superstition and legends.
He is survived by Deborah.
