About this Page

This site is a tribute to the writer David Stuart Davies, who was born in Huddersfield on 10 February 1946 and died at home in August 2024 after being diagnosed with a high grade and untreatable brain tumour, which he chose to keep largely private.

This page has been set up to allow you to come together to celebrate his life and to share memories of David. We were all very lucky to have known someone as special as David and so this site is designed to share the joy he brought to our lives, and also to encourage your support for Kirkwood Hospice, whose wonderful palliative care team supported David through a very challenging period after his diagnosis.

Please support Kirkwood Hospice if you can

Donations to Kirkwood Hospice, however small, are welcomed to help maintain the wonderful work they do in caring for people facing terminal illness in Huddersfield and across the Kirklees district.

The palliative care team and all the staff at the Kirkwood have been amazing in providing everything David needed. The Kirkwood receives no government funding and relies on donations, so please give something, if you are able. David would really appreciate it. 

You can donate via the link at the bottom of this page.

About David the Writer

A selection of David's articles on writing, plus links to podcasts and highlights from David's award winning play, Sherlock Holmes - the Last Act, are included in the Life Stories section of this site.

A tribute to the range and depth of his writing work is included at the bottom of this page and in the Life Stories section of this site. The text is adapted from a piece for the local paper by writer Tony Earnshaw.  

About David the Man

David is much loved and missed by people who knew him personally, and by those further afield and at a distance in time who were entertained and inspired by him as an English teacher early in his career, and later around the world though his writing and infectious enthusiasm for Sherlock Holmes, and for drama and books.

His friends remember David as a loving, kind, witty, talented and funny man, able respond to any situation with lightning sharp, hilarious and sometimes very silly quips and puns. He was a a man of immense energy and enthusiasm for the things he loved, always working hard, and much to the joy of his publishers, always ahead of deadlines. 

David was a brilliant performer and a livewire who was guaranteed to bring light and humour to any gathering and to bring determination and energy into the darkest of situations.

Beneath the ebullience, David was also a very gentle, sensitive and loving soul who wrote deeply introspective and wonderful poetry. And despite a long career as an author, until very recent years he was modest and self critical, doubting whether he could actually call himself a 'writer'. You were a writer, David, a very talented and versatile writer... 

He wore his literary expertise lightly and his clothes with style and flamboyance. Who can forget David, the stylish young man in a sharp suit or tweeds? Or in later years sporting one of his many-hued corduroy suits, velvet jackets, tartan trousers, or his special black velvet jacket with a scarlet lining, which he wore when performing at literary festivals and libraries around the country, usually topped by a pocket handkerchief, a boutonniere or a scarf?

David Stuart Davies leaves a legacy of literature, laughter and love.

Missing David so much and remembering him forever with deepest love.

Go gently into that good night, darling...

***

David Stuart Davies – An Appreciation
Adapted from the text of an article by Tony Earnshaw for the Huddersfield Examiner and the Yorkshire Post
 
The writer David Stuart Davies, who has died, aged 78, following a cancer diagnosis, was an internationally regarded expert on Sherlock Holmes.
A teacher for twenty years, he later turned to writing full-time. His prolific output included novels, plays, short stories, and studies of the world’s foremost consulting detective.
He was also a magazine editor and a consultant for publishers Wordsworth on its reprints of classic mystery and supernatural books and for Macmillan on a series of classic horror stories, classic crime at Christmas and Yorkshire: A Literary Anthology.
 
Born in Huddersfield in 1946, Davies failed his 11+, leaving school with no qualifications. The careers teacher had asked what David wanted to do when he left school and when David said he wanted to be a writer, the teacher just laughed and handed him leaflets about the two major factories in the town. David set about studying in his spare time and later passed O and A levels at evening classes and went to Leeds University, obtaining an English degree.

He was an active member of the Huddersfield Thespians early in his career and won an award for best young actor in the North in the 1960s for his role as John Proctor in The Crucible.  

David lived in Huddersfield in a house full of books, and taught English at the former Mirfield Free Grammar School, where, like many people, he was supported by the inspirational leadership of head teacher Cess Dorman. For three years David was a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund at Huddersfield University, helping students and lecturers to write with confidence and clarity.
 
He made his debut as an author in 1976 whilst still at university with Holmes of the Movies, a study of Sherlock Holmes on screen. In the late 1970s he wrote comedy scripts for BBC Radio Leeds.

Many other books followed, including Bending the Willow, an acclaimed biography of the actor Jeremy Brett that benefited from Davies’ close association with one of the key players of Holmes on TV and on stage.

Davies’ knowledge and understanding of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation made him an ideal inheritor of the character, and he brought Holmes to new readers in a string of ten new novels from 1991 to 2022, the last being Revenge from the Grave for Titan Publishing.

His wartime private eye Johnny Hawke featured in six novels, and DI Paul Snow, his Huddersfield detective, appeared in a Yorkshire noir trilogy, beginning with Brothers in Blood, set in the homophobic world of the 1980s police force.
Davies’ short ghost stories were collected in an anthology entitled The Halloween Mask.

He also brought Sherlock Holmes to the stage in a trio of one-man plays including the award-winning Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act, starring Roger Llewellyn, which premiered at Salisbury Playhouse in 1999. It toured worldwide and was revived recently with actor Nigel Miles-Thomas.

Davies was editor of the crime fiction magazine Sherlock and for 20 years edited Red Herrings, the monthly magazine of the Crime Writers’ Association, of which he was also a member.

Davies was an affable, engaging, and hugely knowledgeable speaker who wore the mantle of “expert” lightly and inspired new generations of writers. He lectured on aspects of Holmes and Conan Doyle in libraries, at literary festivals from Edinburgh to New Delhi, at Sherlockian conventions, and even aboard the Queen Mary II.

He also gave regular TV and radio interviews and provided informed commentary for DVD and Blu-Ray releases of classic Holmes movies and TV series, most recently the 1968 BBC Sherlock Holmes series starring his idol – later his friend – Peter Cushing.
He was invested as a member of the Baker Street Irregulars in 1995 and in 2016 had the privilege of being initiated into The Detection Club, set up in 1930 by the likes of Dorothy L. Sayers and G K Chesterton as an exclusive club for crime writers. Past members included Agatha Christie.
 
Davies was married twice. In 2021 he celebrated his silver wedding anniversary with his wife Kathryn, who survives him.