By Jove Carruthers!

Miles Jupp goes in search of the real Carruthers, the character who inspired a thousand silly quips and cod Edwardian accents. At least seven different Carruthers crop up in Edwardian boys' tales, but who exactly was he, what did he do, and how did he assume such a strange kind of posthumous fame? Miles finds out about the Carruthers who appears in the Sherlock Holmes short story The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist and the one which narrates Erskine Childers' 1903 spy novel The Riddle of the Sands.