David Stuart Davies is one of Britain's leading Sherlockian writers. He was editor of Sherlock Holmes The Detective Magazine, authored several Holmes novels, hit play Sherlock Holmes: The Last Act, Titan's Starring Sherlock Holmes and a biography of Jeremy Brett. He is advisor to the Sherlock Holmes museum, and contributed commentaries to DVDs of the Basil Rathbone Holmes films.

Henry James was born in New York in 1843 and was educated in Europe and America. He left Harvard Law School in 1863, after a year's attendance, to concentrate on writing, and from 1869 he began to make prolonged visits to Europe, eventually settling in England in 1876.

His literary output was prodigious and of the highest quality: more than ten outstanding novels, including The Portrait of a Lady and The American; countless novellas and short stories; as well as innumerable essays, letters, and other pieces of critical prose. Known by contemporary fellow novelists as 'the Master', James died in Kensington, London, in 1916.