Air Commandant Dame Lena Annette Jean Conan Doyle, Lady Bromet DBE, AE, WRAF, ADC (21 December 1912 – 18 November 1997) was best known as Jean Conan Doyle.
The second daughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, she served for thirty years in the WRAF, where she worked in intelligence during World War II and by the time of her retirement she had attained the rank of Air Commandant, the highest rank in the Women's Royal Air Force. Until 1966 she served as an honorary Aide-de-Camp to Queen Elizabeth II. She was styled as Lady Bromet after marrying Air Vice-Marshal Sir Geoffrey Rhodes Bromet (1891 – 1983). Her husband served a term as Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man. Sir Geoffrey and Lady Jean Bromet had no children.
After the death of her brother, Adrian Conan Doyle, in 1970, Dame Jean became her father's literary executor and the legal copyright holder to some of the rights to the Sherlock Holmes character as well as her father's other works. She assiduously defended Sherlock Holmes' character. She and her brothers, Adrian and Denis Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle's children by his second wife, Lady Jean Conan Doyle, inherited the copyrights with the estate when their mother died in 1940.
A spirited child, nicknamed "Billy", she was described as a tomboy by Houdini, who used to sign herself "Your loving son". On her tenth birthday, however, she announced that she had decided to be a girl after all. She then went to her Aunt Ida's school, Granville House in Eastbourne, where she took after her mother in her love of nature. As a schoolgirl she was a classmate and friend of future film and television actress Anna Lee, who was her father's god-daughter.
Dame Jean and the widows of her brothers, Adrian and Denis, initially shared control of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle′s literary trust; however, the women did not get along. Denis Conan Doyle had married a Georgian princess known as Princess Nina M'divani and died in 1955. Using a loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland, in 1970 Princess Nina bought the estate and established Baskervilles Investments Ltd. in the tax haven, Isle of Man. Eventually, when Princess Nina fell dramatically behind on the loan, the Royal Bank of Scotland ended up with the rights to Conan Doyle′s works. The bank then sold the rights to Lady Etelka Duncan; her daughter administers the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Trust to this day.
Dame Jean regained the rights following the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, although some of the Conan Doyle properties remain with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Trust, which has sued the Doyle heirs. When Warner Brothers made Sherlock Holmes, released in 2010, the studio entered in negotiations with both parties.
At her death at age 84, her will stipulated that any remaining copyrights she owned were to be transferred to the Royal National Institute for the Blind. According to a 1990 interview, Dame Jean's eyesight was poor from an early age. The National Institute for the Blind sold the rights back to Doyle heirs. (There are now nine surviving Doyle heirs. None are direct descendents, as neither Dame Jean nor her brothers had any children.) Sherlock Holmes passed into the public domain in the United Kingdom in 1980. It's scheduled to do the same in the United States in 2023.
The Doyle heirs authorized British novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz to pen a new Holmes novel; The House of Silk was released in 2011.
Famous quotes containing the words conan doyle, conan and/or doyle:
““What business is it of yours, then?”
“It’s every man’s business to see justice done.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
““It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognise out of a number of facts which are incidental and which are vital.... I would call your attention to the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.””
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)