Neo-Victorian Food Futures – A Case for Sherlock Holmes

In the early 2020s, the audio-book streaming service Storytel commissioned a new set of Sherlock Holmes stories from crime and thriller writer Anthony Horowitz (co-written with Sarah J. Naughton). Horowitz had already written two acclaimed novels set in Conan Doyle’s Victorian universe, but in penning the new series for Storytel, he moved the characters into a future transformed by the ongoing socio-ecological crisis. Interestingly, the future Holmes and Watson find themselves in is not very dissimilar from the Victorian past out of which they once emerged. Because of “Global warming. Pandemic. Economic collapse. War”, London has transformed into something very like the London of Dickens and Doyle: houses are warmed with coal or scraps, most people traverse the city on horse-driver carriages, crime is rife, and ill-health and wealth inequality are ubiquitous.

 While climate fiction often borrows from other genres such as the thriller, crime fiction, horror and gothic, this is the first example of an entire existing literary universe being moved into a future drastically altered by the social and biospheric crisis. The three novels of the series are often notably nostalgic. There is a lot of sitting by the fire, reading newspapers and drinking tea, and a great deal of exploration of foggy alleyways. Despite being set in a thoroughly miserable London where the unhoused appear to outnumber the housed, there is something comforting about the story. The authors do their best to steer clear of the racism and misogyny that saturated many of Doyle’s original stories and, also contrary to the original, the work that Holmes performs is not designed to keep the Empire steaming ahead. The villains of this new series are almost invariably part of the economic elite; the same affluent white men whose extractive endeavours helped cause the crisis London finds itself in. 

Food enters the narrative in a similar way. The authors are clearly aware of the need to turn towards new foodways. In one passage, Inspector Lestrade is discussing a move away from London with his wife and son, this in order to become head of security at a food corporation named BossMeat:

 ‘BossMeat…?’ Lestrade frowns. ‘Don’t they make meat out of…?’‘Insects. Yes. But you don’t need to make that face, George. Insects have been part of the human diet since the beginning of time.’ Suddenly she sounds like the primary school teacher that she once was. ‘Moths and butterflies, locusts, mealworms… they’re healthier than conventional meat, more cost-effective and better for the planet. You know the side-effects from grazing cattle and poultry as well as the cruelty. By the end of the last century, factory farming had become disgusting, indefensible.’ She nods at the brochure. ‘Crickets contain 100% protein,’ she assures him. ‘Locusts have more iron per milligram than beef!’ 

Even though the CEO of BossMeat is part of the economic elite, this straightforward endorsement of alternative protein is never collapsed by the series. This is indeed how people need to eat in the universe imagined by the authors. Yet, Holmes and Watson do not seem to consume anything except egg, bacon, veal curry and Chinese take-out. As in the film Blade Runner 2049, protein produced from insects does not seem to qualify as food in the conventional sense. To retain their Victorian personalities, the protagonists have to consume like Victorians. 

This is ironic since, the reader soon gathers, Holmes is himself an artificial bundle of protein. While different origin stories are circulated in the series, it would seem that Holmes (and Moriarty) are clones created in vitro by the bioengineer Mycroft Holmes in a laboratory. In this way, Holmes is a bit like the novel food he does not eat. This noted, the primary reason why Holmes and Watson avoid new types of food is that such consumption risks jarring the reader out of the story. In a future so thoroughly transformed, traditional food items anchor the heroes of the series both to the Victorian past and to the dominant food system the Victorians helped create. The characters of Holmes and Watson become recognizable, and recognizably masculine, through their consumption of animal-sources protein. The reader is expected to be grounded and comforted by the fact that they consume a conventional Western/British diet. 

This is one of the most significant challenges for those involved in what the Lancet calls the 21st-century great food transition. To accomplish this shift, it is essential to shift attitudes towards meat. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, and particularly in present-day US, the trend is moving in the other direction. For all its good intentions, the new Sherlock Holmes series encourages a similar, backwards shift.