Mycroft Holmes

Mycroft Holmes
Sherlock Holmes character
as depicted by Sidney Edward Paget in the Strand Magazine
First appearance	"The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter"
Created by	Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Government official
Relatives	Sherlock Holmes (brother)
Nationality	British

Mycroft Holmes is a fictional character appearing in stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He is the elder brother (by seven years) of detective Sherlock Holmes. He is described as having abilities of deduction and knowledge exceeding even those of his brother, though their practical use is limited by his poor physique and dislike of fieldwork.

The character has been adapted in various pieces of literature and media, including television series, movies, radio, and comics. He is also popular in culture, being mentioned by many works, which mostly reference his job, personality, or his relationship with Sherlock Holmes.

Possessing deductive powers exceeding even those of his younger brother, Mycroft is nevertheless incapable of performing detective work similar to that of Sherlock as he is unwilling to put in the physical effort necessary to bring cases to their conclusions. In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes say:

...he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points...

Though Sherlock initially tells Watson that Mycroft audits books for some government departments, he later reveals that Mycroft's true role is more substantial. While Conan Doyle's stories leave unclear what Mycroft Holmes' exact position is in the British government, Sherlock Holmes says that "Occasionally he is the British government [...] the most indispensable man in the country." He apparently serves as a sort of human computer, as stated in "The Bruce-Partington Plans":

He has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living. The same great powers which I have turned to the detection of crime he has used for this particular business. The conclusions of every department are passed to him, and he is the central exchange, the clearinghouse, which makes out the balance. All other men are specialists, but his specialism is omniscience. We will suppose that a minister needs information as to a point which involves the Navy, India, Canada and the bimetallic question; he could get his separate advices from various departments upon each, but only Mycroft can focus them all, and say offhand how each factor would affect the other. They began by using him as a short-cut, a convenience; now he has made himself an essential. In that great brain of his everything is pigeon-holed and can be handed out in an instant.