In the opening chapter of A Study in Scarlet – the first Sherlock Holmes story – we learn that Dr. John Watson, Holmes's companion and the narrator of the story – was wounded at Maiwand. Watson may be based on Surgeon Major A. F. Preston, Medical officer of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot, who was injured in the battle.
A war memorial in the Forbury Gardens, a public park in the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, is known as the Maiwand Lion. It was erected in 1884 to commemorate the deaths of 329 men from the Berkshire Regiment during the Second Anglo–Afghan War (of which Maiwand was one of the principal battles).
The Maiwand Lion is one of the world's largest cast iron statues. Residents of Reading see it as a symbol of their town, although rumours persist that the sculptor – George Blackall Simonds, a member of a Reading brewing family – committed suicide on learning that the lion's gait was incorrectly that of a domestic cat. In fact, Simonds made careful observations on lions and the stance is anatomically correct. He also lived for another 43 years, enjoying continued success as a sculptor and creating statues of Queen Victoria (1887) and George Palmer (1891).
(George Palmer was one of the founders of Huntley & Palmers, a globally–successful biscuit manufacturer and another Reading icon – to the extent that the town's football club was traditionally nicknamed The Biscuitmen. Huntley & Palmers created several biscuit styles, including the Nice. In 1970 it merged with Peek Frean and Jacobs to form Associated Biscuits, and manufacturing in Reading came to an end in 1976. Associated Biscuits was acquired by Nabisco in 1982, and by Danone in 1989. The Huntley & Palmers brand was revived in 2006, operating from Sudbury in Suffolk.)
© Haydn Thompson 2020