Some proponents of the demotic criticize Dalrymple for supposedly lacking the common touch, and he is certainly a strong critic of popular culture. But his essay in the new edition of National Review, in which he finds substance and meaning in the (extraordinarily popular) Sherlock Holmes stories, refutes this view:
The irresistibility of the Holmesian canon is likewise sometimes used to detract from or disparage the talent necessary to have created it. But if the elaboration of an entire fictional world, both realistic and fantastical, capable of being mined by intelligent people for scores of years for layers of meaning, giving innocent pleasure to millions of readers from the very first acquaintance, endlessly rereadable, and timelessly appealing in all quarters of the globe, is not a sign of literary genius, it is difficult to know what would count as such.