Cumberbatch (right) as Holmes attends the wedding of Watson, played by Martin Freeman, in an episode of Sherlock Benedict Cumberbatch with Sophie Hunter at the French Open in June 2014

London, Nov. 5: Sherlock Holmes is to marry, it was announced today.

Before shocked Indian fans of the great detective fall off their bed, perhaps one should make it clear that the one getting married is Benedict Cumberbatch, the latest of the many actors to have portrayed Holmes on the screen.

In a little advertisement in the matrimonial columns of The Times, the engagement was announced today of the 38-year-old actor and Sophie Hunter, 36, an Oxford educated theatre director.

The announcement was typically low key and English. It read: “Mr B.T. Cumberbatch and Miss S.I. Hunter: ‘The engagement is announced between Benedict, son of Wanda and Timothy Cumberbatch of London, and Sophie, daughter of Katharine Hunter of Edinburgh and Charles Hunter of London.’”

By making the advertsiement as ostentatiously unobtrusive as possible, Cumberbatch has ensured this is the biggest romance story since the Hollywood star George Clooney married lawyer Amal Alamuddin.

In the league table of British actors, Cumberbatch is currently just about the hottest property after his starring role in the very loose television adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s canon in Sherlock, with his faithful companion played by Martin Freeman.

For those who have not seen the series, the adaptation is set in modern times with Holmes quite often looking things up on his iPhone, rather than asking Watson to reach for the volume marked W.

There are those directors who have tried to spoil the Doyle stories by suggesting that Holmes and Watson were a couple of gay men shacked up at 221B Baker Street.

In A Scandal in Bohemia, Holmes takes an interest in Irene Adler but only because she proves his intellectual equal.

Before getting on to today’s news about Cumberbatch, it is worth recalling the start to the story:

“To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.

“It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind.

“He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer — excellent for drawing the veil from men’s motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results.

“Grit in a sensitive instrument, or a crack in one of his own high-power lenses, would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his. And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.”

The tale ends thus:

“What a woman — oh, what a woman!” cried the King of Bohemia, when we had all three read this epistle. “Did I not tell you how quick and resolute she was? Would she not have made an admirable queen? Is it not a pity that she was not on my level?”

“From what I have seen of the lady she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty,” said Holmes coldly.

Cumberbatch has had several serious relationships in the past — one paper even ungallantly listed them with dates.

They have included Olivia Poulet (2001 to March 2011), whom he met when both were at Manchester University; Anna Jones (September 2012 to January 2013), a fashion designer; Katia Elizarova (July 2013), a blonde “Russian model”; Liv Tyler (Summer 2013), a “Hollywood stunner”; and Alice Eve, (Summer 2013), his co-star.

Cumberbatch was spotted with his now fiancé Sophie Hunter at the French Open in June but they first met when starring opposite each other in the film, Burlesque Fairytales, in 2009.

His career is going through a golden phase. He plays British code breaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.

Sophie, who read modern languages at Oxford, has directed a number of experimental and avant garde productions including a puppet version of Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition which toured the US.

She has acted in TV shows such as the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood and an episode of Midsomer Murders, as well as the 2004 Mira Nair-directed film version of Vanity Fair, starring Reese Witherspoon.

Her stage productions as a director have also included the Britten opera The Rape of Lucretia.

She has also had a music career of her own, recording a French language album with Robbie Williams’s collaborator Guy Chambers in 2005 called The Isis Project, after they met through a mutual friend.

Sophie’s parents divorced when she was a child but she is close to her mother, who lives in Edinburgh.

It is reported that Cumberbatch was old fashioned enough to fly to Scotland to seek her daughter’s hand.

Tabloid reporters have suggested that Cumberbatch’s exit from the marriage market will prove upsetting for his female fans, who have been collectively dubbed “Cumberbitches”.