The Great Boer War

When the Boer War broke out in South Africa in 1899, Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was already a hugely successful, middle-aged writer. Nevertheless, he was determined to see the war at first hand. Unable to secure a place as a regular soldier, he fell back on his medical training and was accepted by the British army as a doctor in a field hospital. Based in part on the first-hand accounts he received from wounded soldiers, the author constructed a history of the war which he first published in 1900 and continued to edit and re-publish until the war ended in 1902. Documenting both the military campaign and the political background to the conflict, this volume is fascinating both as a piece of history and as a glimpse into another facet of the author most commonly known for his mystery stories.