The Great Boer War

The Great Boer War is Arthur Conan Doyle's authentic and thorough account of the conflict which gripped turn-of-the-century Britain. When the Boer War broke out in South Africa in 1899 Conan Doyle 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 Conan Doyle 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 The Great Boer War 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.