How Africa Made Arthur Conan Doyle a Sir

How the Second Boer War turned Arthur Conan Doyle from physician-author into a knighted propagandist — and how that experience shaped Sherlock Holmes . African History meets British Literature. The Knight and the Campaign: How Africa Made Arthur Conan Doyle a Sir The overlooked story of a literary genius , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, who became a propaganda writer and wartime spokesman for the British Empire after the Second Boer War . Most readers meet Arthur Conan Doyle through Sherlock Holmes’s cool logic. Fewer realize that Africa shaped both the detective’s creator and the knight he became. As a young ship’s doctor on the West African coast, Doyle honed the powers of observation that later animated Sherlock Holmes. Two decades later, the Second Boer War in South Africa transformed him into a defender of the empire, earning him a knighthood and leaving imperial fingerprints across his work. From Doctor to Volunte...