In March 1900, 40-year-old Conan Doyle left England by boat. for South Africa. Destination: the town of Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State, one of the two Boer republics – the other being the Transvaal – which had entered the war against England. For several months, the famous creator of Sherlock Homeswho had not practiced medicine for seven years, went to a military hospital to treat British soldiers who had been wounded or suffering from dysentery. Back home, he recounts a war he would have liked to have fought as a soldier, but was deemed too inexperienced to fight.

The Great Boer War, published before the end of the war, which lasted thirty months, does not pretend to be a detached account. It is the committed book of a man who, in a sometimes epic mode, takes up the cause of his country in a conflict that heralds the great carnage of the following century. “Take a community of Dutch people like those who have defended themselves for 50 years…