Sherlock Holmes plays the white man

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s many passions included a view of Empire that would today be regarded as racist

Jeremy Black

I saw the smoke banks on that October evening swirl slowly up over the Atlantic swell, and rise, and rise, until they had shredded into thinnest air, and lost themselves in the infinite blue of heaven. And with them rose the cloud which had hung over the country; and it also thinned and thinned, until God’s own sun of peace and security was shining once more upon us, never more, we hope, to be bedimmed. — Last sentences of Doyle’s novel Rodney Stone (1896), referring to the battle of Trafalgar of 1805 A MAN OF GREAT VARIETY and wide-ranging interests, from cricket to Divorce Law reform, football to Spiritualism, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859-1930) reflected the openness of Victorian and Edwardian society to talent. In 1900 he stood for Parliament for the first…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2021

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