Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION
Practice
Profession
2. SPORT
Sport and the nation
The straight left
A nation of amateurs
3. MEDICINE
The statement of the case
The consultants
In general practice
The cold detective
4 SCIENCE
The curious adventure in Berlin
Monsters and committees
Thinking like a scientist
5 LAW AND ORDER
Crimes and punishments
Edalji's eyes
6 ARMY AND EMPIRE
Soldier boys
Army
Empire
7 SPIRIT
Church
Spiritualism
Fairies
The new life

About the Author

Douglas Kerr was born in Scotland, educated at Cambridge and Warwick universities, and is a Professor of English at the University of Hong Kong, where he has taught since 1979. He is the author of Wilfred Owen's Voices, George Orwell, and Eastern Figures: Orient and Empire in British Writing. He first encountered Arthur Conan Doyle at the age of eleven and has been reading him ever since.

Reviews

`It is one of the great achievements of Douglas Kerr's fine book that it reconciles the contradiction between Conan Doyles commitment to scientific thinking and his credulity over the Cottingley case. And this paradox is only one of many that Kerr exposes and addresses. Conan Doyle: Writing,Profession and Practice is thoroughly researched but wears its learning lightly; it is satisfyingly substantial but winningly elegant at the level of the sentence: it is
a joy and an education to read.'
Michael D. Hurley, The Cambridge Quarterly
`finely nuanced ... a complex study of a writer whose legacy remains striking and memorable, but never simple.'
Christopher Metress, English Literature in Translation