The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (Annotated)

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. Conan was originally a given name, but Doyle used it as part of his surname in his later years. You do very well, my friends, to treat me with some little reverence, for in honoring me you are honoring both France and yourselves. It is not merely an old, grey-mustached officer whom you see eating his omelet or draining his glass, but it is a fragment of history. In me, you see one of the last of those wonderful men, the men who were veterans when they were yet boys, who learned to use a sword earlier than a razor.