That Secret History of a Nation

‘The Bruce-Partington Plans’, in which the design of a new and devastating type of submarine is stolen from Woolwich Arsenal and sold to a foreign spy, came at an ominous moment in British history. When it was first published in the December 1908 issue of the Strand Magazine, the war that would consume Conan Doyle’s attention – and several members of his family – was still more than five years away. But Germany had already become Britain’s principal geopolitical adversary: Britain entered strategic ententes with France (1904) and Russia (1907), alliances which would endure into – and help precipitate – the First World War; a naval arms race, centred on Dreadnought-class battleships but including the new, disruptive technologies of submarines and torpedoes, was in full swing; and Germany was widely believed to be conducting espionage in Britain on an unprecedented scale.