It is strange to me Jock Calder of West Inch to feel that though now in the very centre of the nineteenth century I am but five-and-fifty years of age and though it is only once in a week perhaps that my wife can pluck out a little grey bristle from over my ear yet I have lived in a time when the thoughts and the ways of men were as different as though it were another planet from this.

The Great Shadow, also known as The Great Shadow and other Napoleonic Tales, is an action and adventure novel written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The novel takes place in the Napoleonic era on the English-Scottish border city called West Inch. The Great Shadow refers to the Napoleon's influence and his reputation that forms a shadow over West Inch.