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Arthur is, or rather becomes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories and "Lost World" and tales of medieval chivalry like "The White Company" and "Sir Nigel". The name "Arthur" also implies King Arthur, with an arthurian sense of what is right and proper and noble, and an urge to go on quests for what he believes is right and just.
George, the son of a traditional English clergyman, is as British and proud to be British as the butler in "Remains of the Day". And only graduallly do we learn that his father was born a Parsee, in India, and that some of their neighbors (in the countryside near Birmingham) look askance at George and consider him a foreigner because of the color of his skin. Still later we learn that his self-contained standoffishness is not just cultuiral -- an aspect of his Britishness -- that he has extremely poor (nearly legally blind) eyesight (astigmatic myopia).
Described separately, neither of these men is anyone I would ever want to meet or converse with, much less have as a friend. But presented as Julian Barnes presents them, they are fascinating, wonderful people who I feel I have known for their entire lieves, and who I would wish to continue to know even after they had died (should Doyle's belief in the afterlife prove true).
I found myself weeping on the final pages -- which no other book has moved me to since "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Exodus", "Dr. Zhivago", and "Gone with the Wind", all of which I read when I was a teenager (far too long ago). And I was moved not because of maudlin melodrama, but because of the common lot of all of us mortals, and the hope that there could be something more.
The strangest part of the story is that it is true -- that two such men did live and that the events portrayed did take place very much as described, even though the way Barnes tells the tale it feels so much more real than real life.
By the way, it's also a mystery story...
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