Lord John Roxton

Lord John Roxton is a supporting character in the Professor Challenger series of books by Arthur Conan Doyle. He makes his first appearance in the first of this series, "The Lost World", when he is a member of the expedition to the eponymous land of the title, and is a prominent character in the subsequent novels as well. The narrator of "The Lost World", Edward D. Malone, describes him as being tall and thin, with peculiarly rounded shoulders, skin which is "a rich flower-pot red from sun and wind" and cool, masterful blue eyes. Malone compares him to Don Quixote and Napoleon III as well as to the quintessential English sporting gentleman. Roxton greets the prospect of visiting the Lost World with delight, largely because of the prospect of bringing home a dinosaur as a hunting trophy:

Roxton has travelled the world, as a hunter in addition to his pursuits as an explorer in the main bodies of the novels. Being an enemy of slavery, he made enemies in Brazil in his campaign against that institution, a fact which comes into play over the course of the plot of "The Lost World".

The titular "lost world" is located on a remote South American plateau, accessed by using a felled tree as a bridge across a vast sheer drop. When Lord John Roxton and the other members of his expedition use this makeshift bridge to enter the Lost World, Roxton is the only one who takes the easy but dangerous option of "walking" across it; all the others straddle the tree and carefully inch their way across. The character was based on Doyle's friend & British Consul/Irish patriot Roger Casement.