WHO AMONG US DOESN'T THINK IT FOLLY?:

REVIEW: of An Act of Courage by Allan Mallinson (PETER MILLAR, Times of London)

Two groups of people in particular, both regarding themselves as democratically disenfranchised, will find Allan Mallinson’s book irresistible: foxhunters and those who lament the Government’s iconoclastic abolition of our oldest regiments.

In his preface — in which he knowingly cites the conflict in modern Iraq as proof of the old maxim that you can never have enough infantry — Mallinson makes clear he believes that tinkering for its own sake has always been folly.

What is most impressive is how much the author — a former commander of a cavalry regiment in an era when horses had long since been abandoned for all but ceremonial purposes — conveys about the age when they were prime strategic weaponry.

In those circumstances foxhunting was the equivalent of the continuing obligation of Swiss mountain dwellers to undertake regular rifle practice. In the thick of battle one of his commanders says to our hero, Matthew Hervey, then still a young cornet of dragoons: “Believe me Hervey, these French marshals will show us more foxery than you’d see in a dozen seasons in Leicestershire.”

It is this ability to enter his protagonists’ mindset that gives Mallinson’s narratives their authenticity, reflected also in his use of Georgian phrasing and linguistic style.

Folks who miss Aubrey and Maturin ought to meet Mattew Hervey.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 4, 2005 6:43 AM