Blood Royal (1929) by Dornford Yates

Book review by George Simmers: This is the third of Dornford Yates’s ‘Chandos’ novels, and the first not to feature Jonah Mansel. Mansel had followed the Bulldog Drummond pattern for a twenties action hero – he was an ex-soldier sorting out peacetime problems by bringing into play the attitudes and skills learned in war. In … Continue reading →

The Amazing Summer (1941) by Philip Gibbs

Review by Sylvia D: Philip Gibbs’ The Amazing Summer (1941) is a good example of his journalistic novel-writing, set as it is against a backdrop of the hot and sunny summer of 1940, the Battle of Britain and the early months of the Blitz. It has resonances with Elizabeth Goudge’s The Castle on the Hill … Continue reading →

Turning Wheels (1937) by Stuart Cloete

Book Review by Sylvia D. Between 1835 and the early 1840s some twelve to fourteen thousand Boers (Dutch/Afrikaans for “farmers”) who were descended from settlers who had come from western Europe (mainly from the Netherlands and north-west Germany and Huguenots from France) to settle in Cape Colony, migrated eastward and north-eastward – the Great Trek. … Continue reading →

Lieutenant Hornblower (1952) by C.S. Forester

Book review by Sylvia D. Lieutenant Hornblower was published by Michael Joseph in 1952 but I read the 1957 Great Pan paperback edition which has a very dramatic front cover. The film, Captain Horatio Hornblower, starring Gregory Peck, came out in 1951. Lieutenant Hornblower is one of the later novels which fills in the story … Continue reading →

Juan in China by Eric Linklater (1937)

This Linklater novel is a sequel to his first big success, Juan in America (1931). Review by Helen C: Our young hero, Juan, has been persuaded to accompany his beloved Kuo Kuo to China, as she is determined to rescue China from destruction by ‘bandits, Communists, opium and the Japanese…’ There, he becomes involved in a … Continue reading →

White Fang by Jack London (1907)

Review by Helen N This was quite a hard read for me. If it is not inappropriate to talk about gender-specific books, this is very much a man’s book. Particularly at the time it was written it would have been written for a masculine audience, who would have had experience of hunting and working with … Continue reading →

A Son of the Sun by Jack London (1912)

Review by Sylvia D A Son of the Sun is a collection of short stories, all of which originally ran in the Saturday Evening Post in 1911 and all of which feature the adventures of Captain David Grief, a self-made fleet and plantation owner plying his trade in the South Pacific. Grief owns a number … Continue reading →

Once Upon a Time: An Adventure by Vaughan Wilkins (1949)

Review by George Simmers (see his Great War Fiction blog here). Once Upon a Time is an entertaining romp. It begins with a prelude set in 1901. After Victoria’s death, the new King, Edward VII, enters his father’s study, which the Queen had left preserved exactly as it was on Albert’s death forty years before. … Continue reading →

Vaughan Wilkins (1890-1959)

At our latest reading group we discussed William Vaughan Wilkins (1890-1959), a writer of popular historial romances and adventure stories, and a journalist. We have 14 Wilkins novels in the collection, thanks to a donation by reading group member Jane Varley. (See our holdings here.) I missed the meeting because I was ill, and was … Continue reading →

Prester John by John Buchan (1910)

Review by Mary P: As a boy the hero and narrator of the novel, David Crawfurd, sees a black man, the Reverend John Laputa, preach at his local kirk. When later David goes to South Africa to take up work as an  storekeeper he meets this same preacher on the boat, as well as a … Continue reading →