Allan Mallinson
Auteur van A Close Run Thing
Over de Auteur
Allan Mallinson is a brigadier general in the British army and is currently military attache in Rome. (Bowker Author Biography)
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Werken van Allan Mallinson
1914: Fight The Good Fight: Britain, the Army & the Coming of the First World War (1686) 44 exemplaren
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Officiële naam
- Mallinson, Allan Lawrence
- Geboortedatum
- c. 1945
- Geslacht
- male
- Nationaliteit
- UK
- Woonplaatsen
- Wiltshire, England, UK
- Opleiding
- St Chad's College, Durham, UK
- Beroepen
- cavalry officer
military attache - Korte biografie
- Allan Mallinson is a former Cavalry Officer and the author of the Matthew Hervey series. He is a British national and is also a correspondent for several British newspapers in the area of Defence.
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The Shape of Battle
Really well-written and informative, though (even as the author states multiple times why it's missing) I miss an overarching theme more than anything. It's been a good read, but it leaves me with a bit of an empty feeling.
½
This is the last Hervey book I have read and it did not inspire me to get another. While initially the book starts out well even among regimental and quasi-political based issues in England the subsequent part dealing with South Africa is disappointing. I found this part of the book very slow especially as there was little or no battle conflict. I expected much more of this with native tribes and think the likes of Cornwell would have delivered more in an uptempo fashion.
My first Mallinson book and the title coming from Wellington's phrase. Mallinson here depicts Waterloo from the viewpoint of the Cavalry Officer. I prefer the Infrantry myself being accustomed to Sharpe. However, I do see this as readable. There is padding to get through before you reach Waterloo.
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3296662.html
One of the 28th is a standalone novel, whereas A Close Run Thing, published in in 1999, is the first in a series of thirteen (so far) chronicling the adventures of Matthew Hervey, the latest of which came out last year. I would be astonished if Mallinson had not read Henty before starting to write. There are some clear similarities between the books - both the protagonists are from middle-class family backgrounds (Hervey's father is a vicar, so is Ralph's prospective father-in-law), struggling to rise in the officer caste of the army; both protagonists fall in love and get married at the end of the book (sorry for spoilers); both novels feature questions of inheritance; and in both, the protagonist and his comrades are sent to Ireland - indeed, both to Cork - to keep order during the interval between Napoleon's exile to Elba and the Hundred Days.
But the take of the two books on Ireland is very different. By superior intellect and judgement, Ralph Conway of the 28th manages to capture a Galway ruffian and liberate the locals from the tyranny of untaxed liquor distillation, er, well. Hervey on the other hand gets into trouble for defending the local peasants against eviction, having got himself sensitised to the Irish situation by reading Maria Edgeworth. I don't find either scenario particularly believable, but I do find it interesting that both authors felt they needed to invoke Ireland in some detail to set the scene for the later phases.
A Close Run Thing is more consciously a Bildungsroman (in fairness, Henty's characters are so two-dimensional that it is unfair to expect character development from them). Hervey is constantly getting into trouble, mainly for doing the right thing and therefore annoying the wrong superior officers, and a lot of the book involves those disentanglements as well as developing his relationship with his girlfriend. (There's also a surprising amount of theology.) Mallinson here is following in the footsteps of Cornwell/Sharpe and O'Brien/Maturin.
When it comes to the actual Battle of Waterloo, both have pretty detailed accounts of the fighting, drawn from the usual sources. Mallinson goes into it in more depth, but wears it a bit better because he has been giving us military detail all through the book (especially about horses). He also puts Hervey, who conveniently speaks German, into a crucial role in liaison between the Prussians and Wellington. Henty's detailed account of the battle is a jarring deviation from the tight-third of most of the book, especially since Ralph himself is more at the worm's eye than bird's eye point of view, rather like Stendhal's protagonist in The Charterhouse of Parma.
Hervey gets through unscathed, though dearly beloved comrades are killed in front of him.… (meer)
One of the 28th is a standalone novel, whereas A Close Run Thing, published in in 1999, is the first in a series of thirteen (so far) chronicling the adventures of Matthew Hervey, the latest of which came out last year. I would be astonished if Mallinson had not read Henty before starting to write. There are some clear similarities between the books - both the protagonists are from middle-class family backgrounds (Hervey's father is a vicar, so is Ralph's prospective father-in-law), struggling to rise in the officer caste of the army; both protagonists fall in love and get married at the end of the book (sorry for spoilers); both novels feature questions of inheritance; and in both, the protagonist and his comrades are sent to Ireland - indeed, both to Cork - to keep order during the interval between Napoleon's exile to Elba and the Hundred Days.
But the take of the two books on Ireland is very different. By superior intellect and judgement, Ralph Conway of the 28th manages to capture a Galway ruffian and liberate the locals from the tyranny of untaxed liquor distillation, er, well. Hervey on the other hand gets into trouble for defending the local peasants against eviction, having got himself sensitised to the Irish situation by reading Maria Edgeworth. I don't find either scenario particularly believable, but I do find it interesting that both authors felt they needed to invoke Ireland in some detail to set the scene for the later phases.
A Close Run Thing is more consciously a Bildungsroman (in fairness, Henty's characters are so two-dimensional that it is unfair to expect character development from them). Hervey is constantly getting into trouble, mainly for doing the right thing and therefore annoying the wrong superior officers, and a lot of the book involves those disentanglements as well as developing his relationship with his girlfriend. (There's also a surprising amount of theology.) Mallinson here is following in the footsteps of Cornwell/Sharpe and O'Brien/Maturin.
When it comes to the actual Battle of Waterloo, both have pretty detailed accounts of the fighting, drawn from the usual sources. Mallinson goes into it in more depth, but wears it a bit better because he has been giving us military detail all through the book (especially about horses). He also puts Hervey, who conveniently speaks German, into a crucial role in liaison between the Prussians and Wellington. Henty's detailed account of the battle is a jarring deviation from the tight-third of most of the book, especially since Ralph himself is more at the worm's eye than bird's eye point of view, rather like Stendhal's protagonist in The Charterhouse of Parma.
Hervey gets through unscathed, though dearly beloved comrades are killed in front of him.… (meer)
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- 1,696
- Populariteit
- #15,138
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- 3.5
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- 21
- ISBNs
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