Hervey goes well Down Under...
Tony Abbott, leader of the Opposition in Australia, said he would "spend his Christmas break with his head buried in military fiction" - on the Hervey novels, he told The Australian: "they are seriously great yarns full of traditional military victory, heroism and achievement."
ON His MAJESTY’S SERVICE
"A fascinating, lively romp..."
says The Times (Books, 4 June).
Allan's eleventh Matthew Hervey novel, On His Majesty's Service, set in the Eastern Balkans, was published on 9 June 2011:
January 1829: George IV is on the throne, Wellington is England’s prime-minister, and snow is falling thickly on the London streets as Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey is summoned to the Horse Guards in the expectation of command of his regiment, the 6th Light Dragoons.
But the benefits of long-term peace at home mean cuts in the army, and Hervey is told that the Sixth are to be reduced to a single squadron. With his long-term plans in disarray, he undertakes instead a six-month assignment as an observer with the Russian army, an undertaking at the personal request of the commander-in-chief, Lord Hill.
Soon Hervey, his friend Edward Fairbrother and his faithful groom, Private Johnson, are sailing north to St Petersburg, and from there on to the Eastern Balkans, seat of the ferocious war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Hervey is meant to be an impartial spectator in the campaign, but soon the circumstances - and his own nature - propel him into a more active role. In the climactic Battle of Kulewtscha, in which more troops were engaged than in any battle since Waterloo, Hervey and Fairbrother find themselves in the thick of the action.
For Hervey, the stakes have never been higher - or more personal.
Order your copy here... >
This is what Allan Massie, that considerable novelist, journalist and all-round man of letters, writes of On His Majesty's Service in The Spectator:
"What is left to be said about Allan Mallinson? Only this perhaps: he has done for the British army what C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian did for the royal navy, and his novels are every bit as addictive as theirs — indeed more addictive for those of us who prefer land to sea war, and find the details of military life more compelling than those of life on board ship."
Read the review in full.
2012 Events
Full details announced soon.
Allan Mallinson commends you to look at the website for the Light Dragoons' appeal fund. The regiment was in the thick of the action in Afghanistan in 2009 during Operation Panther's Claw, and sustained many casualties.
You can read about the background to Panther's Claw in Allan's article in the Daily Telegraph at the time of the operation.
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