FICTION AND HISTORY
COLONEL OF DRAGOONS, by Phillip Woodruff; Jonathan Cape. Enélish price, 12/6. EADERS who like their literature classified may well shake their finicky heads over this book. Mr. Woudruff himself is not quite sure whether he has written a novel or a fictional biography. Actually what he has done is to substitute a fictitious for a real regiment of dragoons, and tell its story in the historicai setting of Peterborough’s Spanish campaign of 1705-6. The experiment has its disadvantages. Colonel Awbyn, the hero, is used as a medium for comment on the situation; his concern for his men’s welfare admits of more than one dissertation on the details of contemporary regimental economy-a _ subject on which Mr. Woodruff is an expert. But Awbyn is a dim figure who never really comés alive. In fact, he is not the hero. at all. That role is filled by Lord Peterborough, a brilliant amateur general who constantly outwitted his adversaries by extreme audacity combined with a craftiness that would have roused the envy of Ulysses, Based on authentic. ‘sources, the tale of his astounding exploits is told with admirable. simplicity-admirable because the facts are such as to. require no embroidery. Mr. Woodruff is at his best when least imaginative. If fiction has failed him, history has come to his rescue.
R. M.
Burdon
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 658, 15 February 1952, Page 13
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221FICTION AND HISTORY New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 658, 15 February 1952, Page 13
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