NO DULL MOMENTS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 809, 28 January 1955, Page 11

NO DULL MOMENTS

TRAMP ROYAL, by Sir Michael Bruce, of Stenhouse and Airth; Elek, New Zealand price 16/-. HERE is supposed to be a 200-year-old curse on the Bruce family because one of Sir Michael’s ancestors, another Sir Michael, used the stones from an old relic to build a dam. The author, the 11th Baronet. has certainly had more than his share of bad luck. I lost count of the number of times he had been wounded or shot at, shot down in aircraft, injured in motor accidents or in fights, thrown from horses, torpedoed or sunk at sea. He was once trampled by a herd of 800 cattle, and he has also been married three times. None of this discouraged him: he was a born soldier, a man to whom war and battles are

"fun"; he was never happier than when in actior and in peace he was always quick and capable with his fists, The easiest way to classify this story of his adventures is as "a good yarn," interesting, at times exciting, but nothing in it very deep or thoughtful. But sometimes he does give the reader a sense of participation in his adventures, notably in his account of a treasure-hunting expedition in the Amazon, of which he and an Indian guide were the only survivors. To a New Zealander he may seem something of a Jingo, a Kipling man, as the title of his book shows. He ends his story, characteristically, with his family tree from 721 A.D., the accuracy of which is discredited when it is found that the dates of two important events in his own biography and the maiden name of his first wife differ from the

details given in the text.

W.A.

G.