Home > The Magazine > Features

Saturday 22 November 2008

Dare to dream and make your ultimate trip a reality

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests

Email registration

Free weekly email update

Great products and special offers for Spectator readers

Click here for great value events

Click here for exclusive articles, offers, tasting notes and discussion

Plumed hats, rapiers and heaving bosoms

Gerald Warner

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Gerald Warner celebrates the unexpected appearance of one last ‘swashbuckling novel’, and mourns the loss of a genre that taught boys honour, courage and chivalry

Today the sword-and-cape novel has again gone offshore: its leading exponent is the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte, creator of the Captain Alatriste series. Though well researched and atmospheric, the novels are disfigured by a self-conscious disowning of the attitudes of the 17th century in which they are set. Dumas would never have made such a mistake: he lived fully in whatever period he was chronicling.

Novels of the swashbuckling school provided an effortless education in manners and morals, ornamented with plumed hats, cup-hilted rapiers and heaving bosoms. Boys who had, in spirit, scaled ivy-clad walls with a sword clenched between their teeth, swum the moat of the castle of Zenda, stormed aboard a pirate galleon, or galloped to safety with a rescued heroine perched precariously on their saddle needed no further schooling in honour, courage and respect for women. These are not values inculcated by modern computer games. It may not make much difference, but the return of Alexandre Dumas to take one last bow is as welcome as it is unexpected.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

More articles from: Gerald Warner | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (2)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Jane Bodington

June 17th, 2008 11:16pm

Well, you've never played 'Monkey Island' have you? Or 'Broken Sword'. Quite a few computer games are full of swash and buckle, and the designers are well-read in the genre and historical context.

But I agree with your main point, about the dearth of historical novels that are true to their period but have a sense of adventure. (Not Sharpe? No sense of humour?).

Anyway Perez Reverte wrote his books as a response to 'Sharpe', offended his sense of national pride, and also because he loves the British Nautical yarns, Hornblower etc., and wanted to do something similar for the Spanish.

In my opinion you forgot 'The Children of the New Forest'by Marryat, 'Kim' by Kipling, Erskine Childers 'The Riddle of the Sands' and Buchan, 'Greenmantle'?

Brian E. Birdnow

July 26th, 2008 4:37am

I am an American writer of your magazine and was wondering why you did not place G. A. Henty in your pantheon of swashbuckling novelists. Henty may not have been a master literary stylist but he told a great tale and did so with verve and elan. His subjects were Scottish partisans, soldiers-of-fortune in seventeenth century Germany, and "cavaliers" fighting in the American Civil War. He was undoubtedly politically incorrect, but isn't the whole chivalric ideal politically incorrect today?

Thank goodness we can have a run on the pound when we need one

Martin Vander Weyer

Martin Vander Weyer looks ahead to next week’s Pre-Budget Report and reflects on George Osborne’s contentious remarks about the devaluation of sterling. It looks like Gordon Brown is getting away with his borrowing binge — leaving the Tories isolated

I loved Oliver Stone’s Bush film — and I know why the critics hated it

Rod Liddle

The movie W. did not provide the crude anti-Bush agitprop that the reviewers craved, says Rod Liddle. This was precisely its strength: we need to get inside the minds even of those we most deplore

The great Tory tax and spend battle: seconds out...

Fraser Nelson and Daniel Finkelstein

In the wake of Cameron’s decision to drop his pledge to match Labour spending, Fraser Nelson and Daniel Fin kelstein of the Times trade rhetorical blows over the issue that is gripping and troubling the Conservative party as it adjusts to the transformed economic context

Where is our inspiration when we most need it?

Bryan Forbes

Bryan Forbes remembers listening to Churchill as a 14-year-old evacuee and now looks with envy at Obama’s capacity to galvanise hope. Where are his UK counterparts?

For a bit of perspective, try thinking Jurassic

Christopher Lloyd

The first takeaways originated about 150 million years ago, says Christopher Lloyd; global travel is pretty ancient, too. And as for democracy...

Another Voice

Matthew Parris

I am woken by the song of the kookaburra in this ancient, haunting landscape

Great expectations dashed

James Buchan

Origins: A Memoir, by Amin Maalouf, translated by Catherine Temerson

And Another Thing

Paul Johnson

Eye-stopping glimpses of an exotic and forbidden world

Another Voice

Matthew Parris

There are no ‘good’ teachers: the teacher who is good for you may wreck another’s prospects

De Gaulle understood that only nations are real

Robin Harris

Few may celebrate the half-century since Charles de Gaulle’s triumphs of 1958, says Robin Harris, but this realist genius understood that, in geopolitics, the nation-state was all