Patrick Skene-Catling

Homage to arms

Coward on the Beach<br /> by James Delingpole

Coward on the Beach
by James Delingpole

If you are not the right age to have enjoyed the thrills of serving in uniform in a really dangerous military campaign, the next best thing is to imagine one and write about it. That is what James Delingpole has done, very well indeed. His assiduous research, in the field, in the Imperial War Museum and elsewhere, his uncanny empathy with the officers and men of the 47th Royal Marine Commando, and his prose style, vigorous, witty and elegant, have produced a novel about the D-Day invasion of Normandy that’s a welcome corrective to the Spielberg–Hanks version and promises a lot more excitement to come. This novel is only Volume One of a projected ten-volume saga, which may well deserve the title A Dance to the Music of War.

Delingpole says he wishes he could ‘go back in time to win a DSO commanding a battalion on D-Day’. Coward on the Beach is a splendid elaboration of that Walter Mitty fantasy. The author’s fictional alter ego is Dick Coward (a distant relation of Noël), an accidental hero of mythic stature, who somehow becomes involved in many of the most hazardous, crucial actions of the second world war. Dick reminisces long after the events, in tapes transcribed by a grandson. The reader is thus comfortingly assured that the hero survives all his wartime ordeals.

Dick’s father, General Ajax Coward, who lost a leg and won a VC at Passchendaele, has announced that he will bequeath the ancient family estate, 3,000 acres in Herefordshire (motto: Semper Audax), to whichever son has the ‘best war’. The eldest son went down with the Hood. By the summer of 1944, the vain youngest son is already a major with an MC and bar.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in