A society of murderers run on sound conservative lines

the life and times of Sapper's Bulldog Drummond

Hans Bertens

pp. 51-68

in: Clive Bloom (ed), Twentieth-century suspense, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1990

Abstrakt

When (ex-)Lieutenant-Colonel Cyril Herman McNeile died, at the age of forty-eight, 1937, he had for more than twenty years been one of Britain's most popular authors. McNeile, a professional soldier who had been commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1907, started writing brisk and affectionate stories that featured simple, but plucky and resourceful, Tommies almost immediately after reaching France with the British Expeditionary Force in 1914. His stance of affectionate toughness suggested to the home front the cool dedication it expected of its military representatives abroad, and "Sapper" (the pseudonym was created by Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail) quickly rose to fame. His first collection, Sergeant Michael Cassidy, RE, was published in June 1915 and sold very well indeed (50,000 copies in the first nine months).¹