LITMIR.BIZ

       INTRODUCTION

      INTRODUCTIONS, like prologues, are often best skipped. They are not, after all, what you have bought the book for and few good stories really need an explanation.

      And yet, readers of this volume may welcome a short account of Philip MacDonald and his work, if only because after his death in 1980 his books quickly slipped from public view and information on him can be surprisingly difficult to find and sometimes contradictory. Even the year of MacDonald’s birth has for some reason become veiled in mystery. 1896, 1899, 1900 and 1901 are all quoted by reliable sources.

      The question of his birth can be quickly cleared up. Census records show that he was born on 5 November 1900 into a family that was very much part of the British literary establishment. His grandfather was the Scottish novelist and poet, George MacDonald, whose pioneering fantasy writing influenced many other writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and indeed G.K. Chesterton. His father was the playwright and novelist Ronald MacDonald and his mother the actress Constance Robertson. At the time of his birth the family was living (with one servant) at 9 Rossetti Mansions, Chelsea. Later they moved (gaining an additional servant on the way) to 25 St Margaret’s Road, Twickenham, from where MacDonald attended St Paul’s School. During the First World War, he served in Mesopotamia, though again details are hard to come by. His publisher after the war claimed he had served as a trooper in a ‘famous cavalry regiment’ but never thought to say which one and, to the best of my knowledge, nobody has subsequently identified it for certain. (It may have been the Machine Gun Corps Cavalry.) Whichever regiment it was, and whatever action he saw, MacDonald made good use of his experience in one of his earliest novels, Patrol (1927), in which a cavalry troop finds itself lost in the desert. It is told very much from the point of view of the ordinary soldier—the only officer is already dead at the start of the tale, having failed to impart to his second-in-command their current location or the object of the mission. Only the bravery and common sense of the troopers can see them through to possible safety—it is apparent where in the military hierarchy MacDonald’s sympathies lay.

      His

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