Conn Iggulden and Hal Iggulden
THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS
294pp. HarperCollins. £18.99.
0 00 723274 8
The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden is the latest in what seems to be a publishing trend (Julian Barnes’s Arthur and George being the another recent example) that exploits a nostalgic sentiment for the days when books looked like books. Cloth-bound, gold embossed, reassuringly heavy, it mercilessly tugs at the heartstrings of anyone old enough to have ever read a Boy’s Own annual. The authors lament, in their introduction, that they did not have this book when they were young (not surprising since one of them was born in 1972 – the Boy’s Own paper stopped publication in 1967), and have produced the present volume in order to preserve a part of their culture they “really don’t want to see vanish”. They seem to be entirely serious in their quest, and with only traces of irony they have compiled a book that is packed with articles on such atavistic topics as conker fights and the manufacture of water bombs, invisible ink and the rules of cricket, as well as restoring to prominence some of the pricklier tales from British history – the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, the life of Douglas Bader and the story of the British Empire (the longest chapter in the book). Even the staunchest anti-imperialist will need a heart of stone not to be moved by the story of Scott’s last expedition, or the fact that British schoolboys have been deprived of its tragic power for so long.
The Iggulden brothers (the older, Conn, writes historical novels set in ancient Rome), are clearly taking a stand against what is perceived as the politically correct anxieties about patriotism and Britain’s colonial past, just as they are keen to revive unfashionable elements of education (the memorizing of rhymed poems, an emphasis on grammar, the learning of Latin). Although the Boys’ Own paper was founded by the Religious Tract Society, the Igguldens give only one page to religion, where they reproduce the Ten Commandments in full as they appear in Exodus chapter 20 (King James Version, of course). There is an entertainingly self-conscious moral undertone to the book, however. In a chapter on grammar, the sentence “You are responsible for your actions” is given as an example of the second person form of the verb “To be”, while “By The Lord Harry!” is given as an example of an interjection. And an endearing revival of a naive sexism is achieved in the chapter on “Girls”: “If you see a girl in need of help – unable to lift something, for example – do not taunt her”.
But for the most part the seriousness of the Igguldens prevails – or is it that they are simply trying to emulate the straight prose of their past role models? The chapter on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is exactly that, with plain facts illustrated by the wonders themselves on old cigarette cards. (But the Colossus of Rhodes as the most famous ancient wonder? Surely the Pyramids are better known?) The instructions for making paper planes were new to me and didn’t fly quite as true as my own version, but at least I now have several different designs to compare. I am also keen to try out the marbling instructions, and now know the difference between a code and a cipher (Morse code is, in fact, a cipher, while “the Big Cheese has landed at happy” is code for “De Gaulle has landed at Heathrow Airport”). Sometimes the authors come unstuck by avoiding the modern world so thoroughly. They acknowledge, in their instructions for making a go-kart, that the task is made almost impossible by the disappearance of the traditional pram, which once was the primary source for go-kart wheels. Today’s go-kart makers have to visit scrapyards and junk shops. Likewise their instructions for making a battery require copious amounts of blotting paper, now as rare as pram wheels thanks to modern writing methods.
The stories from history are well told, readable for almost any age (from eight to eighty, as it says on the cover), and do at least attempt to set the stories in a wider context, so that we are told (with inevitable simplification) why the British were fighting the Zulus at Rorke’s Drift (for control of lands rich with diamonds, gold and timber), and even why William the Conqueror invaded in 1066 (he had probably been made heir to the English throne by Edward the Confessor, and may have seen his landing as an attempt to protect his rightful title). Widening the context even further, they suggest that the outcome of the Second World War was determined by Nelson’s Victory in the Battle of the Nile. Most of these accounts go into great but manageable detail, although the story of the Battle of the Somme seemed curiously curtailed, ending on the first morning with its 20,000 dead. Like all the best storytelling it is the incidental details that stay in the mind longest. When Julius Caesar landed in 55bc the ancient Britons fought with the aid of dogs, making the English Mastiff the oldest recorded breed. Incidental facts are, indeed, one of the main pleasures of this book. The adult reader who may think he (and, for this book it seems it must be “he”) knows about the Charge of the Light Brigade, is unlikely to know that Alum Powder is good both for making crystals and as an underarm deodorant. You can also use it to tan hides and fireproof tablecloths. Would he also know that the first message issued in Morse Code was “What Hath God Wrought?”, or that the distress call Mayday is a corruption of m’aidez? Literature and the arts are barely mentioned. There is an uninspired survey of Shakespeare quotes that have passed into the language to the extent that “we hardly ever recognize them as Shakespearean” (“a plague on both your houses”, etc), and a chapter called “Five Poems Every Boy Should Know”. If you have entered into the spirit of this book, these poems will come as no surprise – “If”, “Ozymandias”, “Sea Fever”, although it was a joy to reread Henry Newboldt’s “Vitae Lampada” (“There’s a breathless hush in the close tonight”), a poem whose modern counterpart is Rolf Harris’s “Two Little Boys”, though only one of these could possibly inspire someone in the midst of battle.
The most striking difference between The Dangerous Book for Boys and the pre-war comic annuals it emulates, is in its relationship with science and technology. Boys’ comics of the past usually revelled in the wonders of the modern age as they unfolded around them, there would have been articles on The Land Speed Record, or The Mallard, or prognostications on the possibilities of space travel. This is another instance in which the authors have let their sense of nostalgia get the better of them. What fun there could have been had in a boy’s guide to nuclear power, for instance, or the possibilities of human cloning. The Space Shuttle (“The most complicated machine ever built”) does get a grudging mention on very nearly the last page, in a chapter called Seven Modern Wonders of the World. (Incidentally, surely it is stretching the definition of the word “modern” to include the Great Wall of China here, built more than 2,000 years ago.)
There are a few minor lapses and inaccuracies. In the list of monarchs we get Richard I, Richard II but Richard III is only Richard. The chapter on paper planes contains diagrams of three types of plane but descriptions of only two. These are only minor complaints about a book that delights both for its defiant championing of unfashionable sentiments, and for its enthusiastic preservation of narratives and areas of knowledge perilously close to extinction. In a book that revels in the peculiarities of the English character, my favourite section was on the phonetic alphabet. Before the standard version was established (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, etc) the RAF had its own version, which was thought to be more suitable for the British accent. This seems to encapsulate the aims of The Dangerous Book for Boys itself, preserving in twenty-six words a whole chapter of English social history – Ace, Beer, Charlie, Don, Edward, Freddie, George, Harry, Ink, Johnnie, King, London, Monkey, Nuts, Orange, Pip, Queen, Robert, Sugar, Toc, Uncle, Vic, William, X-ray, Yorker, Zebra.
