The Hand-Reared Boy

Readers of the Hand-Reared Boy will have no difficulty in remembering its hero, Horatio Stubbs. The time is now early 1940s, and Horatio is soldiering in The Royal Mendip Borderers. In due course his regiment is dispatched overseas to India to become part of the unforgettable forgotten army. The genteel skirmishes for women in the United Kingdom intensify into a desperate running battle to cope with the urgencies of randiness. Eventually the regiment is posted to the Burmese Front and plunged into the Battle of Kohima in the mountains of Assam. During the campaigns against the Japanese, the troops partake in various riotous sexual escapades with whores, ponces and gobble-wallahs. The author shows us, through the eyes of Horatio and his friends, the far-off days of the forties exactly as they were - heroic, bawdy, or downright bloody unspeakable.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"A very funny and a very decent book...unless laughter is corrupting, it's not going to corrupt anyone." - Robert Nye