H. C. McNeile
Herman Cyril McNeile (
1888 -
1937) was a British author, who published under the
pseudonym "Sapper".
He was one of the most successful popular authors of the 1920's and 1930's; his principal character was
Bulldog Drummond.
Herman McNeile was born in 1888 at
Bodmin in
Cornwall. His father was Malcolm McNeile, a Captain in the
Royal Navy and, at the time, governor of the naval prison at Bodmin.
He was educated at
Cheltenham College and the
Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He was commissioned into the
Royal Engineers in 1907 and was sent to France in 1914 when
the First World War broke out. McNeile saw action at both the
First and the
Second Battle of Ypres. He displayed considerable bravery, was awarded the
Military Cross and was
mentioned in dispatches.
It is thought that McNeile's first work was published before the First World War, but this is difficult to verify as serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names. His first known published works were short war stories based on his own experiences and were immediately successful. They were originally published in the
Daily Mail and, when republished in book form, sold over 200,000 copies within a year. His writing caught the public mood at the time. It was grimly realistic enough to seem authentic, yet managed to conceal the horrific reality of
trench warfare and life at the front line.
Lord Northcliff was so impressed by this writing that he attempted, but failed, to have McNeile released from the army so he could work as a war correspondent. In
1919, McNeile resigned from the army with the rank of
Lieutenant Colonel and became a full-time author.
He is mainly remembered as the author of the ten
Bull-Dog Drummond books, the first of which was published in
1920. These brought him considerable financial success - the film-rights to the first
talkie Bull-Dog Drummond film are reputed to have earned him $750,000. However, the bulk of his work was in the form of short stories that were published in various popular monthly magazines. Most of his books were short story collections. Drummond is a proto-James Bond figure and a crudely debased version of the imperial adventurers depicted by the likes of John Buchan. McNeile's jingoism and anti-Semitism (in
The Black Gang, for example, Drummond and his chums intern villainous Jewish Bolsheviks in a kind of private concentration camp) make the books hard to appreciate even at the level of kitsch today.
He died in
1937.
*
1915 Sergent Michael Cassidy R.E*
1915 The Lieutenant and Others*
1916 Men, Women and Guns*
1917 No Mans Land*
1918 The Human Touch*
1919 Mufti Short stories.
*
1920 Bull-Dog Drummond*
1921 The Man in Ratcatcher*
1922 The Black Gang*
1923 The Dinner Club*
1923 Jim Maitland*
1924 The Third Round*
1925 Out of the Blue*
1926 Word of Honour*
1926 Jim Brent*
1927 The Saving Clause*
1927 Shorty Bill*
1927 John Walters*
1927 The Saving Clause*
1928 The Female of the Species*
1929 Temple Tower*
1930 The Finger of Fate*
1930 Tiny Carteret*
1931 The Island of Terror*
1932 The Return of Bull-Dog Drummond*
1933 Knock-Out*
1933 Ronald Standish*
1934 When Carruthers Laughed*
1935 Bull-Dog Drummond at Bay*
1936 Ask For Ronald Standish*
1937 Challenge
