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The Military Orchid (Paperback, New edition)
Jocelyn Brooke; Illustrated by Gavin Bone, Stephen Bone; Introduction by Horatio Clare; Cover design or artwork by David Inshaw
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Jocelyn Brooke's love affair with wild flowers and home-made
fireworks began when he was growing up in Kent and exploring the
countryside of the the Elham Valley. But there was one particular
flower, especially rare and beautiful which became an obsession.
Over three decades and through two world wars, in the deserts of
Libya and the woodlands of Italy, in the chalk downs of Kent,
Sussex and Hampshire, he searched continually for his most beloved
and elusive Orchis militaris, the military orchid.Against the
backdrop of his quintessentially English upbringing and his army
career, with ts wonderful cast of snobbish neighbours, eccentric
public school teachers and bullish staff sergeants, Jocelyn Brooke
blends memoir, botany and satire to recall his lifelong quest. The
Military Orchid is a comic masterpiece and became widely revered:
Kingsley Amis decribed Brooke as "brilliant and exciting", John
Betjeman called him "as subtle as the devil", and to Anthony Powell
he was "one of the most interesting and talented" writers to emerge
after the Second World War.
This is a new release of the original 1951 edition.
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of
rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for
everyone!
A disarming, lyrical hybrid of fiction and autobiography, this
forgotten masterpiece of post-war English fiction follows a small
boy through his First World War childhood and teenage years on the
Kentish coast, then into the army and frontline service in the
Second World War. Obsessed by his strange twin passions for orchids
and for fireworks, the author-narrator paints a haunting portrait
of a childhood and adulthood interleaved with one another in a
near-mystical rural idyll. Defined by his unspoken homosexuality,
the books capture the unfolding of a melancholy, often painfully
sensitive male consciousness. First published in the late 1940s as
three separate but interlinked volumes - "The Military Orchid"; "A
Mine of Serpents" and "The Goose Cathedral" - The Orchid Trilogy
conjures up a rapturous, fantastical portrait of England at war and
peace in the 20th century. Witty, subtle and deceptively simple,
this unjustly neglected classic that has yet to be surpassed in its
exploration of the magical world of childhood. One of those
too-rare books whose enjoyability makes it seem too short -
Elizabeth Bowen It is a kind of collage of sharply drawn bits of
real life, excellently described and artistically arranged -
Stephen Spender Reminiscence and reflection and description are
woven together to make a curious and fascinating tapestry - David
Cecil Mr. Brooke's finely shaped prose, his wit, percipience, and
liveliness in the description of people, places, and states of mind
are a rare delight - The Scotsman A sad, funny, densely detailed
yet continuously readable experience - The Observer One of the most
exciting creative artists of our time and one who will consistently
evade all the literary categories - John Pudney
Brittle, effeminate and perennially untalented, Nigel
Tuffnell-Greene has little in common with his high-achieving and
ultra-masculine elder brother, Geoffrey, whom he worships and
detests - hating him with a passion almost indistinguishable from
love. In Conventional Weapons the reader is introduced to a stratum
of English middle-class society before and after World War II as
the divergent paths of the two brothers unfold. Geoffrey joins the
army, marries and sets up in business, but eventually ends up an
exile in Malta; Nigel drifts into a seedy London life of drinking,
parties and half-hearted gay liaisons, and finds some fame as an
artist and novelist. With an astonishing appreciation of their
deeper character traits, which remain unspoken and barely revealed,
Brooke explores the shared fragility beneath the surface of these
seemingly polarised lives. Beautiful, subtle and immensely
powerful, his impeccable prose is never better than in this late
novel. 'One of the most interesting and talented of contemporary
writers' - Anthony Powell 'He is subtle as the devil' - John
Betjeman 'Mr Brooke has ploughed his English corner of The Waste
Land between the two world wars with a dexterity that compels our
harrowed admiration' - Harold Acton
The Dog at Clambercrown takes its name from a mysterious pub -
seductive and frightening, never visited, only heard of - that
fascinates Brooke's child narrator in this beautiful and utterly
original work of autobiographical fiction. Both a journey through
Europe and a return to the forbidden kingdoms of a Kentish
childhood, the novel interweaves past and present as Brooke,
responding to the magical potency of "Abroad", summons the
obsessions and terrors of his youth, and conjures an almost pagan
vision of the English countryside - even as he sits down to tea
with the Sicilian mafia. First published in 1955, The Dog at
Clambercrown epitomises what Anthony Powell termed as Brooke's
unique genre of "reminiscence lightly touched with fiction".
Disarmingly clever, deliciously opinionated and irrepressibly
amusing, this neglected classic of gay literature is ripe for
rediscovery. 'One of the most interesting and talented of
contemporary writers' - Anthony Powell 'He is subtle as the devil'
- John Betjeman 'Here is a writer possessed by the magic-the
voodoo-of childhood' - New Statesman
The calm of Reynard Langrish's quietly predictable life is
shattered when, on a night of rain-swept storm, a stranger - a
young soldier called Captain Archer - appears at his remote Kentish
cottage. He takes Langrish to an ancient hill fort and introduces
him to the men under his command, all of whom share a mysterious
tattoo - two snakes entwined around a drawn sword - and are engaged
in preparations to defend against a nameless menace, referred to
only as 'the Emergency'. As the dreamlike narrative rapidly
accelerates into Kafkaesque nightmare, Langrish is drawn into a
world where illusion, paranoia, and reality unite with lethal
consequences, and disorienting shifts of time and perception
culminate in a terrifying moment of pure horror. Originally
published in 1950, The Image of a Drawn Sword is steeped in the
themes and images that occupy much of Brooke's writing - the
relentlessness of time, suppressed homosexuality, condemned love,
self-hatred, and futility; and, above all, an England that was both
real and uniquely his own, a mystical, half-known natural world.
'In its way not inferior to Kafka . . . [it has] a haunting,
sinister quality' - Anthony Powell 'Seldom have naturalism and
fantasy been more strangely merged' - Elizabeth Bowen 'He is subtle
as the devil' - John Betjeman 'The skill and intensity of the
writing made peculiarly haunting this cry of complaint on behalf of
a bewildered Man' - Pamela Hansford Johnson, Daily Telegraph
When Duncan Cameron's mother dies, he is sent to live with his
Uncle Gerald on a remote farm in Kent. What follows is a hypnotic
tale of psychological suspense as this boy on the cusp of manhood
enters his only living relative's ultra-masculine world of; a dark,
erotically charged landscape in an England teetering on the brink
of the Second World War. Originally published in 1948, The
Scapegoat was Jocelyn Brooke's first novel and, as with many of his
other works, occupies a fascinating space between fiction and
autobiography. Described by novelist Peter Cameron as 'almost
unbelievably subversive and kinky', this unjustly neglected classic
of gay fiction offers a quiet depiction of a childhood adrift in
silence and despair, and a beautifully wrought exploration of
masculinity. "He is subtle as the devil" - John Betjeman "Jocelyn
Brooke is a great writer. . . . If you care enough for literature,
seek out The Scapegoat" - Elizabeth Bowen "It could not have been
written more delicately or sensitively" - Sean O'Faolian
"Exceptionally well-written"- Desmond MacCarthy
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