Trapped in a cupboard with a nubile blonde nymphomaniac; crossing the Waal under a hail of fire with the US paratroops of 82nd airborne; rattling in a jeep through the Dutch countryside with the men of 1st Airborne Recce Squadron; trying to take out a self-propelled gun with a ruddy useless PIAT. It's all in a day's work for Lt Dick Coward and Sgt Tom Price on their second published adventure. After the horrors of D-Day, they find themselves plunged into even greater chaos and mayhem as they land in the deceptively tranquil countryside around Arnhem, Holland, as part of Operation Market Garden. What should be a pushover - the ingenious scheme that everyone thinks will end the war by Christmas - turns into Britain's biggest military disaster of the Second World War. But if it's a cock-up, by golly is it a glorious one. Rarely if ever have Allied soldiers acquitted themselves better than the British, Americans and Poles, as they fought against the might of the SS, in their bid to capture 'The Bridge Too Far." As usual Coward and Price are in the thick of it. They have to be. If Coward doesn't get a VC this time, he'll be booted off the family estate for good, and stand no chance of winning the heart of the fickle, dangerously beguiling Gina. Will he get the medal? Will he get the girl? Will Price be driven so mad by his master's Bertie Wooster-like stupidity that he ends up throttling him first?
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About the Author
James Delingpole is a journalist, broadcaster and author of six books including How To Be Right, Thinly Disguised Autobiography, and the Dick Coward series. He writes for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Mail On Sunday, the Sunday Times, The Times, the Independent On Sunday on everything from rock to culture to politics and gardening. He is married with children and lives in South London.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Delingpole Doesn't Disappoint!,
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This review is from: Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2) (Hardcover)
Being from the colonies (Canada), so to speak, I only became aware of James by his blogging on the Daily Telegraph, most recently notable for his coverage of Climategate and AGW hypocrisy. Given the excellent POV and writing style, I had high expectations for my first of his novels. Having received a Kindle for Christmas 2009 and being a fellow military history enthusiast, I made ""Coward at the Bridge" my maiden purchase. As the title suggests it more than met the anticipation.
JD has the ability to take seemingly one-dimensional stock characters and gradually ad layer by unexpected layer. It in this development that he is able to add an undertone of humour to the grimmest and most inhumane of situations, or conversely paint the comedic or ridiculous with with a tint of menace. Perhaps the most pleasing aspect is JD's acknowledgment of the class differences of the period and the nobility inherent in each. His main characters are not stereotypical toffs or binmen and find that shared danger, hardship, and misery as the primary leveler with tacit acknowledgment of the underlying commonalities instead of the divide of conventional wisdom. I can't wait for other Delingpole titles to be added to Kindle. At first blush I can confidently say he has joined James Lee Burke in my list of great writers - not fact, fiction, or otherwise, juts great writers!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bawd and bullets,
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This review is from: Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2) (Hardcover)
I enjoyed this, but it is a very hard book to categorise. There is a bit of Tom Sharpe in here, along with Leslie Thomas, maybe a bit of Jeeves and Wooster too! This is a bawdy and semi comic romp set within the Airborne assault of Arnhem during Operation Market Garden in 1944.
Dick Coward and his trusty sergeant Price join the forces that dropped into Arnhem in what was anticipated to be an easy mission to take the bridge, Coward is keen to prove to his father that he is worthy of inheriting the family estate and Price wants to keep Coward alive while killing as many of the enemy as possible. Told from the perspective of an elderly Coward recounting his life's adventures this blends an accurate and detailed military perspective with the light touch of very entertaining characters. The author treads a careful path between respect for the military action and the lives lost but injects circumstantial humour around his lead character. The Brits are shown with a stoic and sarcastic humour in the face of considerable adversity and the author also resists the opportunity to make light of the Americans, instead showing their enormous bravery as they tried to support the beleaguered British troops. In the middle of this we have the likeable Coward trying to do his best but ending up in all sorts of scrapes ranging from the bawdy to the circumstantial. The one liners zip around as much as the bullets. This is the second in what I thought would be a long series, but I sense that the author has resolved things to the degree that he does not need to continue if his inclination takes him elsewhere. That would be a shame as the balancing act shown here demonstrates his ability but I also understand that this must be a hard book to market. Worth seeking out.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wink too far...,
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This review is from: Coward at the Bridge (Dick Coward 2) (Hardcover)
This is the second volume of Delingpole's Dick Coward adventures - it opens with him trapped in a cupboard with beautiful blonde nymphomaniac, closes with him entwined with a pair of young herefordshire ladies in a menage a trois, and in between he is having more fun being shot at while losing the Battle of Arnhem.
Volume II is a direct sequel to Coward on the Beach, and the war in Europe is nearing its end: with 10 volumes planned by the author, I don't think another 8 can be fitted 6 months. This means, I assume, that some later Coward volumes will be "flashbacks" to adventures alluded to previously - Burma, the Western Desert, flying Spits, Crete, fighting with the brave defenders of Stalingrad (well, the German ones anyway) and so on. To a degree that may also be necessary as Coward has now achieved the fame (and fortune) that he was fighting WWII to win. There is less Sgt Price here - a mixed blessing, as we get more focus on Dick Coward, but miss Price's no-nonsense approach to war - and Coward seems more sympathetic than he did in "on the Beach". Operation Market Garden is told accurately, and if it seems improbable that one man could have so many adventures...well, that's wartime for you. Bridge is better than Beach, but not as good as Flashman at his best. Which brings me to the quibble in the review title: its all very well to write a WWII homage to Flashy, really it is. But please, there is no need to beat us over the head with that in the endnotes. One simple reference is sufficient to refer interested readers, but three is the literary equivalent of Madonna's conical foot-long bra: unnecessary, distracting, and frankly just a bit much. Still, if that's the worst complaint I have about the book - and it is - that means it's a pretty good read, aimed at lovers of military history who don't mind a mention of sex and benzedrine on the side.
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