Snake and Sword

Complete and unabridged, with 58 full-page plates by William Powell Frith, James Tissot and William Quiller Orchardson. A boy grows up in an Indian cantonment with an inherited terror of snakes that nobody will explain to him, and goes into the army knowing the thing is waiting. Percival Christopher Wren served in India and wrote Beau Geste afterwards; the barrack detail here is first-hand. It is ...