Drummond
The Bulldog Drummond stories follow Captain Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, DSO, MC, a wealthy man who was an officer in the "Royal Loamshire Regiment", who, after the First World War, spends his new-found leisure time as a private detective. It begins when he places an advertisement in the local newspaper-
Demobilised Officer finding peace incredibly tedious would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; but crime of a humorous description, no objection. Excitement essential.
The character is partly based on McNeile's friend Gerard Fairlie, who carried on writing Drummond books after McNeile's death.
Drummond is a proto-James Bond figure and a version of the imperial adventurers depicted by the likes of John Buchan. In terms of the detective genre, the first Bulldog Drummond novel was published after the Sherlock Holmes stories, the Nayland Smith/Fu Manchu novels and Richard Hannay's first three adventures including The Thirty-Nine Steps. The character first appeared in the novel Bulldog Drummond (1920), and this was followed by a lengthy series of books and adaptations for films, radio and television.
| “ | Drummond ... has the appearance of an English gentleman: a man who fights hard, plays hard and lives clean ... His best friend would not call him good-looking but he possess that cheerful type of ugliness which inspires immediate confidence ... Only his eyes redeem his face. Deep-set and steady, with eyelashes that many women envy, they show him to be a sportsman and an adventurer. Drummond goes outside the law when he feels the ends justify the means. | ” |
Drummond is a muscular man, who has worked to remove the limitations of his size carries making him stealthy ("he could move over ground without a single blade of grass rustling") and quick ("he could kill a man with his bare hands in a second") for such a large man. During his time on the Western Front he would take himself on solitary raids through No-man's land.
Drummond has a number of ex-Army friends and colleagues and his man-servant, and secretary, is his former batman James Denny. Drummond has a flat in London's West End.
Read more about this topic: Bulldog Drummond
Famous quotes containing the word drummond:
“Property has its duties as well as its rights.”
—Thomas Drummond (1797–1840)