Coward at the Bridge is James Delingpole’s follow up to last year’s Coward On The Beach. Where Coward on The Beach was a comic book D-Day story, Coward At The Bridge is a comic book Arnhem story. No detective work required to spot a nascent series under development.

Coward On The Beach was a novelist’s adaptation of a story from the 70s comic, Commando, that Delingpole turned into a breakneck, Flashman-esque romp. With its mixture of derring-do, cynicism and potted history, it was enjoyable, in a guilty pleasure type way. Coward At The Bridge has no equivalent comic book source to draw upon, instead relying on the altogether more grown up standard reference points for everything anyone knows about Operation Market Garden. It’s still a romp though and and ultimately Coward At The Bridge resembles nothing more than a Boy’s Own version of A Bridge Too Far.

Everything you’ve read or seen about Arnhem is pretty much all here.  It’s part of the fun to play spot the forced reference throughout, as the best bits from A Bridge Too Far (book and film), Band Of Brothers and the key popular history books are shoehorned into the action. So directly are scenes lifted that all the way though Coward at the Bridge my mind’s eye was forced to project Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and Robert Redford’s faces onto Delingpole’s characters.

Even Jeremy Clarkson’s father-in-law, the preternaturally heroic winner of a VC at Arnhem, makes an appearance in scenes lifted from the (surprisingly good) BBC documentary Clarkson made about him.

This historical detail as understood via its refraction through the lens of popular entertainment, is then wrapped up in a gossamer thin, sub Flashman comic plot surrounding Lieutenant Coward, his brother, his father, his fiance, his Sergeant and his picaresque quest for a VC of his own. The result is a strange kind of pseudo history. It cherry picks all the “best” bits from the history books. It affects to hate the arbitrary horrors of war but quite clearly really loves them. It is apparently about the nature of heroism but doesn’t really have anything to say about it except “cripes!”

This is a good afternoon in the garden read, an enjoyable diversion that will not live too long in the memory. George MacDonald Fraser’s crown remains intact. As a romp and an adventure I enjoyed Coward At The Bridge, but then again I wish I could be living in my bedroom just as it was in 1979 when I was 14. Others may find Coward At The Bridge a bit brash.

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