I’ll be quite frank: I enjoy a rousing tale of derring-do as much as the next manly fellow. I like my heroes bristling with weapons and facial hair, preferably whilst rowing longboats and shouting ‘ho!’ a lot. So I was all set to enjoy The Dangerous Book of Heroes as a kind of guilty pleasure. The format is simple enough, with each hero (or set of heroes) enjoying a short biography, pleasantly illustrated with the sort of line drawings that used to grace boys’ magazines – something the book is very conciously trying to imitate. From early exploits to heroic last stands, we follow each life through to its noble conclusion and the idea is that we learn something in the process. Which is unfortunately where the Book of Heroes starts to go a little astray.

My first surprise was that while some might talk of Alexander, and some of Hercules (with others preferring Hector and Lysander, no doubt), if they were looking for them in The Dangerous Book of Heroes they might be a little confused. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be any room in this book for anyone who doesn’t have English as a first language, or at least the best interests of England at heart. It might be a minor quibble, but I’m pretty sure that less than half of the world’s greatest heroes were born outside of the home counties: it’s one thing to write a book on English Imperial Heroes and call it just that, but to just call it the Book of Heroes gives the rather unpleasant implication that anyone who didn’t fight for the Empire was somehow unworthy of inclusion.

This seems to have narrowed the playing fields somewhat, so there are a few people in the Dangerous Book of Heroes who frankly don’t seem to belong. Certainly some of the folk in here – Thomas, Lord Cochrane, or Captain Burton, for example – are genuinely interesting imperial adventurers, but there are still a few Victorian establishment figures who seem to have very little going for them. Cecil Rhodes, for example, seems to have little else to commend him other than the accumulation of  vast wealth, the larcenous appropriation of African tribal lands and an involvement with the farcical Jameson raid. When he is quoted as having left a country as his legacy it is hard not to think of how that country – now called Zimbabwe – is doing now. This might not matter so much if it weren’t for the Messrs. Iggulden’s tendency to try and gloss over these failings, so that on the one hand they adopt the unapologetic stance that ‘a Quaker book of Heroes might look very different’ whilst on the other doing their very best to portray such truly ambiguous people as Rhodes and Robert Clive as though they had done nothing more objectionable than kick a few puppies in their entire lives.

This atmosphere of apologism for empire grows throughout the book until it borders on outright jingoism. Coupled with a worryingly naive perspective on the nature of history, it makes a nasty subtext to a book that seems to genuinely believe itself to be in the right. Aside from the occasional bit of factual confusion – the section on Bletchley Park, for example, seems to be greatly hindered by a confusion over the mathematical nature of cryptanalysis – and the occasional piece of horrifying euphemism – Alan Turing committed suicide because he was socially ostracised for his homosexuality, not because of his ‘fragile genius’ – this book is well-presented and entertainingly written. It might have made a good gift to children of fifty years ago, but in the 21st century I can only recommend it for people who dislike having their beliefs challenged in any meaningful way.

Reviewed by Meirion Jordan

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