Product details
- ISBN 9781911440512
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 22 Feb 2018
- Publisher: Duckworth Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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So all is pretty cushy for our reluctant hero, ex-WWI ace pilot Bart Bandy.
Actually that should read pretty Khooshie, the name of the handsome young prince of Jhamjarh, whose life Bart recently saved. His reward from the grateful Maharajah is to set up an airforce for the independent state, while living high on the hog in his own personal palace.
But it’s 1925 and the British authorities are already highly suspicious about the purpose of this new force when Bart, as usual, falls foul of a most important personage, the Viceroy of India no less. Could end badly. Not nearly as badly as the intentions of the neighboring Indian state of Khaliwar though, as Bart soon discovers – but absolutely no one seems inclined to believe him.
With the blackest of black comedy and seat-of-the pants escapades, Donald Jack’s series about a young pilot is uniquely funny and compelling.
Donald Lamont Jack was born in Radcliffe, England,on December 6, 1924. He attended Bury Grammar School in Lancashire, and later Marr College, Troon (from which he was briefly evicted after writing an injudicious letter to the editor).
From 1943 to 1947 he served in the Royal Air Force as an AC, or aircraftsman, working in radio communications. During his military service Jack was stationed in a variety of locales, though he concentrated on places beginning with the letter ‘B’: Belgium, Berlin, and Bahrain. After de-mobbing, he participated in amateur dramatics with The Ellis Players, and worked for several years in Britain, but he had by then grown weary of ‘B’-countries and decided to move on to the ‘C’s. Thus, in 1951, Jack emigrated to Canada.
In 1962 he published his first novel, Three Cheers for Me, about fictional Canadian First World War air-ace Bartholomew Wolfe Bandy. Three Cheers for Me won the Leacock Medal for Humour in 1963, but additional volumes did not appear until a decade later when a revised version of the book was published, along with a second volume, That’s Me in the Middle, which won Jack a second Leacock Medal in 1974. He received a third award in 1980 for Me Bandy, You Cissie.
Jack returned to live in England in 1986, where he continued to work on additional volumes in the Bandy series. He died on June 2, 2003. His final novel, Stalin vs. Me, was first published posthumously in 2005.
