but in that time established himself my favourite historical writer and Imperial Governor the most influential historical novel I have ever read.He was born in 1908 in Allahabad, India, (his father was a publisher there); he was sent to England at the age of eight to go to boarding school at Clifton - then, after leaving school, he became a cadet at Sandhurst, the Army’s academy for future officers. Sandhurst trained cadets for both the British Army, and the Indian Army, which was the one for which George Shipway was destined. He used to claim in later life that the only reason he had joined the Army was so that he could play polo, which he would not have been able to afford to do as a civilian! After Sandhurst, he was commissioned in 1928 into the 13th. Duke of Connaught’s Lancers, a cavalry regiment. He returned to India, where he married while he was posted at Jullundur. In the ensuing years, the Shipways moved “all over India”. George Shipway’s service included two years away from his regiment with a force of irregulars on the frontier between Baluchistan and Iran, as well as being a staff officer in Delhi and in central India, but history was about to bring his Indian Army career to an end. At Partition, the Indian Army was divided, and the 13th. Lancers was one of the regiments assigned to Pakistan. The Shipways came “home”. George Shipway had obtained a transfer to the British Army, to the 3rd. Carabiniers, the Prince of Wales’s Dragoon Guards, a Scottish regiment. In the end, he decided not to go through with it. His explanation was that he had never been north of Yorkshire and didn’t intend to make such a dramatic change in his life, but really he seems to have had no wish to pursue an Army career anywhere but in India. He retired in 1947 with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. At this point, the Shipways happened to run into a friend whom they had known in India. She was married to another former Indian Army officer, and she and her husband were now running Cheam School in Berkshire, a school for boys aged from 8 to 14. They suggested to George Shipway that he should become a teacher at the school, which he did. So began his second career, as a schoolmaster, lasted 19 years. 
His pupils included Prince Charles, who spent some time at Cheam - it seems that the boys liked and respected him. Looking at George Shipway’s photograph on his 1970s book jackets, one can judge that only a very foolish, or a very brave, boy would have misbehaved in Mr. Shipway’s class. The photograph shows a man who clearly knows his way about the world, with a genial expression, but who carries the bearing of one who expects to be obeyed when he gives an order. While he was a schoolmaster, he tried his hand at writing in his spare time, encouraged by his friend John Masters, who had also been an Indian Army officer before becoming an author. George Shipway eventually began work on what would become Imperial Governor. George Shipway combined the qualities of the soldier with those of a scholar. When he was a boy, his family had thought of sending him to a grander school, Winchester, and Mrs. Shipway believes that if his life had taken that turn he might well have become a university don rather than a soldier. He loved the countryside, and his wife treasured a book in which he had collected dried specimens of more than 200 species of wild flower.Bibliography
* Imperial Governor (1968). ISBN 0-432-14750-0
* Knight in Anarchy (1969). ISBN 0-432-14751-9;
* The Chilian Club (1971), ISBN 0-432-14752-7;
* The Paladin (1972). ISBN 0-432-14753-5
* The Wolf Time (1973). ISBN 0-432-14754-3
* Free Lance (1975). ISBN 0-432-14755-1
* Strangers in the Land (1976). ISBN 0-432-14756-X
* Warrior in Bronze (1977). ISBN 0-432-14757-8
* King in Splendour (1979). ISBN 0-432-14758-6
No comments:
Post a Comment