Rogue Male

This was my father’s favourite book, and the teenage me agreed. It’s the greatest prolonged chase story ever written. An English tourist takes a pot shot at Hitler and is hunted all the way to the West Country in England, where he digs himself into the bank of an unused country lane, cornered like a fox. I lived in Devon at the time, and knew those huge high banks along the sides of ancient tree-covered lanes, and I and the village kids built ourselves exactly the same sort of hideaway, dug into a bank in the woods and invisible from… show more.

Imagine a lone man, who single-handedly attempts to kill Adolf Hitler, who then gets caught and tortured by the Gestapo, then manages to escape back to England. By itself, the book could stop there, as this would be sufficient for any adventure novel. However, Household continues the story. The hero, once back in England, discovers that the Nazis are on his tail, and have sworn to kill him: he turns into a rogue male, which is an expression to describe a runaway, marauding elephant bull. Ironically, the spy on the hero’s heels is a big game hunter, and the two… show more.