Send Him Victorious

by Douglas Hurd

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Genres: Fiction

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1968

About the author

Douglas Hurd, Baron (born 1930), is a British Conservative politician and novelist, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and his retirement in 1995.

Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, Hurd first entered parliament in February 1974, as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency. His first government post was as Minister for Europe, and he served in several cabinet posts from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984-85), Home Secretary (1985-89) and Foreign Secretary (1989-95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990 and retired from frontline politics during a cabinet re-shuffle in 1995.

In 1997, Hurd entered the House of Lords. Viewed as one of the Conservative Party's senior elder statesmen, he is a patron of the Tory Reform Group, and remains an active figure in public life. Hurd is a writer of political thrillers including The Image in the Water, and a collection of short stories in Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil.

Reviews

[Peter Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up as an interesting curiosity of what if / fictional political future gazing by former Home, and later, Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. Who now of course is Baron Hurd of Westwell.
Published in 1968 six years before he first became an MP in 1974, it is set seven years hence in the then wild far future of 1975.

The writing style is awful, the characters often seem to blur into other (apart from the stereotypical eye patched, often smoking, French mercenary almost pantomime villain), and the ending is a rushed and silly mess, but it is all quite fun in its own demented way, if only with the benefit of hindsight.

To be fair I am told that his later book ‘Scotch on the Rocks’ (which shares several of the same characters as this book) which depicts a fictional Scots military revolt set in the then future, is a much better book. It must have been, as it was turned into a BBC drama serial.

However back to this book. While it suffers all the faults of it being one of Hurd’s earliest books, do please still read it and revel in the weirdness. This includes: the Sun and Guardian newspapers merging into a newspaper called “The Globe”, an unnamed King who already has a secondary school aged son and heir by 1975, and 1970s Rhodesia (as it was called then) having a coup overthrowing Ian Smith for being insufficiently racist and right wing in the view of the coup plotters.

[Sharanya Mukherji · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hurd and Osmond together had contrived a brilliant plot which has made a rollercoaster of a read in it's thin 224 Pages. It's a fine political thriller and anyone who is a fan of works by McLain or Forsythe or Grissam should definitely give this a try. It starts a bit slow but it as I patiently proceeded, it rapidly picked up pace.

The writer duo interestingly asks a very big question, "What if The British Army Rises against it's government and ultimately the crown?" And the answer to that is so thought provoking and imaginative that one can't not help by not turning the pages. Ultimately I would say I'm really satisfied and I wonder why a film hasn't been made based on this ingenious plot? Which I believe is still relevant even today...

[Richard Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating and intricately-plotted tale from an already bygone age of James Bond style espionage and British stiff upper lip. Centred around a plot to overthrow the UK government due to its interventionist policy towards its former colony Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), there are aspects of this story (co-written by a British politician) such as attacks on statues and racial tensions, which remain sadly resonant in the world today.