The Hour of the Donkey: Anthony Price’s expert portrayal of a green, scared soldier at war

As Anthony Price did on a few occasions, this book dives out of the usual chronological sequence for his cast of characters from a branch of the British intelligence services, this time returning to the Second World War but only featuring one of the regular characters – a much younger Major Frederick Clinton – and tangentially another – by featuring the father of the usual star of Price’s books, David Audley.

The setting is the German invasion of France in 1940 and although the plot is tied in to the historical conundrum of why Hitler ordered his troops to pause for several days, allowing the British to escape from Dunkirk, it is really about how one young, green soldier reacts to being in fighting for the first time. His perennial confusion and incompetence is a little wearing at times – though I suspect not unrealistic – and although Price is happy to pen ‘good guy’ characters who are willing to see many die if they think it will help produce the right outcome, in The Hour of the Donkey Price has a great eye for the telling details which bring home the horrors of war and what those deaths entail, as well as for how under-prepared and under-equipped the British soldiers were when facing the Germans in May 1940.

The plot itself moves relatively slowly at times and is, for a Price novel, surprisingly straight forward and wrapped up neatly and so four rather than five stars from me this time for an Anthony Price novel.

If you like this, you might also be interested in Tomorrow’s Ghost by Anthony Price: clever, clever and clever.

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Buy The Hour of the Donkey by Anthony Price here.