Biography
Alan Judd (real name Alan Edwin Petty) was born in the UK in 1946. A graduate of Oxford University, he served as an officer in the British Army in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles', before later joining the Foreign Office.
It was while working for the Foreign Office that Judd began writing novels, beginning with the highly successful A Breed of Heroes (1981), the story of a British soldier, Charles Thoroughgood, which was inspired by Judd's experiences in Northern Ireland. It won the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award and was later adapted for a BBC television drama. (It has been wrongly reported that A Breed of Heroes was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but this is incorrect: Judd's editor, Richard Cohen, was disappointed that the novel was not shortlisted and tried to persuade several UK publishers to create an 'alternative Booker', but the idea did not take off.)
Many years after A Breed of Heroes, Charles Thoroughgood returned in two more successful novels, Legacy (2001) and Uncommon Enemy (2012), following his progress after leaving the army and taking up a new career with MI6. His latest Charles Thoroughgood novel is Inside Enemy (2014).
Other novels include Short of Glory (1984) and Tango (1989), set in Africa and South America respectively, which were inspired by Judd's Foreign Office career, and The Noonday Devil (1987), an entirely different novel set in Oxford. More recently, Judd has shown his versatility as a novelist by turning his hand to historical fiction: The Kaiser's Last Kiss (2003) and Dancing With Eva (2007) both explore Nazism.
In 1990 Judd published a biography of Ford Madox Ford, who has always been a source of inspiration. During the same period he wrote another novel, The Devil's Own Work (1991), which pays homage to Ford. The Devil's Own Work was highly acclaimed and won the Guardian Fiction Prize.
Judd is also a journalist and regularly contributes to the Telegraph and the Spectator. In 1990 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Critical perspective
The character of Charles Thoroughgood features in three of Judd's novels, written decades apart: A Breed of Heroes (1981); Legacy (2001); and Uncommon Enemy (2012).
Thoroughgood's career path bears many similarities to the author's - a graduate of Oxford University, he joins the army and serves in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles', before later becoming an intelligence officer - but, nonetheless, the trilogy should not be assumed to be autobiographical for the details are fictional.
In A Breed of Heroes Charles joins the Assault Commandos and is posted to Northern Ireland for a four-month tour of duty in Armagh and Belfast. The novel evokes the horrifying reality of the Ulster conflict, for both the soldiers and the local people, yet it maintains a fairly balanced view in which both sides are shown to be equally guilty of hypocrisy. As a former officer himself, Judd is able to offer his readers an insider's view of the minutiae of daily life in the army, particularly the way in which endless hours of tedium and boredom are punctuated by short bursts of horrific violence. Yet it is not all grim: A Breed of Heroes is perhaps most notable for its ability to combine harrowing scenes and emotional poignancy with entertaining humour, depicting some of the more absurd and ridiculous features of military life.
A Breed of Heroes was followed, much later, by Legacy, in which Charles has left the army and joined MI6, where he is being trained as an agent and assigned to investigate a possible Russian spy. Judd has created a highly engaging espionage story, likened to the work of John le Carré, which gives us layers of insight into Charles' character and the nature of the father-son relationship: when he unexpectedly starts to uncover disturbing secrets about his own late father, Charles begins to question his sense of identity and his relationship with the man he thought he knew.
Uncommon Enemy completes the trilogy: having retired from MI6, a reluctant, middle-aged Charles allows himself to be persuaded back to the world of espionage - to the newly-formed Single Intelligence Agency (SIA), of which MI6 is now part - in order to locate a missing agent. In the same way that A Breed of Heroes depicts some of the more farcical elements of the military, Uncommon Enemy comments shrewdly on the influence of modern management styles: Charles is shocked to discover that the SIA is now pervaded by bureaucracy, political correctness and mission statements, devoid of the strong values of loyalty and patriotism that he knew in his former days with MI6. He worries about the way in which his new young colleagues perceive him: 'Already the old MI6 and MI5 were becoming mythologised; he realised they must see him as part of history … yet another example of an Old Office old stager who couldn't accept modernisation …' (Uncommon Enemy).
The trilogy as a whole, written in a deceptively simple and accessible style, is acclaimed for the way in which it combines authentic depictions of the military and the Secret Services with strong, imaginative storylines and refreshing humour, and for its poignant portrayal of a man who struggles to reconcile his 'old-fashioned' values, particularly patriotism, with modern-day society. Charles Moore comments:
[The trilogy] is about a man whose love for his country is inexpressible … The effect of such love, paradoxically, is to separate him from most of his colleagues … Alan Judd knows the world he writes about from the inside, and the reader feels this to great effect. But the stance of the story and of the hero is that of the outsider: how can one do the state good service when there is something rotten in the state? One comes away from this fascinating book [Uncommon Enemy] with many feelings stirred.
(Review of Uncommon Enemy, Telegraph, 13 February 2012)
Judd is an extremely versatile writer - so much so that it is not easy to summarise his work as a whole. In between writing the Charles Thoroughgood trilogy, he produced a steady output of other works, with a diversity ranging from espionage thrillers to historical novels to non-fiction works. Short of Glory (1984) and Tango (1989) were both inspired by Judd's overseas postings with the Foreign Office: Short of Glory, set in South Africa, is an amusing satire of the workings of the Foreign Office, while Tango is a hilarious tale of a bored Englishman who re-locates to South America and accidentally gets caught up in a coup.
More recently, Judd has explored his interest in Nazi history in two historical novels: The Kaiser's Last Kiss (2003) and Dancing With Eva (2007). The former is a fictionalised account of the last years of Kaiser Wilhelm, exiled in Holland. After the Nazi invasion, the Kaiser forms an uneasy relationship with Krebbs, the chief SS officer patrolling his palace. Krebbs, a young man who is beginning to question the regime he serves, is a compelling and fascinating character. His increasing disillusionment with Nazism, combined with his love affair with a Jewish maid, is an effective vehicle through which Judd explores the complexity of fascist regimes and those who serve them: Krebbs is not a monster but a 'real' person who has made the wrong choices, and his story is extremely moving.
Dancing With Eva also demonstrates the author's remarkable ability to intertwine historical facts with an imaginative story. The novel focuses primarily on fictional characters, Edith (a secretary) and Hans (a soldier), who served Hitler and Eva Braun during their final days in Hitler's bunker. Meeting again 60 years later and reflecting on the past, Edith and Hans contemplate the issues of individual and collective responsibility and guilt, making this an ambitious novel which successfully combines ethical and philosophical debate with captivating storytelling.
Along with novels that combine fact and fiction, Judd has also written 'straight' non-fiction in the form of highly-acclaimed biographies: Ford Madox Ford (1990) and The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (1999). His fascination with Ford also led to another novel, The Devil's Own Work (1991), which pays homage to Ford's classic 1915 novel, The Good Soldier. The Devil's Own Work is also a fascinating and quite chilling exploration of the creative process, a modern-day Faustian tale which combines supernatural elements with contemplations on the perils of ambition and the personal cost of sacrificing one's integrity.
Elizabeth O'Reilly, 2013
