Play Up and Play the Game The Heroes of Popular Fiction

Play Up and Play the Game (1973) examines the type of fictional hero most embodied in the work and character, poetry and philosophy of Sir Henry Newbolt. ‘Newbolt Man’, imbued with the spirit of fairplay, loyalty, fearlessness, conformity (while remaining slightly philistine and sexless), can be traced in the work of Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Edgar Wallace, Anthony Hope and P.C. Wren. The book traces his development from the Victorian schoolboy (Tom Brown’s School Days and Kipling) to the twentieth-century secret agent (Buchan’s Richard Hannay), and on to his demise in Sheriff’s Journey’s End and Aldington’s Death of a Hero.