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The Drummer Boy
'As far as the eye can see, scarlet men are marching . . . A rich and splendid company, but none more so than the drummer boy.'
But a moment later, the sound of Charlie Samson's drum was swallowed in a wild thunder. The glorious scarlet troops had been ambushed. Men were dead and dying all around, and all the beauty was gone. All that was left was himself and his drum, and a few shady nightwalkers - cowards who came crawling from the ditches and knaves who scoured the dead for wealth . . .
But a moment later, the sound of Charlie Samson's drum was swallowed in a wild thunder. The glorious scarlet troops had been ambushed. Men were dead and dying all around, and all the beauty was gone. All that was left was himself and his drum, and a few shady nightwalkers - cowards who came crawling from the ditches and knaves who scoured the dead for wealth . . .
192 pages, Paperback
Published May 1, 2015
About the author
Leon Garfield
122 books50 followersLeon Garfield FRSL (14 July 1921 – 2 June 1996) was a British writer of fiction. He is best known for children's historical novels, though he also wrote for adults. He wrote more than thirty books and scripted Shakespeare: The Animated Tales for television.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
Garfield attended Brighton Grammar School (1932-1938) and went on to study art at Regent Street Polytechnic, but his studies were interrupted first by lack of funds for fees, then by the outbreak of World War II. He married Lena Leah Davies in April, 1941, at Golders Green Synagogue but they separated after only a few months. For his service in the war he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. While posted in Belgium he met Vivien Alcock, then an ambulance driver, who would go on to become his second wife (in 1948) and a well-known children's author. She would also greatly influence Garfield's writing, giving him suggestions for his writing, including the original idea for Smith. After the war Garfield worked as a biochemical laboratory technician at the Whittington Hospital in Islington, writing in his spare time until the 1960s, when he was successful enough to write full-time. In 1964, the couple adopted a baby girl, called Jane after Jane Austen, a favourite writer of both parents.
Garfield wrote his first book, the pirate novel Jack Holborn, for adult readers but a Constable & Co. editor saw its potential as a children's novel and persuaded him to adapt it for a younger audience. In that form it was published by Constable in 1964. His second book, Devil-in-the-Fog (1966), won the first annual Guardian Prize and was serialised for television, as were several later works (below). Devil was the first of several historical adventure novels, typically set late in the eighteenth century and featuring a character of humble origins (in this case a boy from a family of traveling actors) pushed into the midst of a threatening intrigue. Another was Smith (1967), with the eponymous hero a young pickpocket accepted into a wealthy household; it won the Phoenix Award in 1987. Yet another was Black Jack (1968), in which a young apprentice is forced by accident and his conscience to accompany a murderous criminal.
In 1970, Garfield's work started to move in new directions with The God Beneath the Sea, a re-telling of numerous Greek myths in one narrative, written by Garfield and Edward Blishen and illustrated by Charles Keeping. It won the annual Carnegie Medal for British children's books. Garfield, Blishen, and Keeping collaborated again on a sequel, The Golden Shadow (1973). The Drummer Boy (1970) was another adventure story, but concerned more with a central moral problem, and apparently aimed at somewhat older readers, a trend continued in The Prisoners of September (1975) republished in 1989 by Lions Tracks, under the title Revolution!, The Pleasure Garden (1976) and The Confidence Man (1978). The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris (1972) was a black comedy in which two boys decide to test the plausibility of Romulus and Remus using one of the boys' baby sister. Most notable at the time was a series of linked long short stories about apprentices, published separately between 1976 and 1978, and then as a collection, The Apprentices. The more adult themed books of the mid-1970s met with a mixed reception and Garfield returned to the model of his earlier books with John Diamond, which won a Whitbread Award in 1980, and The December Rose (1986). In 1980 he also wrote an ending for The Mystery of Edwin Drood, unfinished at the 1870 death of Dickens, an author who had been a major influence on Garfield's own style.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985. On 2 June 1996 he died of cancer at the Whittington Hospital, where he had once worked.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 15, 2015
4.5
The drummer boy – the drummer boy! In and among the trees he stalked, drumsticks lifting high with a haughtiness that could never last. He was all but at the end of his road. He longed for his life to finish here where it had begun. All he prayed was that he might undo what he’d done and leave the world without the stain of having lived on it.
The Drummer Boy has to be one of the weirdest book I've ever read. It’s marketed as a children book and because of that many adults will pass it, and it’s a shame.
If I could use only one word to describe this story, I would use word Nightmarish , as the story has a dreamlike quality to it, especially the first chapters of it.
Playlist
Jesper Kyd's Darkness Falls In Florence
The drummer boy – the drummer boy! In and among the trees he stalked, drumsticks lifting high with a haughtiness that could never last. He was all but at the end of his road. He longed for his life to finish here where it had begun. All he prayed was that he might undo what he’d done and leave the world without the stain of having lived on it.
The Drummer Boy has to be one of the weirdest book I've ever read. It’s marketed as a children book and because of that many adults will pass it, and it’s a shame.
If I could use only one word to describe this story, I would use word Nightmarish , as the story has a dreamlike quality to it, especially the first chapters of it.
Playlist
Jesper Kyd's Darkness Falls In Florence
April 16, 2020
Charlie Sampson is the drummer in his regiment. He is young, attractive and serves as a source of pride and encouragement for his regiment, whom he thinks of as his ‘scarlet men’. One day, they go into battle on a hillside, a number of well placed artillery shots split the units apart, French soldiers come out of the trees and all is chaos. A little later, Charlie wakes up to find almost everybody dead. Those left behind are skulking about, robbing from the dead, the sort of lowlives he had joined the army to escape. Out of necessity, he becomes one of them.
The main ones are James Digby, who played dead to survive the battle and longs to be back with is fiancee; Corporal Finch, who likes to try and use French words and has a limp, and Shaw, who is the best character in the book. He’s one of those Leon Garfield slightly dodgy father figures in the tradition of Long John Silver. He is a surgeon, and a very good one at that. He’s going about the battleground pulling teeth to sell, the clattering bag of gnashers he then has with him at all times. He’s described as being as odds with himself, fat and awkward, longing for a life as positive as he is but condemned to battlefields and junk piles. He sticks to Charlie throughout, helping and hindering but with a vague, if not trustworthy, goodness.
Also, with a character called Corporal Finch, add another to Garfield’s bird names.
In the course of escaping France, James Digby dies an ignominious death and his ghost follows Charlie around, telling him to tell his fiancee he died well so Charlie and Shaw go to London to do so. There they meet the fiancee, Sophia, who is dying of something nondescript, and her father, the general in charge of the operation that had all the men killed. Charlie falls head over heels for the sickly Sophia and impressed by the general, though as the book goes on, we realise there is more to them than first appear and they take on something of a underworld form themselves.
There were some structures in this that seem almost Homeric. Just as Homer uses stock phrases such as ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ and ‘fleet-footed Achilles’, so this book talks about ‘the scarlet men’ and ‘the golden child.’ Charlie Samson also has a slightly Orpheus quality, he goes to the underworld and communes with lost souls, Sophia Lawrence falls behind like Eurydice and the drum has almost mystical qualities like Orpheus’ lyre. I was not surprised to find this book came out the same year as The God Beneath the Sea.
This book is more slippery than other Leon Garfield works, partly it’s the links to the Orpheus tale (which seem more obvious the more I think about them) but it’s also partly to the ideas in the book are not fully developed. For this reason, characters introduced as villainous slide into being friends and friends into antagonists, the ghost part isn’t properly integrated into the whole and Charlie’s eventual romantic conclusion comes from nowhere.
Not that it harmed the book, it was nominated for the Carnegie award the same year The God Beneath the Sea won the Guardian’s children’s book award.
The main ones are James Digby, who played dead to survive the battle and longs to be back with is fiancee; Corporal Finch, who likes to try and use French words and has a limp, and Shaw, who is the best character in the book. He’s one of those Leon Garfield slightly dodgy father figures in the tradition of Long John Silver. He is a surgeon, and a very good one at that. He’s going about the battleground pulling teeth to sell, the clattering bag of gnashers he then has with him at all times. He’s described as being as odds with himself, fat and awkward, longing for a life as positive as he is but condemned to battlefields and junk piles. He sticks to Charlie throughout, helping and hindering but with a vague, if not trustworthy, goodness.
Also, with a character called Corporal Finch, add another to Garfield’s bird names.
In the course of escaping France, James Digby dies an ignominious death and his ghost follows Charlie around, telling him to tell his fiancee he died well so Charlie and Shaw go to London to do so. There they meet the fiancee, Sophia, who is dying of something nondescript, and her father, the general in charge of the operation that had all the men killed. Charlie falls head over heels for the sickly Sophia and impressed by the general, though as the book goes on, we realise there is more to them than first appear and they take on something of a underworld form themselves.
There were some structures in this that seem almost Homeric. Just as Homer uses stock phrases such as ‘rosy-fingered dawn’ and ‘fleet-footed Achilles’, so this book talks about ‘the scarlet men’ and ‘the golden child.’ Charlie Samson also has a slightly Orpheus quality, he goes to the underworld and communes with lost souls, Sophia Lawrence falls behind like Eurydice and the drum has almost mystical qualities like Orpheus’ lyre. I was not surprised to find this book came out the same year as The God Beneath the Sea.
This book is more slippery than other Leon Garfield works, partly it’s the links to the Orpheus tale (which seem more obvious the more I think about them) but it’s also partly to the ideas in the book are not fully developed. For this reason, characters introduced as villainous slide into being friends and friends into antagonists, the ghost part isn’t properly integrated into the whole and Charlie’s eventual romantic conclusion comes from nowhere.
Not that it harmed the book, it was nominated for the Carnegie award the same year The God Beneath the Sea won the Guardian’s children’s book award.
May 28, 2024
Rather Gothic tale of a drummer boy in an 18th century battle. He escapes a massacre, falls in with field robbers and a doctor, and finds himself involved with the General who was in charge, and his rather strange daughter,
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews