H. C. McNeile
Herman Cyril McNeile, MC, was a British soldier and author. He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the inter-war period. He wrote Bulldog Drummond novels, as well as three plays and a screenplay. His stories are either directly about the war, or contain people whose lives have been shaped by it.
About H. C. McNeile in brief
Herman Cyril McNeile, MC, was a British soldier and author. He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the inter-war period before his death in 1937 from throat cancer. He wrote Bulldog Drummond novels, as well as three plays and a screenplay. His stories are either directly about the war, or contain people whose lives have been shaped by it. His thrillers are a continuation of his war stories, with upper class Englishmen defending England from foreigners plotting against it. After the Second World War his work was criticised as having fascist overtones, while also displaying the xenophobia and anti-semitism apparent in some other writers of the period. His first known published story, Reminiscences of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, was serialised on page four of the Daily Mail from 13 January 1915. He had written two collections of short stories, The Lieutenant and Others and Sergeant and Others, both of which were published by Hodder & Stoughton in 1916 and 1918. He died of throat cancer in 1937, which has been attributed to damage sustained from a gas attack in the war. He is buried at St Pancras Cathedral, London, with his wife, Violet Evelyn Baird Douglas, and their three children. He also leaves behind a wife and a son, Peter, who worked as an engineer in the Royal Engineers until he retired in the 1970s. He never married and never had any children of his own. He left the army to work as a war correspondent for the Times and the Sunday Times.
He later had a series of successful short stories published under the pen name ‘Sapper’ by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of The Daily Mail. The nickname was based on that of his corps, the Royal Engineer, and was used to refer to him as a soldier and a soldier. He did not like either of his given names but preferred to be called Cyril, although he was always known by his friends as Mac. He spent time with a number of Royal Engineer units on the Western Front, including 1st Field Squadron RE, 15th Field Company RE and RE elements of the 33rd Division. In 1914 he was promoted to the rank of captain. On 2 November 1914 he travelled to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force. On 31 October 1914, he travelled via England and married Violet Evely Baird Douglas on 31 November 1914. He and his wife were later known as the Sappers. In 1920 he published Bulldog. Drummond, whose eponymous hero became his best-known creation. He went on to have a successful career as a writer and a screenwriter. His novels and story collections included two characters who appeared as protagonists in their own works, Jim Maitland and Ronald Standish. His last novel, The Ripper, was published in 1926. He retired from the army in 1928. He lived in London and died in 1937. His family had ancestral roots from Belfast and Scotland, and counted a general in the British Indian Army among their members.
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