Now some years ago I read and enjoyed the author's 'The Last English King' so I approached this with high hopes but whilst I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, it is a rather long and there some fairly dull philosophical rants therein, I generally found myself engrossed in it. Seduced by the glamour of battle little Jose reluctantly serves as courier, linguist, pimp and mascot to survive. Joseph Bosham, self-styled third Viscount of Bosham, with a half-English Catholic priest for a father and an Italian brothel-keeper for a mother, educated in mathematics, music and philosophy but with a natural gift for languages and depravity, is born in the 1790s and settled in a turbulent Spain just as the great armies of Wellington and Napoleon vie for supremacy during the Peninsular Wars. But Rathbone never quite made it into the wider public consciousness.
Both were historical novels: first King Fisher Lives, a taut adventure revolving around a guru figure, in 1976, and, secondly, Joseph, set during the Peninsular War and written in an 18th-century prose style, in 1979. Just as his subject matter changed markedly over the years, so too did his readers and his publishers.Īmong his more than 40 books two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Arguably, his experiment with different genres and thus his refusal to be typecast cost him a wider audience than he enjoyed.
He was difficult to pigeonhole because his scope was so broad. The prolific author Julian Rathbone was a writer of crime stories, mysteries and thrillers who also turned his hand to the historical novel, science fiction and even horror - and much of his writing had strong political and social dimensions. His great-uncle was the actor and great Sherlock Holmes interpreter Basil Rathbone, although they never met. Julian Christopher Rathbone was born in 1935 in Blackheath, southeast London.
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