Drums Along the Khyber

James Ogilvie emerges from Sandhurst a young subaltern bound for his baptism of fire in India.

Two generations of Ogilvies have served the 114th Highlanders, the Queen’s Own Royal Strathspeys.

James Ogilvie is the third generation.

Pitchforked with mixed feelings into imperial Britain’s elite military academy, Sandhurst, and then into the family regiment, he finds himself in 1894 a subaltern en route to India – a torrid journey out that teaches him the first lessons of military life and the command of men.

His initiation is made more difficult by the vindictive attentions of the adjutant, Captain Black, and by the high expectations placed on him by his own irascible father, his Divisional Commander on the North West Frontier of India.

Ogilvie gets his first taste of action when the Royal Strathspeys are sent through the Khyber Pass to contain the rebel Ahmed Khan outside Jalalabad.

Fighting the border tribesmen brings brushes with death, but also many opportunities for the kind of glory that can forge a distinguished military career.

But as the campaign goes on, Ogilvie also starts to doubt the entire Imperial project.

‘Drums Along the Khyber’ is a thrilling historical adventure story, rich in period detail. It is the first in the Ogilvie series of novels by Philip McCutchan.

‘The adventure-writer succeeds who makes you read faster than you really can…Drums Along the Khyber has something of this quality’ – The Sunday Times

Philip McCutchan (1920-1996) grew up in the naval atmosphere of Portsmouth Dockyard and developed a lifetime's interest in the sea. Military history was an early interest resulting in several fiction books, from amongst his large output, about the British Army and its campaigns, especially in the last 150 years.

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