Faber & Faber

Wallace Breem (1926-90) only wrote three novels - Eagle in the Snow (1970), The Legate's Daughter (1975) and The Leopard and the Cliff (1978). The third, in particular, remains just as powerful today as it ever did, its Third Afghan War setting resonating with the war that rages today. A serving soldier himself, Breem was well-equipped to portray the futility of war. He was an extraordinary man, as his literary executor Bruce Coward testifies.

Bruce Coward writes:

Wallace Breem’s first novel, Eagle in the Snow, was highly praised by Mary Renault and Rosemary Sutcliff, among others, when it first appeared in 1970. It was set on the Rhine frontier at the time of the disintegration of the Roman Empire at the end of the fourth century A.D.

His third and last book, The Leopard and the Cliff, an equally compelling novel, is also concerned with another great empire beginning to disintegrate at its frontiers. In this case it is the British Empire and the setting is the North-West Frontier in 1919 - in the political no-man’s-land between British India and Afghanistan. The novel is a fictionalised account of an actual episode during the Third Afghan War and is, in a way, complementary to its predecessor. Although published over thirty years ago its subject is even more topical today than it was in 1978.

It is the gallant and tragic story of a small British-led force of no more than six British officers, a score of Pathan officers and 1,500 men, the majority drawn from local tribesmen of dubious loyalty, which is ordered to withdraw from its remote outposts when faced by a sudden uprising of the surrounding tribes. The commanding officer is killed on the first day and his place is taken by his second-in-command, Charles Sandeman, a passed-over Major who is deeply concerned for his wife who, far away in Simla is expecting their first child. To Sandeman falls the task of leading the withdrawal through extremely hostile country and under ceaseless attack. Water is very short, men die of heatstroke and there is treachery and desertion. Before the end Sandeman is the only surviving Briton. Eventually he succeeds in getting the survivors through to safety but at the cost of his own life. The final pages bring the story irresistibly to a bitter and yet noble end and contain some of Breem’s finest writing.

Wallace Breem was supremely well-qualified to write The Leopard and the Cliff because, on leaving Westminster School, he volunteered for service in the Indian Army - British service holding little attraction for him - and was commissioned into the Guides in 1945. He served with them on the North-West frontier until partition in 1947 gaining valuable first-hand knowledge of its peoples, languages and customs which were to stand him in good stead when he came to write his final novel.

After Independence Breem’s services were no longer required in what had become Pakistan so he returned to the UK and, after trying several careers which included assisting a veterinary surgeon, working in a tannery and rent collecting in the East End, he joined the staff of the Inner Temple Library in 1950. Librarianship proving congenial he remained with the Library until his sudden death in 1990 eventually becoming Librarian and Keeper of Manuscripts of the Inner Temple. He also helped to found the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians of which he was President at the time of his death.