Allan Mallinson
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Brigadier Allan Mallinson is an English author and serving cavalry officer the British Army. Mallinson originally trained for the Anglican priesthood, but joined the army in 1969 and served with the infantry in Malaya, Cyprus and Northern Ireland. He commanded the 13th/18th Royal Hussars (Queen Mary's Own) from 1988 to 1991, in Cyprus and Norway. He has served as the British Military Attaché in Rome.
Mallinson is best known for writing a series of novels chronicling the (fictional) life of Matthew Hervey, a junior officer serving in the (fictional) British 6th Light Dragoons from the late Napoleonic Wars through subsequent colonial conflicts in North America and India.
The Hervey novels are similar to the Sharpe novels of Bernard Cornwell, although Hervey is a "proper" officer and not raised from the ranks, in the cavalry not the infantry, and campaigning mainly after (not during) the Napoleonic Wars. In UK hardback publication order, the Hervey novels are:
- A Close Run Thing (1999) : Cornet Hervey's adventures before and during the Battle of Waterloo.
- The Nizam's Daughters (2000) : Hervey in India, defending the fictional princely state of Chintal (published in the US as Honourable Company).
- A Regimental Affair (2001) : problems in the regiment in England and Canada.
- A Call to Arms (2002): back in India, an independent excursion on the borders of Burma.
- The Sabre's Edge (2003): set in the First Burmese War in 1824, and the siege of Bhurtpore in 1826.
- Rumours of War (2004): Hervey in Portugal in 1826, with flashbacks to the Peninsular War before the battle of Corunna.
- An Act of Courange (2005): Hervey imprisoned at Badajoz at Christmas 1826, with further flashbacks to the Peninsular War in 1812.
Mallinson has also written a non-fiction Light Dragoons, a non-fictional history of the four light cavalry regiments of the British Army. It was published in 1993, soon after he relinquished command of 13th/18th Royal Hussars (which includes (in merged form) two of the light dragoon regiments: the 13th was originally raised as a heavy dragoon regiment in 1715 but later converted to light dragoons; the 18th was raised as a light dragoon regiment in 1759; both retitled as hussars in 1861, merged together in 1922 and then merged with the 15th/19th The King’s Royal Hussars to form the present Light Dragoons in 1992).