Conocimiento común

Nombre legal: Petty, Alan Edwin
Fecha de nacimiento: 1946
Género: male
Nacionalidad: UK
País (para mapa): UK
Educación: Oxford University
Ocupaciones: soldier
diplomat
security analyst
writer
novelist
Premios y honores: Granta's Best of Young British Novelists (1983)
Royal Society of Literature (1990)
Biografía breve: Alan Judd is a pseudonym of Alan Edwin Petty, born in the UK. A graduate of Oxford University, he served as an officer in the British Army in Northern Ireland before later joining the Foreign Office. Since then, he has worked as a security analyst and a journalist. It was while working for the Foreign Office that he began writing novels. He made his literary debut with A Breed of Heroes (1981), which won the Winifred Holtby Award and was adapted by the BBC into a television drama. The main character, Charles Thoroughgood, returned in three more books so far, Legacy (2001), Uncommon Enemy (2012), and Inside Enemy (2014). Other novels include Short of Glory (1984), Tango (1989), and The Noonday Devil (1987). His historical fiction includes The Kaiser's Last Kiss (2003), which was adapted into the film The Exception in 2016, and Dancing With Eva (2007). In 1990, he published a biography of Ford Madox Ford, and wrote another novel, The Devil's Own Work (1991), paying homage to Ford. Judd is a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator. In 1990, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Miembros

Reseñas

A Fine Madness por Alan Judd

This may take some time to get into, in the vein of Wolf Hall, but if you keep at it, there's a nice narrative in here.

Denunciada

JBD1 | 2 reseñas más. | Apr 18, 2024 |

Queen & Country por Alan Judd

I have not read any of the earlier novels featuring Charles Thoroughgood, although this stood fairly well on its own. I enjoyed it, but the whole plot felt extremely unlikely - I really hope the chiefs at MI6 are a bit more on top of things...

Denunciada

pgchuis | Jul 21, 2023 |

Accidental Agent por Alan Judd

Based in the period of the Brexit negotiations between Britain and the European Union, Judd paints a picture of the stratagems of both sides in order to meet their goals and the almost inevitable resulting compromise to allow each to say that these have been met. The main characters are Charles Thoroughgood, chief of MI6 and his deputy, Gareth Hawley, who aspires to become chief on Thoroughgood’s imminent retirement. Into the main storyline, is interwoven the possible Islamic threat posed by the godson of Thoroughgood’s wife, Sarah. Although Judd captures the tension of the negotiations well and the bureaucracy that frustrates and annoys Thoroughgood at his work, Hawley’s actions seem out of character with his previous career and thus undermine and weaken the end of the book.… (más)

Denunciada

camharlow2 | Dec 27, 2022 |

A Fine Madness: Sunday Times 'Historical… por Alan Judd

Oh, I really liked this. I think it helped that I know little enough of Marlowe to begin with that I wasn’t irked about errors or fabrications in his biography. If anything, the book has inspired me to read more about Marlowe.
What I also really like is that this book could have been a thriller of derring do and using Kit as and “action hero”. Judd doesn’t do this. This is told by a character (a specialist in cyphers and fellow “spy”) who is imprisoned in the Tower and is interviewed by someone 30 years after Marlowe’s death. The interview is being conducted apparently about Marlowe by order of the King.
It’s all about Kit’s character and more so his way of thinking, with his search for honesty (and whether it can be found in religion) in the foreground.
The suspense element is built around us not knowing why Thomas is being questioned about Marlowe.
It does become clear in the last chapter but in keeping with the espionage theme and the vagueness and ambiguity of what each of the characters say to each other, it is never spelled out for the reader.

Apart from the investigation into Marlowe’s thinking and character (both of which I thought were done really well), I loved the structure and style in which the story was told. I totally felt immersed in the Jacobean politics and plotting that made it impossible to trust any of the characters completely. Judd pitched this against the main character describing Marlowe’s search for truth in everything, which I felt was a superb contrast to the description of the environment in which Marlowe lived.

The ending also really worked for me. It finally touches on a point that other books such as Tamburlaine Must Die have picked up about Marlowe, but I really liked how Judd deals with it. Again, it seemed that Judd acknowledges that too little fact is known to be certain of much about Marlowe, and that speculation may actually distract from the bigger picture.

"What I can say is that a man is more than his proclivities. Christopher had hot blood and a fearless mind. He walked where the rest of us fear to tread and he dissolved my faith in the life to come. Yet he sought not to destroy, but to be true. His bequest to me was honest doubt. That is what I believe is important about him, more than his plays or his verses, of which I know sadly little. His life showed that the courage to be honest is the best exemplar of whatever life might be to come. If there is one. And if there is no life to come, only nothingness, then being honest about that and living fully in the face of nothing is an even greater virtue, the very best we can do. And that surely is deserving of something."

I very much look forward to reading more by Alan Judd.… (más)