20 Timeless Tales of Adventure
by Richard DaviesForgotten Adventurers
The Dangerous Book
of Heroes
Con & David Iggulden
From the co-author of the bestselling 'The Dangerous Book for Boys', this is a book of heroes, new and old, known and sadly forgotten, now glorified as they ought to be. From Captain Scott to Joe Simpson, from Douglas Bader to Ernest Shackleton, from Gertrude Bell to Emily Pankhurst, Conn Iggulden brings our great heroes from history back to life. Filled with the British sense of fair play and decency that made 'The Dangerous Book for Boys' so popular, 'The Dangerous Book of Heroes' celebrates those who fought for what is right and good, those who made amazing discoveries, those who moved boundaries in their lifetimes.
I read a good number of books. Some stick with me. Some fade away very quickly. Those rollicking tales of adventure I read mostly as a child are ingrained into my mind. I have revisited some of them as an adult and the experience can be exhilarating. Not only do the heroes and villains come rushing back, but the bedroom where I first read that tale of bravery, conflict, and intrigue returns into focus. Adventures in faraway places, especially when they are entwined with historical facts, just don’t seem that far-fetched when you are eight or nine. Anything is possible.
Smuggling, pirates, desert islands, rebellions, undiscovered regions, forts, spies, family feuds, nature at its most brutal and lots of fights are the stuff of old-fashioned adventure yarns. The 20 books below all have staying power and should never be forgotten. Many were published at the start of the 20th century, a golden age for adventure (because the world was actually like that to some extent), but the genre as we know it dates back to Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in 1719. Hollywood has always loved these books because the plots put the characters in physical danger, and twisted and turned to keep you reading.
Many of these novels were intended for children but, like so many good books, were also adored by adults. Perhaps it’s time for a hefty dose of nostalgia or even to discover the ones you missed. If you know a teenager glued to the Nintendo, introduce them to my friends, Davie Balfour, Jim Hawkins, Allan Quatermain and Richard Hannay. They are more super than Mario.
Also check out a selection of recommendations from your fellow book lovers at the bottom of the page.
Top 20 Timeless Tales of Adventure
1. Eagle of the Ninth Rosemary Sutcliff
(1954)
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This adventure (written for children) set in Roman Britain left an indelible mark on my childhood. It’s about a young Roman officer’s quest to discover the truth about the disappearance of his father’s legion when attempting to tame the Celts. Rather like Kipling looking at the British living among the Indians, Sutcliff describes the Romans living among the barbarian British. The glory of Rome is far away. A movie adaptation of the book has been announced for 2010.
2. Moonfleet
J. Meade Falkner
(1954)
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There’s nothing like beating the system. For centuries, smuggling was an essential part of life after-dark on Britain’s south coast. Every visit to Dorset in my summer holidays inspired me to re-read this book and every seaside pub looked like a haven for contraband. The hero is 15-year-old orphan John Trenchard, who tangles with a gang of smugglers and their desperate quest for a huge diamond. It’s a breathless adventure with murder, mystery, and intrigue.
3. Kidnapped
Robert Louis Stevenson
(1886)
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I’m sorry but Kidnapped is better than Treasure Island. Although young Davie Balfour is the main protagonist, I always loved the character of Alan Breck Stewart – the Scottish resistance fighter who really existed.
Set in 1752, the plot focuses on the murder of Colin Campbell. It uses real events to great effect and Davie’s travels around the Highlands are memorably described. A sequel, Catriona, was penned in 1893.
4. King Solomon’s Mines
H. Rider Haggard
(1885)
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I loved this story because it took me to faraway places. Allan Quatermain (a wonderful name) leads some adventurers deep into an unexplored region of Africa. In the 1970s, an undiscovered region sounded quite feasible to me – in 1885, it was very feasible. The book sparked of a flurry of Africa-based adventure tales. Haggard wrote the story very quickly after someone challenged him to write something as good as Treasure Island.
5. The Thirty-Nine Steps
John Buchan
(1915)
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I fear today’s teenagers might think this is a very long self-help book. John Buchan was a stuffy old aristocrat but The Thirty-Nine Steps is a thrilling spy adventure. Like Buchan, the hero Richard Hannay has a stiff upper lip but he’s also an all-action hero. Set in 1914, the Great War is just days away and spies are on every corner. There’s a murderous German plot to steal Britain’s military secrets and Hannay clocks up the train miles to defend King and country.
6. The Gun
CS Forester
(1933)
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Remember the movie version? It was called The Pride and the Passion and starred Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and an incredibly foxy Sophia Loren.
The Gun tells the story of a British officer and a group of Spanish guerrilla fighters, who drag a massive cannon across Spain in a bid to capture a key town from Bonaparte’s French. Forester is famous for his eternally popular Hornblower books but The Gun deserves to be reloaded.
7. Lorna Doone
RD Blackmore
(1869)
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Whoa! This is a romance I hear you say. I sneaked Lorna Doone off my sister’s bookshelf and its intrigue, loads of nasty violence and vicious arch villain, made it seem more like an historical adventure to me. Only 500 first editions were printed. Seventeenth century Somerset, famed for cider, and Devon, famed for cream teas, are portrayed as rural, rough and lawless. Sort of like Tombstone with thatched cottages. The book popularized the name, Lorna.
8. Jamaica Inn
Daphne du Maurier
(1946)
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I sneaked this one off my mother’s bookshelf. Like Lorna Doone, Jamaica Inn is hardly a romance – it’s another breathless adventure where the pub trade is once again closely linked with the smuggling business. This time Cornwall gets the criminal treatment. Poor 23-year-old Mary Yellan goes to live with her aunt at Jamaica Inn but her aunt’s husband is up to no good. Wreckers abound. Bodmin Moor also has a starring role – it’s more threatening than Hardy’s tedious Egdon Heath.
9. The Call of the Wild
Jack London
(1903)
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London’s finest hour, The Call of the Wild is one heck of a dog book. Buck’s natural instincts of survival kick in after he ends up as a sled dog in the Yukon during the 19th century Klondike gold rush. This is a tough, uncompromising story with violence and evil.
London actually left the warmth of California to join the Gold Rush where he had a miserable time and caught Scurvy. If you enjoy The Call of the Wild, you’ll also like White Fang by London.
10. Beau Geste
P. C. Wren
(1924)
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A classic tale of family honour where the French Foreign Legion battles Tuareg rebels in the North African deserts. I have always loved the idea of the fort being manned by a troop of dead soldiers – it’s one of the classic scenes in literature.
Would a child reading this book today understand the principle of honour and the desire to avoid family disgrace which is the fundamental theme behind this novel? Hollywood used to love this book, I still do.
11. The Four Feathers
A.E.W. Mason
(1902)
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I love this book. Like Beau Geste, it’s hopelessly old fashioned and also concerns honour among Britain’s warlike toffs. There was nothing worse than being called coward in Empire-building Britain. Harry Feversham loses everything after being labelled a coward through the presentation of four feathers. Harry bids to restore his honour in Africa where the Dervishes are battling General Gordon’s British forces. Damn, the Brits are good in a fight.
12. Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
(1883)
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My favourite scene is when Billy Bones is handed the black spot by the world’s scariest blind man but I also love the battle for the stockade - my favourite character is cheese-obsessed Ben Gunn. It scares me that today’s generation of children could miss out on reading books like Treasure Island. The hero is just a kid, the villain is unforgettable and the story’s dominant character, there’s plenty of fighting and the tension builds and builds.
13. The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
(1844)
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I have always thought revenge was a sweet topic for adventure yarns.
Captain Edmond Dantès is falsely imprisoned but he encounters a priest in jail who gives him the location of a secret treasure trove. Dantès escapes, becomes the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo and sets about gaining revenge.
Much better than The Three Musketeers novels. They literally don’t write books like this anymore.
14. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
(1719)
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The great granddaddy of all adventure books. Three hundred years ago, Britain ruled the world’s waves and shipwrecks were commonplace. This novel was probably influenced by experiences of Alexander Selkirk, who was marooned on an island in the Pacific for four years. People say it’s an example of British colonialism. I think the book simply plays on the very basic fear of being isolated from humanity. Footprints in the sand! Skim over the racist descriptions of Friday.
15. The Prisoner of Zenda
Anthony Hope
(1894)
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It took me a long time to realize that Ruritania is a made-up nation. I thought it had been rubbed off the map following World War I.
This adventure novel uses the old lookalike theme (Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper, CS Lewis’ The Horse and his Boy etc ). The king of Ruritania is abducted and a holidaying British toff, who looks the spitting image of his highness, steps into this place.
16. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Jules Verne
(1870)
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We can’t really exclude Verne from this list although Vingt mille lieues sous les mers is really a science fiction novel. Twenty Thousand Leagues refers to the distance travelled under water and not the depth. Captain Nemo, the Nautilus and the fight with the giant squids are all part of literary history. Verne’s rip-roaring yarn didn’t stay science fiction for long - he illustrated the military might submarines would soon wield over surface vessels.
17. Kim
Rudyard Kipling
(1901)
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The Great Game (the rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in central Asia) provides the back-drop to this novel.
Kim is the orphaned son of an Irish soldier living on his wits. He becomes involved with a Tibetan Lama and the British secret services in the push and shove against the Russians.
The well-travelled Kipling delves deeply into Indian culture and religion.
18. The Lost World
Arthur Conan Doyle
(1912)
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Never mind the arrogant Sherlock Holmes, follow the pushy Professor Challenger to a South American plateau where dinosaurs are alive and well and hungry. A science fiction romp, of course, but it sparked the ‘Lost World’ genre. Plenty of pterodactyls and a race of ape-men too. Easy to confuse this book with Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot, published four years later, where German submariners discover a lost land.
19. Lost in the Barrens
Farley Mowat
(1956)
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This children’s novel penned by Mowat, a Canadian legend, is also known as Two Against the North.
Two boys, one white and one from the Cree tribe, try to help a starving native village but become trapped in Canada’s frozen tundra in deep winter. They battle a giant bear in an unforgettable sequence, snow blindness, river rapids and the freezing temperatures.
20. The Wool-Pack
Cynthia Harnett
(1951)
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I’m putting this one in for Mrs Hughes, my old English teacher, who made us read this book in school. It won the Carnegie Medal in 1951.
Set 600 years before insider trading, AIG bonuses and Bernie Madoff, this book focuses on corporate intrigue in the wool trade. Nicholas Fetterlock and Cecily Bradshaw take on some wooly villains.
A children’s book jammed full of history.
We asked you to tell us about your favorite timeless tales of adventure – here’s a selection of recommendations from you.
Dawn says…
“I love adventure stories, fell in love as a girl with Robin Hood (I wanted to be him, mind you), not Maid Marian, never looked back. Have read most of your list and seen films I liked a lot too, especially the Four Feathers remake (with Heath Ledger, poor dear) and The Man Who Would Be King. But one I love and have read many times even though it is not great literature is Lord Johnnie by Leslie White. If you love swashbuckling romance and a bit of history, you should enjoy it. Published in 1949, it's the tale of a rugged, handsome villain turned hero by circumstances. Narrow escapes, battles at sea, swordfights, romance on the run, it will keep your light on after you should be asleep. Good reading, adventure lovers!”
Jason says…
“I loved your list. There are many that I read as a young boy. My favourite adventure book is The Odyssey by Homer.”
Les says…
“How can you leave Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn off the list? You don't need a ‘Why’ for any of those books!”
Tor says…
“Great selection. How about Howard Pease? Swallows and Amazons?”
Donald says…
“Who can compare with Tarzan? Especially the first four or five - well defined heroes, adventure, loyalty, bravery. Anyone who has actually read a couple of them will agree, I'm 56 and still have a faint hope that I'll grow up to be Tarzan.”
Lynn says…
“Prester John by John Buchan - this was on the Grade 9 English curriculum in Ontario back in the 1960s but I've revisited it a few times since then. I still have my old school copy. This book led me to read pretty much everything else Buchan wrote. It's a great adventure tale about a young Scot, David, who goes to work in rural South Africa around the turn of the 20th century. There, he becomes aware of a native uprising led by an imposing black minister, Reverend John Laputa, whom he (David) had encountered years before in Scotland. Laputa claims to be the successor of an ancient mythical ruler called Prester John. He is quite mad, but has convinced thousands of natives to follow him into a violent rebellion against British colonial rule. Although this, along with Buchan's other books, is quite dated with respect to many shameful aspects of colonial policy, race relations, etc. it is nonetheless still a very enjoyable and well written escapade.”
Ann says…
“I always loved She by Rider Haggard - the story of the eternally beautiful princess in the heart of Africa waiting through the ages for the return of her mortal lover. Granted, some of the African events were pretty silly, but the allure of ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed’ persists - right down to her name being used by Rumpole of the Bailey to describe his own domestic goddess, Hilda. It was wonderful and terrifying, thrilling, romantic, and very adventurous.”
Greg says…
“No list of adventure books is complete without The Riddle of the Sands, a forerunner of the contemporary thriller. Author Erskine Childers' eventful life adds a certain romantic cachet to the novel, too.”
Bill says…
The Falcons of France. I picked this up in my middle school library and later saved up my lunch money to buy my own copy. It is still sitting on the shelf and I re-read it about every five years. It would make a smashing good movie, if Peter Jackson could get away from the Rings to do it.”
Terry says…
Drums Along the Mohawk by Walter Edmonds. I started reading this book as a book report for school. Don't ask me what grade I was in, too long ago! But there was one chapter that kept me glued to the pages - Adam Helmer's Run. The Indians kept closing in on him as he ran and you could feel his heart beating in his chest as he ran. Much later on in my life I enjoyed the occasional run. I always used my imagination when running long distances. But I got the most mileage out of my body when I imagined being chased by extremely pissed off Iroquois Indians! This chapter in this book has stayed with me for well over 40 years.”
Colleen says…
“My fave classic is Three Musketeers by Dumas. All that swashbuckling action is fascinating - and of course leads to reading other Dumas tales. In more modern tales, Randy Wayne White can pull you right in with Doc Ford and his hippie buddy Tomlinson, down at Sanibel Island. As a former black ops agent, Doc Ford becomes embroiled in incredible adventures when occasionally called back into action.”
Peter says…
“My best beloved adventure stories are the Africa stories of Edgar Wallace. I grew up with them, knew a lot of them by heart and even today they appeal as a reminder of a lost world.”
Michael says…
“Your writer claims they don't write novels like The Count of Monte Cristo anymore. Not so. Might I suggest Alfred Bester's extraordinary science fiction novel The Stars My Destination, with a superficially similar plot, but much better written.”
Susannah says…
I'd add to the list - The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton; Nada the Lily, She, and The Brethren by Rider Haggard; Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini; Greenmantle, Mr Standfast, The Three Hostages, Salute to Adventurers, John Macnab, and Huntingtower by John Buchan; The Refugees, The White Company, and Sir Nigel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; Winning His Spurs by GA Henty; Journey Through the Night by Anne de Vries (known in Holland as Reis Door de Nacht); and of course, no list of pre-1960s adventure is complete without a mention of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.”
Love adventure novels? Tell us what’s your all-time favorite adventure novel and why.
For more summer reads check out our Retro Summer Reading feature.
More for the armchair adventurer:
- Big on Biggles
- There and Back Again - History of the Hobbit
- Philip Pullman: The Most Dangerous Man in England?
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