The Ravi Lancers

In his new novel John Masters returns to an old love, the Indian Army, but chooses a new setting: the trenches of Flanders in the early months of the Great War. The Ravi Lancers are an anomaly, the private regiment of an Indian prince, serving with the British. Their new commanding officer, Warren Bateman, a seconded Indian cavalryman, is determined to mould the regiment into a first-class fighting force, although like all the best officers of the old Indian Army he is sympathetic to his men. They, though, owe their allegiance to the second-in-command, Prince Krishna Ram, the Rajah's heir and a demi-god. It was Krishna's anglophile enthusiasm which brought the Lancers to the Western Front. But once there bitter conflict becomes inevitable. The tension between these two men moves to a more personal level when, during leave in England, Krishna has a passionate affair with Warren's sister, while Warren learns of his wife's unfaithfulness with another man. Private and military pressures combine to harden and embitter Bateman. He becomes a tyrant to his men, suppressing their traditions and religious customs, without which they are more than ever demoralised. Only one living writer could have done justice to this subject: the clash between two men and their women; between two sorts of military tradition; between infinitely different cultures. As before in John Masters's novels East and West do meet, but the result is as tragic as it is poignant. The Ravi Lancers is a magnificent and moving novel: as powerful as anything its author has ever written.