John Masters
Encyclopedia
Lieutenant Colonel
Lieutenant colonel
Lieutenant colonel is a rank of commissioned officer in the armies and most marine forces and some air forces of the world, typically ranking above a major and below a colonel. The rank of lieutenant colonel is often shortened to simply "colonel" in conversation and in unofficial correspondence...

 John Masters, DSO
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...

 (1914–1983) was an English officer in the British Indian Army
British Indian Army
The British Indian Army, officially simply the Indian Army, was the principal army of the British Raj in India before the partition of India in 1947...

 and novelist. His works are noted for their treatment of the British Empire
British Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...

 in India.

Life

Masters was the son of a lieutenant-colonel whose family had a long tradition of service in the Indian Army. He was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst , commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is a British Army officer initial training centre located in Sandhurst, Berkshire, England...

. On graduating from Sandhurst in 1933, he was seconded to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry
The Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry was an infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 to 1959. Its lineage is continued today by The Rifles....

 (DCLI) for a year before applying to serve with the 4th Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles. He saw service on the North-West Frontier
North-West Frontier (military history)
The North-West Frontier was the most difficult area, from a military point of view, of the former British India in the Indian sub-continent. It remains the frontier of present-day Pakistan, extending from the Pamir Knot in the north to the Koh-i-Malik Siah in the west, and separating the...

 with the 2nd battalion of the regiment, and was rapidly given a variety of appointments within the battalion and the regimental depot, becoming the Adjutant
Adjutant
Adjutant is a military rank or appointment. In some armies, including most English-speaking ones, it is an officer who assists a more senior officer, while in other armies, especially Francophone ones, it is an NCO , normally corresponding roughly to a Staff Sergeant or Warrant Officer.An Adjutant...

 of the 2nd battalion in early 1939.

During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 his battalion was sent to Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

 in Iraq, during the brief Anglo-Iraqi War
Anglo-Iraqi War
The Anglo-Iraqi War was the name of the British campaign against the rebel government of Rashid Ali in the Kingdom of Iraq during the Second World War. The war lasted from 2 May to 31 May 1941. The campaign resulted in the re-occupation of Iraq by British armed forces and the return to power of the...

. Masters subsequently served in Iraq, Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

 and Persia
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

. In early 1942, he attended the Indian Army Staff College
Command and Staff College
The Command and Staff College was established in 1907 at Quetta, Balochistan, British Raj, now in Pakistan, and is the oldest and the most prestigious institution of the Pakistan Army. It was established in 1905 in Deolali and moved to its present location at Quetta in 1907 under the name of Quetta...

 at Quetta
Quetta
is the largest city and the provincial capital of the Balochistan Province of Pakistan. Known as the "Fruit Garden of Pakistan" due to the diversity of its plant and animal wildlife, Quetta is home to the Hazarganji Chiltan National Park, which contains some of the rarest species of wildlife in the...

. Here he met the wife of a fellow officer and began an affair. They were later to marry. This caused a small scandal at the time.

After Staff College he first served as Brigade Major
Brigade Major
In the British Army, a Brigade Major was the Chief of Staff of a brigade. He held the rank of Major and was head of the brigade's "G - Operations and Intelligence" section directly and oversaw the two other branches, "A - Administration" and "Q - Quartermaster"...

 in 114th Indian Infantry Brigade before being "poached" by "Joe" Lentaigne
Walter David Alexander Lentaigne
Lieutenant General Walter David Alexander Lentaigne, CB, CBE, DSO, British Indian Army. Sometimes called "Joe" Lentaigne.Walter Lentaigne was an officer in the British Indian Army. He fought in the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. During World War II he commanded a battalion during the 1942 Burma...

, another officer from 4th Gurkhas, to be Brigade Major in 111th Indian Infantry Brigade
111th Indian Infantry Brigade
The 111th Indian Infantry Brigade was an Infantry formation of the Indian Army during World War II. The brigade was formed in March 1943, in India as a Long Range Penetration Brigade attached to the Chindits 3rd Indian Infantry Division...

, a Chindit formation. From March, 1944, the brigade served behind the Japanese lines in Burma. On the death of General Orde Wingate on 24 April, Lentaigne became the Chindits' overall commander and Masters commanded the main body of 111 Brigade.

In May, the brigade was ordered to hold a position code-named ‘Blackpool’ near Mogaung
Mogaung
Mogaung is a town in Kachin State, Myanmar. It is situated on the Mandalay-Myitkyina railway line.-External links:* Falling Rain Genomics, Inc.* Maplandia.com...

 in northern Burma. The isolated position was attacked with great intensity for seventeen days and eventually the brigade was forced to withdraw. Masters had to order the medical orderlies to shoot 19 of his own men, casualties who had no hope of recovery or rescue. Masters later wrote about these events in the second volume of his autobiography, The Road Past Mandalay.

After briefly commanding the 3rd battalion of his regiment, Masters subsequently became GSO1 (the Chief of Staff) of Indian 19th Infantry Division, which was heavily involved in the later stages of the Burma Campaign
Burma Campaign 1944-1945
The Burma Campaign in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II was fought primarily between British Commonwealth, Chinese and United States forces against the forces of the Empire of Japan, who were assisted to some degree by Thailand, the Burmese Independence Army and the Indian National Army...

, until the end of the war. After a spell as a staff officer in GHQ India in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

, he then served as an instructor at the British Army Staff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley
Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, was a staff college for the British Army from 1802 to 1997, with periods of closure during major wars. In 1997 it was merged into the new Joint Services Command and Staff College.-Origins:...

. He left the army after this posting, and moved to the United States, where he attempted to set up a business promoting walking tours in the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

, one of his hobbies. The business was not a success and, to make ends meet, he decided to write of his experiences in the army. When his novels proved popular, he became a full-time writer.

In later life, Masters and his wife Barbara moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

, USA. He died in 1983 from complications following heart surgery. His family and friends scattered his ashes from an aeroplane over the mountain trails he loved to hike. General Sir Michael Rose
Hugh Michael Rose
General Sir Hugh Michael Rose KCB, CBE, DSO, QGM , often known as Mike Rose, is a retired British Army General. As well as commanding 22 Special Air Service Regiment, he was Commander UNPROFOR Bosnia in 1994 during the Yugoslav Wars.-Early life:The stepson of British author John Masters, Rose was...

, the former UN commander in Bosnia, is a stepson of Masters.

Personality

John Masters: a regimented life by John Clay was published by Michael Joseph in 1992. Now out of print, it is a sympathetic but not uncritical biography. According to Clay, Masters possessed a strong and sometimes domineering personality, and could be impatient with weakness or incompetence. He could also be extremely warmhearted and generous. His outgoing and boisterous personality flourished during his long residence in the United States, with its greater social freedoms. Masters was impatient with the literary establishment, which faulted his Indian novels as unsympathetic to Indians, and he was impatient with editors who wanted to remove the rough edges from his characters. Masters strove for accuracy and realism, resenting it when people mistook his characters' views as his own. He was extremely hard-working and meticulously well-organized, both as a soldier and a novelist. Clay speculates that Masters may have been driven to achieve by rumours that his family was not pure English, but Anglo-Indian or Eurasian. In 1962 Masters learned what he had apparently long suspected, that he did indeed have a distant Indian ancestor.

Clay's biography provides details that Masters omitted from the three volumes of autobiography he wrote: Bugles and a Tiger (1956); Road Past Mandalay (1961); and Pilgrim Son (1971). They are nevertheless extremely revealing. Bugles and a Tiger, which details Masters's time at Sandhurst and service on India's northwest frontier on the eve of World War II, is among the finest portraits of the profession of arms ever written. Road Past Mandalay deals mostly with the Burma campaign in World War II, while Pilgrim Son chronicles his career as a writer.

Treatment of India and the British Raj

Apart from the autobiographical works (mentioned above), Masters is also known for his historical novels set in India. Seven of these portray members of successive generations of the Savage family serving in the British Army in India in an attempt to trace the history of the British in India through the life of one family. In chronological order of events (but not in order of publication) these novels are:
  • Coromandel! (A 17th century English lad runs away to sea, ends up in India).
  • The Deceivers
    The Deceivers
    The Deceivers is a 1952 novel by John Masters on the Thuggee movement in India during British imperial rule. It was adapted in 1988 as the Merchant Ivory Productions film starring Shashi Kapoor, Pierce Brosnan, Bijaya Jena, Saeed Jaffrey and Dalip Tahil....

    (An English officer goes undercover to root out the ritual murders of Thuggee
    Thuggee
    Thuggee is the term for a particular kind of murder and robbery of travellers in South Asia and particularly in India.They are sometimes called Phansigar i.e...

    ).
  • Nightrunners of Bengal
    Nightrunners of Bengal
    Nightrunners of Bengal is the title of the first novel by John Masters. It was published in the United States in January 1951 by the Viking Press, New York, and at first attracted severe criticism from some reviewers who objected to what they regarded as its imperialist viewpoint and graphic...

    (The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857).
  • The Lotus and the Wind
    The Lotus and the Wind
    The Lotus and the Wind is a spy novel by John Masters. It continues his saga of the Savage family, who are part of the British Raj in India, and is set against the backdrop of the Great Game, the period of tension between Britain and Russia in Central Asia during the late nineteenth century.-Plot...

    (The Great Game
    The Great Game
    The Great Game or Tournament of Shadows in Russia, were terms for the strategic rivalry and conflict between the British Empire and the Russian Empire for supremacy in Central Asia. The classic Great Game period is generally regarded as running approximately from the Russo-Persian Treaty of 1813...

     of British and Russia
    Russia
    Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

    n spies on the Northwest Frontier
    Northwest Frontier
    North West Frontier is a 1959 British adventure film starring Kenneth More and Lauren Bacall. The film was directed by J. Lee Thompson from a screenplay by Robin Estridge and also features Wilfrid Hyde-White, Herbert Lom and I. S...

    ).
  • Far, Far the Mountain Peak (Mountaineering
    Mountaineering
    Mountaineering or mountain climbing is the sport, hobby or profession of hiking, skiing, and climbing mountains. While mountaineering began as attempts to reach the highest point of unclimbed mountains it has branched into specialisations that address different aspects of the mountain and consists...

     and World War I
    World War I
    World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

    ).
  • Bhowani Junction
    Bhowani Junction
    Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian community, who were closely involved with the Indian railway system...

    (Britain's exodus and the Partition of India
    Partition of India
    The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...

    ).
  • To the Coral Strand (An ex-officer refuses to go gracefully after Indian independence).
  • The Ravi Lancers
    The Ravi Lancers
    The Ravi Lancers is a novel by John Masters, part of his series of novels portraying the British Raj through the experiences of members of the Savage family....

    (an offshoot of the series, set in World War I
    World War I
    World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

     with one of the protagonists related to the Savages but having a different name).

The Deceivers was filmed in 1988 and starred Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years...

. The best-known film is probably Bhowani Junction
Bhowani Junction
Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian community, who were closely involved with the Indian railway system...

, which concerns the Partition of India
Partition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...

 and the Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...

 community. It starred Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...

. Four of the novels (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th & 6th in the series) were adapted for an 18-part serial in BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

's Classic Serial slot, being broadcast from October 1984 to January 1985.

One of Masters's last Indian novels, The Venus of Konpara
The Venus of Konpara
The Venus of Konpara is a novel by John Masters which draws on an extreme version of the "Aryan Invasion Theory" model of ancient Indian history, according to which invading Aryan barbarians ruthlessly crushed underfoot the indigenous Dravidian peoples of the country, forcing them into the...

, is notable for the fact that its principal characters are Indians. The Savage family play no role in the storyline, though it is hinted that a minor unidentified character is a family member. It is set in the nineteenth century during the Raj, but explores the history of Indo-Aryan
Indo-Aryans
Indo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...

 and Dravidian identities in the country.

Unsurprisingly, considering the subject, Masters's works are not without their critics, many of whom simply reflect their own thinking about British imperialism rather than addressing the literary quality of Masters' work. Those who are hostile to the Empire criticise his work as revisionist—without specifying what is being "revised"—or as uncritical of the Empire. Typical are the observations of one Ronald Brydon: "For us, the saga of the Savages, heroes and conquistadors of the Raj, was a political pornography in which we savoured the illicit sensualities of imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

."

Others have detected a greater sophistication in Masters's dealings with the British Empire. Both Nightrunners of Bengal
Nightrunners of Bengal
Nightrunners of Bengal is the title of the first novel by John Masters. It was published in the United States in January 1951 by the Viking Press, New York, and at first attracted severe criticism from some reviewers who objected to what they regarded as its imperialist viewpoint and graphic...

and The Ravi Lancers
The Ravi Lancers
The Ravi Lancers is a novel by John Masters, part of his series of novels portraying the British Raj through the experiences of members of the Savage family....

contain sympathetic portrayals of Indian nationalists, and portray irreconcilable tensions between British and Indian characters that mirror the conflicts of the Raj in a manner comparable to E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society...

's A Passage to India
A Passage to India
A Passage to India is a novel by E. M. Forster set against the backdrop of the British Raj and the Indian independence movement in the 1920s. It was selected as one of the 100 great works of English literature by the Modern Library and won the 1924 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Time...

. The descendent of the hero of the former novel (who is in practice manifestly the same character) experiences the Partition of India
Partition of India
The Partition of India was the partition of British India on the basis of religious demographics that led to the creation of the sovereign states of the Dominion of Pakistan and the Union of India on 14 and 15...

 with a resigned detachment and later undergoes a deep personal crisis which ends with his staying on in independent India rather than returning to Britain. One Indian novelist (Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh is a prominent Indian novelist and journalist. Singh's weekly column, "With Malice towards One and All", carried by several Indian newspapers, is among the most widely-read columns in the country....

) remarked that while Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

 understood India, John Masters understood Indians.

Other themes

Masters's trilogy of Now God Be Thanked, Heart of War, and In The Green Of The Spring may be considered his magnum opus, covering the changes to various segments of British society wrought by the upheavals of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. The Ravi Lancers is also set in the First World War, but concerns the exploits of an Indian regiment, the commander of which is related to the Savage family. Masters's book Man of War appears to be the first of a similar trilogy on World War II however the author died before any other connected books were published.

Another recurrent theme in Masters's work is rock climbing
Rock climbing
Rock climbing also lightly called 'The Gravity Game', is a sport in which participants climb up, down or across natural rock formations or artificial rock walls. The goal is to reach the summit of a formation or the endpoint of a pre-defined route without falling...

.

In the fifties and sixties his books sold in large numbers, particularly Bhowani Junction (which was also translated into various other languages). Some of his works are now out of print.

Publications

  • The Compleat Indian Angler (1938) Country Life, London, with numerous ink drawings and paintings by the author's father. Now available as a reprint edition.
  • Nightrunners of Bengal
    Nightrunners of Bengal
    Nightrunners of Bengal is the title of the first novel by John Masters. It was published in the United States in January 1951 by the Viking Press, New York, and at first attracted severe criticism from some reviewers who objected to what they regarded as its imperialist viewpoint and graphic...

    (1951)
  • The Deceivers
    The Deceivers
    The Deceivers is a 1952 novel by John Masters on the Thuggee movement in India during British imperial rule. It was adapted in 1988 as the Merchant Ivory Productions film starring Shashi Kapoor, Pierce Brosnan, Bijaya Jena, Saeed Jaffrey and Dalip Tahil....

    (1952)
  • The Lotus and the Wind
    The Lotus and the Wind
    The Lotus and the Wind is a spy novel by John Masters. It continues his saga of the Savage family, who are part of the British Raj in India, and is set against the backdrop of the Great Game, the period of tension between Britain and Russia in Central Asia during the late nineteenth century.-Plot...

    (1953)
  • Bhowani Junction
    Bhowani Junction
    Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian community, who were closely involved with the Indian railway system...

    (1954)
  • Coromandel! (1955)
  • Bugles and a Tiger (1956)
  • Far, Far the Mountain Peak (1957)
  • Fandango Rock (1959)
  • The Venus of Konpara
    The Venus of Konpara
    The Venus of Konpara is a novel by John Masters which draws on an extreme version of the "Aryan Invasion Theory" model of ancient Indian history, according to which invading Aryan barbarians ruthlessly crushed underfoot the indigenous Dravidian peoples of the country, forcing them into the...

    (1960)
  • The Road Past Mandalay (1961)
  • To the Coral Strand (1962)
  • Trial at Monomoy (1964)
  • Fourteen Eighteen (1965)
  • The Breaking Strain (1967)
  • Casanova (1969)
  • The Rock (1970)
  • Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (1971)
  • The Ravi Lancers
    The Ravi Lancers
    The Ravi Lancers is a novel by John Masters, part of his series of novels portraying the British Raj through the experiences of members of the Savage family....

    (1972)
  • Thunder at Sunset (1974)
  • The Field Marshal's Memoirs (1975)
  • The Himalayan Concerto (1976)
  • Now, God Be Thanked (1979)
  • Heart of War (1980)
  • By the Green of the Spring (1981)
  • Man of War (1983) – US Title 'High Command'
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK