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"The filmed versions (1939, 1977, 2002) of the FOUR FEATHERS are all worth seeing. Each is in some ways better than the book. Ralph Richardson (1939) plays a strong Colonel Durrance. The desert and battle scenes with Beau Bridges (1977) and Heath Ledger (2002) are breathtaking. But each film is to the original novel of 1905 as a marionette version is to a human-acted KING LEAR. You have to read the book. The films are but thin icing on a many-layered cake. *** THE FOUR FEATHERS is all about the apparent cowardice displayed in 1882 of Harry Faversham, a 27-year old English soldier, on leave from his regiment based in India. Two days before he learns, during a party in his London apartment with army friends that his regiment is to be transferred to Egypt for duty in the Sudan fighting fanatical muslims, Harry had become engaged to marry beautiful 21 year old Ethne Eustace at her home in County Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. He had already been seriously considering resigning from the army to help Ethne's father rebuild the nearly ruinous family estate. Sudden unofficial knowledge of his coming assignment to Sudan accelerated his decision to resign his commission. *** Only one of the army officers at the party, Jack Durrance, was not in Harry's regiment. But he had known Ethne Eustace longer than Harry and was in love with her himself. Durrance and Faversham had been best friends at Oxford University and would remain so for life. When, the next day, Harry told Jack that he had resigned his commission, that seemed reasonable to Durrance. But the other two friends there, plus a third member of the regiment who had sent a telegram that Harry received during the party, soon pieced together that Harry had resigned only after learning that he would be sent to Sudan. To these other three friends (unlike Jack Durrance) Harry Faversham was, therefore, a rank coward who had shamed the regiment. Accordingly, they sent him three white feathers along with their name cards. The three officiers agreed, however, to keep the facts of the timing of Harry's resignation a secret. By unplanned coincidence these three feathers later reached Harry in Ireland c/o his fiancee. When she saw them fall out of the package when Harry opened it, she too learned why they had been sent. Ethne then added her own fourth feather, accusing Jack of cowardice, and breaking their engagement. *** The rest of the novel reads like a detective story answering questions upon questions: e. g., was Harry Faversham really a coward? If so, was it because his mother died young and his father, an eighth generation army General, could not grasp how his son's imagination might make him fear death or maiming in battle yet never quail under fire? Had Mrs Adair, a woman in love with Jack Durrance, deliberately led Harry to fall in love with Ethne, so that Durrance would drop into her own romantic web? Was Ethne right to accept Jack Durrance's marriage proposal the day she learned of his sun blindness on duty in the Sudan? Did almost everyone underrate Harry's courage? What led Harry Faversham to atone for his great fault by spending five years in Africa, learning native tongues on a quest to make each of the four feather givers take them back? *** A great, great novel probing cowardice, loyalty, courage, motivation, romantic love and a military code of honor. -OOO-"

Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser

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