91Èȱ¬

I was born in Stafford (1940) and have lived there all my life, so you can't get much more Staffordshire than that.

Many people reckon Shakespeare was spoilt for them at school, but with me it worked the other way. It meant nothing to me until I got to the Sixth Form, at which stage I suddenly realized what it was all about.

Since then I’ve been an inveterate Shakespeare fan. I’ve even tried my hand at performing, played various roles with local theatre groups, including King Lear and Mark Antony, but never (yet anyway), Ancient Pistol.

My particular interest in him was sparked by a 91Èȱ¬ television series in 1960 (!) entitled An Age of Kings, in which all of Shakespeare’s main history plays were performed one after another.

The actor who played Ancient Pistol – and in my view made him far funnier than Falstaff - was called George A. Cooper, who’s still around, I’m glad to say. He was the funniest Ancient Pistol I’ve ever seen or ever will see, and the book is dedicated to him.

Clouseau-like secret agent

My Pistol is a soldier-cum-secret agent, and is to espionage what Inspector Clouseau is to criminology. The book only has one object, to make people laugh. If it does that, it’s succeeded. If not, well thanks for buying it anyway; it wouldn’t do for us all to be alike.

In addition Shakespeare buffs might like to see how many quotations they can recognize.

I planned the book as one of a tetralogy, if that’s the word (four books in a series), covering Pistol’s exploits between the years 1397 and 1415.

The sequels are entitled All Mouth and Codpiece, All Cock and Bullets, and All Ship-shape and Bristols. The first two are awaiting a publisher, the last one is in course of writing.

As for the plot of All Wind and Pistol, it’s something like this...

Intrepid figure

Through the perilous world of late mediaeval espionage strides the intrepid figure of Ancient Pistol, secret agent (pictured right).

Never at a loss for an insult or an anachronistic quotation from the Bard, Shakespeare’s vainglorious soldier has been entrusted by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, with a mission of the utmost delicacy, involving as it does the fate of the mightiest in the land.

Pistol would not be everyone’s choice for such a task, being a loud-mouthed, drunken, cowardly fathead.

Inept assistance

His efficiency is further impaired by the necessity to stay one step ahead of his creditors and the army he has defrauded, besides a volatile relationship with Doll Tearsheet (not to mention various other ladies), and the inept assistance of Sir JohnÌý Falstaff.

But whether brawling in the Boar’s Head, discovered in flagrante by a murderous husband, or enduring the indignity of the stocks or the dunghill, Pistol is indestructible.

Before the monumental ineptitude of his blundering, the Machiavellian schemes of the mighty crumble and fall. Ridiculed, beaten, humiliated but undefeated, Pistol triumphs in the end.

Roger Butters

All Wind and Pistol, a novel by Roger Butters, is published by Book Guild Ltd. Click on the link below to visit their website.