All the world wondered

Every cavalryman must envy the hero of this book. Between 1936 and 1941 he led no less than five charges on horseback in Abyssinia, the final and most famous being the last cavalry charge that the British army has faced. And he survived to tell his tale. Indeed Tenente Amedeo Guillet is still living, aged 93, in Co. Meath, to which, very suitably, he retired for the hunting after a highly adventurous life, and where he still rides out.

The last charge of the British cavalry was, as far as I know, in 1920, on 13 July, by the 20th Hussars – a thousand yards’ successful dash against the flank of Kemal Ataturk’s advancing troops in the Ismid Peninsula during the Chanak crisis. Though there were still mounted yeomanry regiments in Palestine and Syria some 20 years later in 1941 – as readers of John Verney’s classic Going to the Wars will remember – they may have patrolled, but they were certainly never mad enough to charge their Vichy French enemies.