"George Orwell once wrote disparagingly about the type of middle-aged man who still lives a fantasy life in the novels of Sapper. Richard Usborne is that type. And not only Sapper's novels: Buchan's and Dornford Yates's too. For Mr. Usborne Half Moon Street is still haunted by Bulldog Drummond, Portland Place by Hannay, and the south-west corner of France by Berry and Co. This book is an affectionate evocation of the world of those skillful writers: a world of which Britain ruled enormous areas; a world in which leisured London clubmen played in the peacetime the Great Game of war against cads, crooks and beastly foreigners. The rules of the game were those of the public school, the stakes usually high--often Civilization itself. In looking back to those spacious days of easy assumptions and confident certainties, we can easily share Mr Usborne's enjoyment as he surveys the careers of his unforgotten heroes. When it was first published twenty years ago Clubland Heroes was greeted with a Book society Recommendation and, by readers and reviewers alike, the flash of recognition that heralds the birth of a minor classic. It's long ovedue reissue, in a thoroughly revised edition which includes a new introduction by the author, will delight a new generation of readers and for others recall past pleasures heightened with happy nostalgia."--Book jacket flap.