a boy’s own story

Last week Conn Iggulden became the first writer in publishing history to take a book to the top of both the fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. His Wolf of the Plains, about the inexorable rise of Genghis Khan, and The Dangerous Book for Boys, a how-to guide to lost boy scout skills such as tying knots, identifying the stars and making a bow and arrow, may be different in genre, but they share, as Iggulden’s editor at HarperCollins put it, a “feeling of comradeship and adventure”.

In related news, boxing clubs are enjoying a surge in popularity, to the delight of Royal Navy recruitment,

who point out that boxing fosters “self-discipline, hard work, outstanding fitness, courage and team work - just the sort of qualities that we look for in potential recruits”.

It feels as if we’re in the midst of one of those great cyclical cultural shifts; a moment when we begin to think that the stiff upper lip was not such a bad thing after all, that manliness isn’t a silly retro Glen Baxter-style joke, but important and necessary, and that, frankly, they should bring back national service.

Part of the trouble with the new men who became ever more feminised (I know, I