The Pomp of Yesterday

At Plymouth harbour, a captain meets a stranger who has arrived from Bombay and cannot remember his own name. The man feels drawn to a familiar harbour and to the officer's uniform, yet his past comes back only in brief, uncertain impressions. Joseph Hocking builds a wartime novel around this encounter, combining the puzzle of lost identity with questions of courage, trust and religious conviction.

The later excerpt places Paul Edgecumbe at the centre of a troubling illness. Luscombe and Colonel McClure discuss possible poisoning, but their suspicions lack proof, making caution part of the suspense. Alongside these personal uncertainties, Hocking's foreword asks what Britain's conduct and faith mean for victory and a lasting peace. He also explains that accounts from soldiers and visits to the front informed his Somme scenes. Readers interested in fiction shaped by the First World War will find both an intimate mystery and a contemporary argument about national responsibility.