Guards! Guards!

by Terry Pratchett

Corgi Paperback

I don’t often read novels, but when I do I want them to be like Terry Pratchett – fast-moving, anarchic, more than a little mad and very, very funny. Terry Pratchett is one of the world’s biggest-selling novelists. I don’t think I have ever been in an airport bookshop anywhere in the world without seeing two or three of those brightly-coloured cartoon covers.  But for those of you who don’t know, Terry Pratchett has written a series of novels – there must be over thirty by now – set in a place called Discworld.

Discworld is what it says it is – a world which is shaped like a flat disc instead of a globe. The disc rests of the back of four enormous elephants which stand on the back of an even more gigantic turtle which slowly paddles its way through space. Are you still with me? On the Discworld there are many different regions and countries which are similar to those of our world – similar, but not at all the same. And in Discworld there live many different races – men, naturally, but also dwarves, trolls, vampires, werewolves and, of course, dragons.

And somewhere at the centre of Discworld, a kind of microcosm of all the chaos and anarchy and madness that it contains, is the enormous, bustling, filthy, fascinating, labyrinthine city of Ankh-Morpork. Terry Pratchett calls  it “the oldest, greatest and grubbiest of cities.” Ankh-Morpork is ruled by the Patrician, Lord Vetinari, a man of Machivellian instincts, who rules the city effectively and with a deeply sardonic sense of humour.

And then the dragon appears. It is a mysterious dragon because it appears and disappears apparently at will, and it destroys at will. The Patrician consults the Archchancellor of Ankh-Morpork’s Unseen University. He consults the Head of the Thieves’ Guild – for in Ankh-Morpork (for thieves are licensed and it is a great mistake arrest a licensed thief, as Corporal Carrot finds out). But the man the Patrician relies upon to deal with the dragon is the unlikely figure of Captain Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork Night Watch.

Vimes is an unlikely hero. He is cunning rather than clever, streetwise rather than educated, boozy rather than alcoholic and despite all appearances to the contrary, he is rather good at his job. Captain Vimes’ unlikely crew of watchmen include Corporal Nobbs, “a small bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties”; Sergeant Colon, who has a flexible sense of honesty and is not to be relied on in a crisis unless he himself in threatened; Lance-Corporal Carrot, who although six feet six inches tall was brought up by dwarves and has a rather mysterious ancestry; and… oh well, now read on…

Laurence Bristow-Smith

British Consul General