Burgoyne, Alan Hughes
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1880-1929) UK politician – Unionist MP for Aylesbury from 1924 – and author, mostly on naval matters. Trafalgar Re-Fought (1905) with W Laird Clowes replays the Battle of Trafalgar in a twentieth-century setting. His Future War novel, The War Inevitable (1908), spends much of its time at sea in the context of the historical Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1921, formally terminated 1923). A sneak attack by Germany on Britain's torpedo boats leads to the circumnavigation of the globe by Japan's fleet to come to the aid of its ally; Germany then suffers a condign Invasion. In a series of stories – beginning with "The Way of the Navy" (September 1909 Pearson's Magazine), where the entire set appeared – Burgoyne speculated on various aspects of future naval warfare, including the impact of air power on a traditional navy, and a kamikaze attack, thirty years before World War Two, by a brave British pilot who – in "The Death Dive: The Story of the World's Last Naval Battle" (October 1911 Pearson's Magazine) – crashes his bomber into the German flagship. [JC/JDS]
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alan Hughes Burgoyne
born Kew, Middlesex: 30 September 1880
died Amersham, Buckinghamshire: 26 April 1929
works
- Trafalgar Re-Fought (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1905) with W Laird Clowes [hb/]
- The War Inevitable (London: Francis Griffiths, 1908) [hb/]
links
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