ON shelves in my study sit a collection of books. Their titles are at one and same time both colourful, and malevolent. The Whores of War, Licensed to Kill, Congo Warriors, The Wonga Coup, and so the epithets adorning their front covers go on.
No less colourful and malevolent are the real-life characters who inhabit the pages of what I’ve come to call my ‘mercenary’ collection.
“Mad” Mike Hoare, Jean “Black Jack” Schramme, Costas Georgiou alias “Colonel Callan”, and Bob Denard, who revelled in the nickname les Affreux – the Dreadful – and whose life is said to have inspired Frederick Forsyth’s 1974 novel about mercenaries in Africa that was subsequently made into a fictional action movie – The Dogs of War.