Standard of Honour

Standard of Honour by Jack Whyte is the second volume of his Templar trilogy. The first volume, Knights of the Black and White, showed the founding of the Templar Order as a front organisation for the ultra-secret Brotherhood of Sion. Sixty years later the Templars are the premier Order of Chivalry in the Kingdom of Jerusalem with a steady stream of recruits and ample funds for equipment. The book opens with the catastrophic defeat of the Christian forces at the battle of Hattin, a defeat which owed as much to their inept leadership as to the generalship of Saladin. The action then moves to France where Henry St Claire is persuaded to return to his role as Master-at-Arms to his liege lord Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine when Richard frees Henry's son Andre from a false charge of murder. Ascending the throne of England on the death of his father Henry the Second Richard agrees to head a new Crusade to re-capture Jerusalem with the St Claire father and son as part of his army. Andre, a member of the secret Brotherhood, becomes a member of the Templar Order and takes the opportunity to search for his cousin Andrew Sinclair of the Scottish branch of the familly who has been missing since the battle of Hattin. Jack Whyte has once again written a story that combines adventure with reflection on the deeper issues involved in any conflict. His portrait of King Richard is rather harsh, whilst an accurate description of his actions it does not make allowances for Richard's need to be a canny politician as well as a warrior. The times were governed by a brutal code and the penalties for failure were extreme. Richard's actions and strategems should be judged in the light of this. Whyte is not afraid to show the Christian knights as lacking in the area of personal hygiene and cultural niceties compared to their Muslim opponents which is true but no reference is made to the origin of much of these attitudes in the priests constant lectures on the "sin of pride" and "mortification of the flesh". None of which takes anything away from this novel as a really good read giving hours of pleasure. Roll on volume three!