The Our detective this week hails from across the pond and he cut his teeth during the First World War.

He's Captain Hugh Drummond, better known as Bulldog Drummond, and he was one of the most popular characters

of detective fiction in print, on screen, and on the radio through the 1930s and 1940s.

Drummond was created by H.C. McNeil, whose literary career began with short stories about

his World War I experiences.

As an officer serving in the British Army he couldn't publish

under his own name so he chose the pen name Sapper, a nickname from the Corps of

Royal Engineers. Sapper stuck and he published the Drummond Adventures under the same name.

After the first Bulldog Drummond story appeared in The Strand magazine, McNeil reworked the character for a 1920 novel.

Like his creator, Hugh Drummond served in the Great War, and he earned his nickname from

his appearance.

He was described as an apparently brainless hunk of a man, but he was a crack shot, quick with his fists,

and an excellent poker player, among other things.

Drummond found peacetime to be in his words incredibly tedious

and he took out a newspaper ad seeking diversion, legitimate if possible and

excitement essential.

The ad led him to a threatened communist takeover of England, and it kicked off a series of

ten novels.

After McNeil's death, his friend Gerard Fairley wrote an additional seven novel starring Bulldog Drummond.

When the character hit the big screen, he shed his rougher image and gradually took on the bearing of a poised English gentleman.

Ronald Coleman earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance in a 1929 film

and he hoped to set the tone for future screen drummons. in a own in 7 B movies for Paramount.

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