Soldier heroes of the modern world have proved potent images of Britishness and the masculine. Soldier Heroes presents a ground-breaking exploration of the imagining of masculinities in adventure stories. Its analyses range across biographies and news reports, novels and play fantasies.

Drawing on literary theory, cultural materialism and psychoanalysis, it traces a history of British heroic masculinities from nineteenth-century imperialism to the present, and examines their internalization in the lived identities of men and boys.