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On holiday in Turkey a couple of years ago I took this book with me, and became an object of scorn to teenage nieces and nephews, as if I'd slipped into premature senility: What are you doing reading that it's a kid's book!' My reputation as the intellectual heavyweight of the family was shattered at a stroke. They could barely conceal their shock and disgust, and openly sneered at me over their Schopenhauers and Heideggers (yes, they're Germans, so what can you expect).

But this was grossly unfair. You can't be clever all the time, and the brain needs its holidays as much as the body does. It's not as if I'd sunk to Geoffrey Archer Dumas's novel is a great classic, much derided by those who know it only through films and comics. It's like knocking Ivanhoe after watching Roger Moore's 50s TV series. It's one of those unfortunate classics that everyone thinks they've read because it has embedded itself in the collective consciousness.

I first read it in my teens, and was hooked from page one. It is the only real page turner' that I've ever read. The rest have all turned out to be impostors. My recent holiday reading of it obviously lost something with the loss of my own innocence: a part of me stayed aloof throughout. But it was still a bloody good read, and I make no apologies to the snobs who wanted me to disown it.

The characters are unforgettable: the Musketeers themselves, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, with their companion the dashing D'Artagnon, are models of honour; Cardinal Richelieu is a scheming politician who you wouldn't want to cross; Lady de Winter is a selfish machine, as inexorable as an Exocet missile in homing in on her target; her henchman, the one-eyed Rochefort, makes a splendid villain.

We follow D'Artagnon from his humble but honourable rural origins as he sets off to seek his fortune in the King's service; his first encounter with the musketeers and his winning of their friendship and respect as he fights with them against the Cardinal's men; the unfolding of the plot against the Queen - masterminded by the Cardinal in his political struggle against the King - and the musketeers setting off to forestall disaster, with their ultimate triumph as they outwit and outfight their enemies.

Don't be ashamed to be seen in the company of the three musketeers one for all and all for one!

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