Sir Ranulph Fiennnes increasingly reminds me of the black knight in Monty Python. When King Arthur chops off the knight’s arms, the knight shouts cheerfully: “It’s only a flesh wound!” Here is Fiennes, the pensioner-pioneer, skipping down Everest after his triumphant climb last week, missing the frostbitten tops of his fingers on one hand, and defying his double heart bypass. He amputated the dead fingers himself with a hacksaw. It’s only a flesh wound.

Afterwards a Times reader wrote in: “It’s about time we had a real role model for kids and adults alike to look up to. What an inspiration to succeed for something other than yourself. Well done, Ranulph! A True Brit.”

Of course, the point is that there are no true Brits with grit left, no more barking mad role models such as Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet, who is not of this century at all, but actually an eminent Victorian. If you ask a passing child to name some British heroes of the 21st century, Simon Cowell tops the list, followed by the late-lamented Jade Goody, an assortment of Ferrari- driving footballers, then Sir Alan Sugar.

Spotting this sorry state of affairs, the man who brought us The Dangerous Book for Boys has written The Dangerous Book of Heroes, to be published next week. It has a similar Boy’s Own Paper-style cover, and is written in the same spirit of spiffing derring-do. Conn Iggulden, the author, had sales of over half a million here for his boys’ book, so no doubt Heroes will have the same penetration into the bestseller aisles of Asda, for adults and children. It may look like a retro Father’s Day present, but its influence will be huge.

While The Dangerous Book for Boys supposedly dealt with the “crisis of masculinity” in a health-and-safety obsessed compensation culture by teaching young lads how to make go-karts, The Dangerous Book of Heroes arrives, with impeccable timing, just as we have completely lost confidence in our parliamentarians and bankers.

“Small, corrupt and badly shaken country in desperate need of uplifting heroes. Apply within,” would be an appropriate sign to put in Britain’s shop window right now. We lack gumption and oomph and honesty. In the famous words of the heroic Antarctic sledging explorer Apsley Cherry-Garrard, quoted at the front of Heroes, Britain is a “nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal.”

That we are in need of heroism is in no doubt, but Iggulden (along with his brother David) has selected a peculiarly old-fashioned, colonial set of gents for worship. There are 37 male entries to six female, and the authors admit that some of their choices are more dangerous than noble. In Heroes there is the usual roll call of Churchill, Fiennes, Scott of the Antarctic and Florence Nightingale, but Iggulden is particularly keen on conquerors: Clive of India, Sir Richard Burton, Lawrence of Arabia and James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak. Bonkers imperialists abound. Burton, the explorer and writer, had himself circumcised so he could pass as a Muslim at Mecca. Brooke set himself up with a kingdom in Borneo in 1841.

Iggulden wants to “breathe new life into the extraordinary stories of heroes who were once known to all. Time and changes in education have meant that sometimes stories are forgotten where they should be remembered.”

What is worrying is that some may consider Iggulden’s ripping yarns from history to be some kind of definitive guide, illuminating the qualities that make up the British character. His selection of mostly explorers and warriors rather than intellectual heroes narrows the field. Better to make your own international list, from Nelson Mandela to Oskar Schindler, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks and Charles Darwin, all of whom had Iggulden’s requirements of “courage, determination and some dash”.

While the only 21st-century Britons who battle in the jungle are on I’m A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here!, there must surely be another kind of modern hero, requiring another kind of book. But British heroes are thin on the ground, except for a few sportsmen and those who have rescued the injured in recent terrorist attacks, or Private Johnson Beharry, awarded the Victoria Cross for saving comrades in Iraq. You are left wondering, as the Stranglers put it in the days of punk: “Whatever happened to all of the heroes?” We need a new conception of heroism, not one based on a Victorian propagandist myth.

Times Recommends

• Superfreakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• Vincent van Gogh’s letters show the soul of the artist