Your Questions

Yes I did - I try to visit all the battlefields depicted in my books.

Gosh, I never noticed! You're quite right. I suspect it is some deep psychological flaw in me, and have to tell you that it's much too late to make a correction. But thanks for pointing it out.

I do believe the Italian publisher, Longanesi, does have plans to publish Heretic in Italian - perhaps it's not out yet? You may want to contact the publisher directly for more information.

She's there, in The Last Kingdom! Very young, of course, just a baby, and in the next book, The Pale Horseman, she appears again, but still only a child. I think you can guarantee that if she's present in those early books then I intend to use her in later ones - indeed, I've long known that she's the heroine of the whole series!

We know next to nothing about her - and I've probably been unfair to her. We do know she came from northern Mercia and that her father was an ealdorman. It was fairly usual for high-born women to be mentioned, because they had status, so we have the names of many noble and royal wives. We know a lot about Aelswith's daughter, Ethelflaed, because she became the Lady of Mercia and led armies against the Danes. We know a fair bit about some prominent abbesses. But it was still a man's world, and how.

Probably the Crimean War!

Perhaps one day the inconsistencies will be corrected - but not any time soon.

Oh dear, I haven't a clue. I wrote the book so long ago and all my notes are in storage. Sorry.

Raw troops seemed to fire high - probably because they aimed straight enough, but the musket's kick jerked the barrel up enough to affect the trajectory - so they were constantly being reminded to aim low. Riflemen? Probably not, because they went through intensive aiming and firing training, so by the time they deployed they probably knew their business. But you didn't really 'aim' a musket. You pointed it and let fly, because it's so inaccurate - the deadliness of a musket was volley fire, but not if the balls flew over the enemy's head.

They used the column because of their conscript army. It took an immense amount of time to train troops to the complicated manouevers needed to go from column to line, line to columns, either to square and so on, and Napoleon liked to get his levies into battle fast, and it was much easier to train them to attack in column rather than in line - especially as holding the dressing of a line during manouevers is extraordinarily difficult. And remember that the column had been immesnely successful for Napoleon when facing Austrian, Prussian and Russian armies. It had a huge psychological advantage - the men in the column felt they were part of an overwhelming mass, and their enemies saw it as an unstoppable juggernaut. Napoleon chided his generals for using the column against British troops - he said they should have softened up the British with massed artillery (which rather ignored Wellington's preferred tactic of sheltering his men from cannon fire by positioning them on a reverse slope). At Waterloo the French columns were supposed to deploy into line at the last moment - thus they could advance fast in a column and then, when the firefight began, deploy outwards, but British musket fire was simply too much and the deployment never took place. I can't think of an occasion when a French column beat a British line - though they certainly came close at Talavera and during the counter-attack at Salamanca

Sir Henry is based on officers who did those foul deeds! So yes. As to Wellington and Sharpe, I suspect they quite liked each other, but neither would ever dream of demonstrating that. Wellington probably rather resents being beholden to Sharpe, which will make him tart, but Sharpe has an obvious respect for Wellington, mainly because he recognises the man's sheer quality.

It's all to do with the rather complicated procedures of promotion. The basic method was by purchase; you literally bought your way up the ladder. If an officer sells his commission to another officer, then a third man can't get the job by merit promotion, because that makes nonsense of the financial transaction. That, to us, seems like nonsense, and so it is, but there you go. You could get brevert promotion (Sharpe does). A brevet promotion did not involve money, and a man could be boosted up a rank, but he still kept his old rank. So Sharpe, as a Captain, can be breveted Major, and though he acts as a major, and is given the wages of a major, and wears a major's uniform, as soon as his major's job ends he reverts to being a captain again. By Waterloo there were lieutenants who served as Lieutenant-Colonels, but went tumbling back down the ranks afterwards because their higher rank was brevet. That's more or less why, and I know it's complicated.