My name is George. I am fifteen and live in Melbourne, Australia. It was 2006, and my family was at Melbourne airport, about to board a flight to Fiji, for our annual vacation. At that time, I was constantly plagued by severe boredom on long flights, and I think the aforementioned flight is three hours long. I have been a keen reader as long as I can remember, and decided to quickly grab a book from the airport bookstore, so as to occupy myself during the long flight. I picked up a terrorist-thriller by someone or other, solely due to the presence of an explosion and S.W..A.T. trooper on the front cover. I was on my way to the cash register when, for no apparent reason, another book caught my eye, entitled 'Sharpe's Fury'. I picked up the book and read the blurb. I have always been interested in warfare (as every boy is) but had never even heard of Napoleon's peninsula campaign (none of his campaigns for that matter, just the man himself), the words 'war' and 'siege' stood out from the blurb. At that moment my mother called for me to hurry, and I made a snap decision to buy Sharpe's Fury instead of the thriller. And thank God I did. Words cannot describe how much that decision affected my life. That book opened the door to another world - many worlds actually, but I'll come to that later - a world of redcoats, sergeants, officers, Napoleon, muskets, Wellington, Waterloo - the list goes on. The second I read the opening chapter - a passage about a cloak and dagger murder in a majestic Spanish city, (not to mention the first time I had ever seen the word 'whore' in a book, and saw that it was spelled with a 'w') I knew I wanted more. Within a year I had read all twenty-one Sharpe books, and again, I struggle to describe how much knowledge and emotion I reaped from them. They were also the first 'adult' books I had ever read, and in a family of four ever-competing young children, reading an adult book means a lot. One day, my father picked up Sharpe's Gold from here I'd left it on the couch, and within half an hour, had become as obsessed as I was. From then on, I had to fight just to get hold of my own books. My dad also finished all twenty-one, and has always said what a great tragedy it is that his father (whom served in the British army during World War II, and eerily, joined as a private and finished as a major - just like Richard Sharpe) passed away before he was able to read them. After Sharpe's, I read Starbuck's, (which I also loved, and was disappointed that the series was discontinued), then Grail Quest, which I read, coincidentally, when my family and I were journeying around France. >From there I read the Arthurian trilogy, the books of which have to be the most startling I have ever read, and the first of which is one of my favourite books of all time (second only to Sharpe's Fury). Although the second and third were staggering, they were SO depressing, as we were forced to watch every single character and kingdom we loved so much from the first book be killed off one by one. Since then I've read Gallows Thief, Azincourt (another favorite), and just recently the Burning Land, when I came across it in a bookstore. I was puzzled while reading the Burning Land by constant references to past battles and adventures, and remarked to my father 'It's almost as if there's a missing prequel.' When I found out there were five, and that there was an entire Bernard Cornwell series I didn't know about, I almost had a heart attack, and immediately placed an order for all of them - and, while I was at it, Stonehenge. I have to say, Sharpe's is the best book series I've ever read, and if I ever become a Hollywood producer, I intend to make at least ten Sharpe's movies. (I'm aware there's already a few, but I was concerned by the varying amount of faith to the novels, and also I felt that the lack of CGI meant the battles and events were lacking in the explosiveness we experienced in the books). I'm also desperate for another book, and I think somewhere there might've been a battle of Rolica mentioned, at which both Sharpe and Wellington were present, but I'm pretty sure never appeared in the books... I also had three questions (feel free to ignore them if you don't want to answer): Firstly, if you don't mine me asking, are you a Christian, Atheist, pagan or what? As I read all of your books, I found myself becoming increasingly puzzled as Christian characters and themes were introduced and recognized, only to be countered by pagan heroes and Christian villains, as well as evidence such as the similarities of Jesus to Mithras explained by Merlin. (Just so we're even, I'm agnostic).
Second, do you really, really, really despise the Spanish? There just seemed to be an awful lot of evil Spaniards throughout Sharpe's, as well as poor fighting displays by their troops (most notably in Devil and Fury). But I guess that might just be history.
Thirdly, what's the deal with all the Irish lieutenants? (Lieutenants as in second-in-command, not military rank) Don't get me wrong, I loved Patrick Harper, and Issa was fantastic in the Warlord Chronicles, but when I recently picked up the Burning Land and met Finan, I was slightly abashed. I mean, three different wars, peoples, and time periods? Really? Anyway, I hope you get this, and I hope none of my questions were answered in your historical notes (I confess I never read all of them because I was so eager to get to the next book in whatever series I was reading), and I hope you realise how much your books have meant to me. (You'll be happy to know that, in addition to my father, my little sister has read the Warlord Chronicles and is now heavily immersed in Sharpe's). Many thanks, George Colman.