Bernard, Good evening from Australia. I love your Sharpe and Starbuck Chronicles, plus the Sharpe series – which I only recently watched. While serving in Iraq in 2003, I had a copy of John Tams’ theme and would sit up at night in Baghdad, listening to the song which spanned nearly 200 years. My interest stems from my ancestral grandfather’s service with Wellington at Waterloo under the 51st Regiment of Foot. In 1810, he was a part of the force which took the island of Guadaloupe in the Carribean. While there, a French ship sailed into port and was taken by the British. On board was a 17 yr old girl whose mother was a lady in waiting to Marie Antoinette and died on the guillotine on the same day. She had been sent to French Gyuana where her father had been sent as Governor. She arrived to find he had died and was in transit back to Paris to an unknown future. The girl, Genevieve, met my grandfather, Captain William Wood, and never returned to France ever again. She went to live in England during the remainder of the war and while the Captain was away with Wellington’s Army – no mean feat. After Waterloo, they migrated to Tasmania and hence this branch of my family commenced from that point. The point of this email is that your Sharpe books bought this period to life, followed by the television series. I was bought up on the story of the Captain and Genevieve and visit their crypt often. I have an intense interest in this period and I thank you very much for opening my eyes on the life my ancestral grandparents would have gone through. With regards Phil Pyke