Dear Mr Cornwell No need to respond but I would like to make a comment about the inevitable comparison between the Sharpe series and the Starbuck Chronicles. I’m a great fan of both but Richard Sharpe has never suffered defeat(possibly “Rifles” apart). Starbuck, by contrast, having hitched his wagon to the Southern Star, is doomed to ultimate capitulation. I imagine that the paradox that any writer who bases novels in the War between the States faces is that any discerning reader will have split sympathies. Admiration for the courageous, outnumbered, innovative but morally ambiguous South and the industrially and numerically superior, morally correct but initially incompetent North. I am looking forward to reading how you manage that in the subsequent Starbuck novels. In the meantime, thank you for two thoroughly entertaining and educational series. Keith Harris, Retford, NOTTS.