Thanks for your many, many riveting tales. Having read nearly all your books, I’ve recently begun re-reading several series — which ain’t quite up there with your OBE but it’s as much honor as I can confer! ‘Just finishing re-reading “Sharpe’s Fortress”, and turned to Le Carre’s “Our Game” which turned a moment of clever wordplay on Sholokov’s title “And Quiet Flows the Don”, which led me to start the “Don” today. …And which leads to a petty observation on Sharpe’s Fortress. Within the first twenty pages of the “Don”, there are two evening observations of a waning moon. This brought to mind Sharpe’s observation on the waning moon as he and his cavalry friends road back in the night from the temple/”cockpit” where he’d dispatched the two Jinnis. An astronomer I’m not, but methinks there are perils in writing about phases of the moon: the lunar phase reflects the moon’s rising/setting to the sun’s rising/setting — it ain’t negotiable, although adjustment is required for season and lattitude as one gains distance from the equator. At the equator, a full moon rises ~6pm, a fourth-quarter half moon rises at ~midnight, and a sliver of waning moon indicates a moon which arose just before the sun (~6am) and set just before it (~6pm). It greater lattitudes, the summer rising and falling might deviate considerably from 6am/pm, but the waning mooon would always preceed the sun by a some degrees. Riding back on a dark evening one could not observe a waning moon — which had already set. Nor could Russian cossacks lay in a dark field looking up to a waning moon unless they were there just before sunrise. No damnation intended here; and no reply needed, although if I’ve blown my cosmology, smite me freely! ‘Apologies if I’m repeating a long-ago thrashed-out pettiness but my googling didn’t find it. I’ve greatly enjoyed your writing and eagerly await your latest books. ‘Wish your books could be released in the US as soon as they’re available in the UK, but I suppose that hangs as much on book tour schedules as on “translation” schedules and legal issues. ‘Spose I should order them from London and see if my language skills are up to the Queen’s spellings. :) Sandy McMillian