Hi Bernard, First of all, as I am sure most messages start, you are one of my favourite authors. I am sure you can work this out by now, otherwise I wouldn’t be contacting you. I am not much into the Napoleonic age, so I will admit I haven’t read any of your Sharpe books, but I have devoured the Warlord Chronicles, Saxon Stories and Grail Quest series and look forward to your upcoming Thomas of Hookton book. I will keep this brief in the hope this will give you more time to reply. My question is this: how much of your own personality is reflected in the characters you create? I presume as an author it will be difficult to create a character with beliefs you find repugnant, but the time periods in which you write had very different standards to those of today. Is there any of your characters which are most like you yourself? If so, why? Apologies if this question has already been answered, I did a brief search but didn’t see it. Cheers, Colin