I re-read Sharpe’s Christmas on the train to work this morning (thinking, en passant, how well both stories would translate to film) when I started thinking about Brigadier Gerard and his viewpoint of the same campaigns. I tried to imagine Sharpe and Gerard in the same room but I fear there would not have been the same mutual respect as there is between Sharpe and Gudin! Gerard was a fine, brave and honourable soldier (and a romantic) but a bit too cocksure and too liable to misinterpret the actions and motives of the rosbifs. Then I started thinking about the crossover between you and Forester with Rifleman Dodd as nexus. I read “Death to the French” after seeing the comment in your web page and despite the fact that I kept wanting to know what Dodd would do next, I found the book far and away the worst Forester I have read. It was full of inappropriate comments paralleling Napoleonic France and militaristic Germany. I haven’t checked but I must see if it was written in the dark days of the Blitz or maybe even earlier! (there were anti-German references from WW1 e.g. the use of poison gas at Ypres). Very distracting and not good for the flow of the adventure narrative. Kate

Further to my comments on “Death to the French” I find it was first published in 1932, so it was between the World Wars although Forester may have been seeing a resurgence of militarism in the years immediately prior to the taking of power by the Nazi Party in 1933. Kate