Mr Cornwell, Until a few months ago, I had read I believe all of your books except for the Sharpe series. I guess I kept putting them off because I knew very little about the Peninsular War. I knew I would like them any way and finally I got around to tackling the series chronologically, and I’m up to Waterloo. First off, I believe my favorite parts of any Sharpe books are his meetings with Wellington. I really enjoy the uneasy admiration between the two. Sometimes you feel Wellington wants to hate Sharpe and other times he wants to love him, and he is incapable of either. Thanks to your books, I am now going to buy a biography on the man who to me was just the guy who won Waterloo and has a beef dish named after him. One question. What do you have against ensigns? Throughout the Sharpe series they seem to have a life-expectancy along the lines of members of a Forlorn Hope.

Mike Higgins