Dear Mr Cornwell, I read and enjoyed the Fort; very good it was. At the end you commented on the relative veracity of the reputations of Lovell, Saltonstall and Revere. You finally came to the conclusion that perhaps only Revere really would have had the fire in his belly to carry the day, and the Fort. You said that Peleg Wadsworth might not have spoken to his grandson, Longfellow on the subject of Revere, and so Longfellow’s poem selected Revere for canonisation without reference to what Wadsworth thought. But I wonder if Wadsworth didn’t agree with you, thinking Revere might have been the better commander, and Longfellow was operating to reverse the balance on whom he might have seen as an unfairly excoriated man. Also we are not required to agree with grandfathers. My own grandfather (who had worked in the same bank as him) described Michael Collins as “a young fool who went off to die for Ireland” whereas I think the world of him. Regards Jonathan Mills