Dear Mr Cornwell

First up – glad to hear there’s a new Sharpe on the horizon. Very much looking forward to it.

My main question however regards Lord Pumphrey and my own interest and work in historical attitudes towards homosexuality. He plainly has/had a crush on Sharpe, which Sharpe himself just shrugged off, if he even noticed. I was wondering how realistic the whole situation was.

Would Lord Pumphrey be as openly gay as he seems to be, and if he would, what would general reaction be? Would the salt-of-the-Earth types like Sharpe be as (dare I say it) PC as he is in the books?

I’ve done some similar research into London’s East End and Docks, and it does seem that it was the puritanical Victorians who clamped down on such “unsavoury” stuff, so I’d like to think that it didn’t put Sharpe up nor down.

Have you any recommendations for further reading?

Many thanks
Pete MacKenzie